The Giraffe Centre is located in the Lang’ata suburb, approximately 20 km (about 40 minutes) from Nairobi’s city centre. It was established in 1983 by Jock and Betty Leslie‑Melville to rescue and conserve the endangered Rothschild’s giraffe through a successful breeding and reintroduction program.
Conservation & Visitorship
Since opening, the centre has played a major role in environmental education and conservation. It’s still actively involved in breeding giraffes and reintroducing them into Kenya’s national parks. The centrerhosts tens of thousands of visitors each year and runs educational programes especially for schools.
We both got to feed the giraffes.
And they had a couple of Warthogs running around.
After the giraffe center we went to the Karen Blixen Museum. Along the road we met some cows.
The Karen Blixen Museum
Karen Blixen (1885–1962) was a Danish author, best known for her memoir Out of Africa (1937), which recounts her life managing a coffee farm in British East Africa. She lived in Kenya from 1914 until her return to Denmark in 1931. Her writing captures colonial Kenya’s beauty, romance, and complexity—and was later adapted into the acclaimed 1985 film Out of Africa starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.
Located roughly 10 km southwest of Nairobi’s city center, at the foot of the Ngong Hills in the suburb now known as Karen, the museum is set in the very bungalow Blixen lived in. Built in 1912 by Swedish engineer Åke Sjögren, the property was acquired by Karen and her husband, Baron Bror von Blixen‑Finecke, in 1917. She farmed coffee here until leaving in 1931.
Post-independence, the house became government property and was converted into a museum—officially opened in 1986 following renewed interest sparked by the Out of Africa film.