Kenya - finally arriving on The Beach and meetings with old friends.

Part 11 of "From Cape Town to Nairobi in a Land Rover" a.k.a. "The Grande Finale".

After our whitewater rafting in Jinja, we crossed over to Kenya at the Busia border crossing on the 27^th of February and started making our way towards Nairobi. After our overnight stop at the Old Teahouse we drove the rest of the way to Nairobi via Kericho and Nakuru without any further overnight stops. We learned later from friends who live in Kenya that we should have stopped in the Lake Nakuru National Park. Apparently it’s very good despite it’s small size.

Another chaotic border crossing. What are those trucks in front doing
in our lane? This got into a complete standstill jam.

Another piece of evidence of that you can transport anything
on the back of a motorbike.

Old Teahouse campsite. We were the only campers.
There were no public bathrooms but they gave us access to one of
the guest rooms for shower and toilet.

Kenyan way of marking the lane is not in use: put rocks and
gravel on the lane. I fail to understand how this could improve
road safety, yet the kenyans seemed to think this was a perfectly
valid way of marking a road. The speed limit was 100km/h - imagine
running over the rocks at this speed. Not a problem if you have a
good 4x4 but I wouldn't want to try it with any other car.

Claudio had looked up in advance a couple of options for where to leave his car in the long term in Nairobi. He had found these on the overlander forums and by asking other travellers that we met during our trip. One of the places we had been recommended was Wildebeest Campsite in Karen, on the outskirts of Nairobi. We went to take a look at the place. Claudio spoke with the owner when we arrived. It all sounded rather positive, including that his security arrangements were quite good (security guards at day and night, electric fences, alarm systems). We decided to stay one night here to get a better feel for the place before Claudio would decide between this place and Jungle Junction. Leaving the car in Nairobi is a little more expensive than leaving it in South Africa or Arusha (Tanzania), but as we already had our flights out of Nairobi booked we didn’t think it to be sensible to drive the car back to Tanzania and then flying out of Nairobi. Arusha is actually rather close to Nairobi, and a bus ride will only take 5-6 hours. We have however seen how the bus drivers drive on the road and we were not keen on getting on a bus. Many of them seemed determined to get to their destination in the shortest possible time with no consideration to road or passenger safety. Driving our own car to our final destination seemed liked a better option for making it back alive and in one piece.

Despite a modern city centre, the slums were rather
prominent when entering the city from the west.

A "suicide cow" crossing the road and trying to get itself killed by
getting ran over by a car. We saw plenty of animals crossing roads
as they are not kept in fenced pastures. I took it as a habit to start
calling them "suicide" animals as crossing the roads at their speed
seemed like pure suicide.

There were also a lot of suicide sheep.

Despite having decided to leave the car in Nairobi, on the 29^th we still started driving to Tanzania and to Arusha. We had to collect Claudio’s sun shades for the car windows that one Swiss traveller had brought down for him to Arusha. The story behind this is that Claudio had bought sun shades in Switzerland for the Landy before departing. Once we got to Cape Town and tried to fit them in we found out that the shades for the front windows and the wind shield were the wrong size. The factory had messed up the packing process and packed Land Cruiser shades in Land Rover packaging. The shades that we had for the back windows were fine, and we didn’t need the rest of the shades until the car gets parked long term in Nairobi. Claudio managed to connect on one of the traveller forums with someone who was coming down from Switzerland and was kind enough to bring the shades down to Arusha. We had however left Arusha before she got there - so now we had to go back down to collect them.

On the way to Arusha we stopped at Amboseli National Park for one night. It’s located right on the North side of Kilimanjaro. The park receives water coming down from the mountain and therefore has a lake and some smaller ponds that stay wet 12 months of the year – good grounds for the hippos and the elephants. The biggest lake shown on the Amboseli map is seasonal and is only formed during the few months of the rainy season.  In those months it’s a home to thousands of birds. The remainder of the year it is dry and empty land. We visited before the big rains had arrived and could therefore drive through the “lake”. On the greener parts of the park we saw again lots of wildebeest, hippos, elephants, vultures, small foxes etc. We overnighted at a community camp that was relatively cheap and nice.

Baby elephant drinks water

This bird (probably a starling?) had its eyes fixed on me
while I was eating my sandwich for lunch at the picnic site.
"Got some for me, too?"

Even wild animals cross the road when you are driving towards them.
I have started believing animals are all suicidal.

Buffalos by the roadside in Amboseli.

This is the lake. No, there is no water in it.

 After Amboseli we crossed  over to Tanzania on the 2^nd of March, drove to Arusha, picked up the sun shades and drove straight out towards East again. We decided to visit the Kenyan coast near Mombasa and then go back to Nairobi. We were unsure if we could drive the shortest route through Tsavo National Park without paying national park fees and therefore decided to take the Southern route that goes along the main road towards Dar-es-Salaam, then turning North into Tanga and the border crossing. This route is much longer. Later we learned we could have taken the shortcut through Tsavo without needing to pay the fees. Oh well – next time.

We again had trouble finding a campsite for the night, and were already looking for a place to camp in the wild as it was getting closer to sunset. It was however hard to find any wild camping sites with lots of villages and houses located near the roadside all the way. Eventually we found a campsite and hotel near Same town where also another overlander car had just stopped. In the evening Claudio remembered he hasn’t informed his friend who lives on Diani Beach that we will be coming visiting Diani. We were hoping that they would be in town and we could meet them for a drink or dinner. He then sent him an sms – and got a response with an invitation to stay over at their house. Sure! After mostly sleeping in a tent (which I love, by the way, don’t get me wrong – seeing the stars almost every night is amazing) it sounded nice to stay in a real house again. Apart from the week in Malawi and a few nights in hostels we had camped all the way. So, the next day we crossed the border to Kenya – but not without first meeting with a few Tanzanian policemen who were asking if we had any “presents” for them from Switzerland. Surprisingly enough, we did not have, so he asked if we had brought anything for him from South Africa. No, we had not brought anything for him in South Africa either (and we were not going to give him any money). He didn’t push it any further so we just drove off.

Claudio’s friend and his wife had recently retired and moved to Diani. They had built themselves a truly lovely house in Diani only 500 meters away from the beach. We went for a walk on the beach, enjoyed drinks at one of the hotel beach bars and had lovely  home cooked dinner.  A marvelous day. We ended up staying altogether for three nights, having one lazy day and one day of visiting some local schools. There had been a visit from a few Belgians who had donated money for building new classrooms and bathrooms for a couple of the local schools, and had asked Claudio’s friends to go and check on the progress and take photos. One of them had donated al the money to run one of the schools – a kind act but what is the school going to do when this man living in Belgium passes away or if he gets into a financially tight situation? No matter how much I appreciate people taking initiative with acts of kindness, I do still believe in working with established organisations to ensure continuity of the operation.

The lovely house on Diani Beach that Claudio's friends live in.

Views on the beach.

The schools, the children and the building projects.

We went to the beach in the early evening wanting to catch
the moon rise.Unfortunately the weather was cloudy and we
could only catch a small spot of the moon peeking between
the clouds.

It was absolutely wonderful staying in Diani. I want to come back here again some time, for a proper beach holiday. It seemed that Diani Beach was another place impacted by the travel warnings as it’s not too far from Mombasa. Many of the nice hotels along the beach were almost empty and there were very few people on the beach or in the water, apart from the local fishermen. The beach itself seemed quite nice. There were operators offering diving, kitesurfing and all kinds of watersport activities – I’m sure I could easily spend a couple of weeks here without getting bored.

While stayed in Diani we had looked at the different options for driving back to Nairobi. One would have been avoiding Mombasa entirely and driving around it on the South side. The second one would involve taking the ferry to Mombasa town and going through the town. Third one, and the longest route, would have taken us further up North along the Kenyan coast before turning West towards Nairobi. We decided on the second option, going via Mombasa and trying out the ferry – despite having heard that the ferry had had some problems a few days ago. The queues had been up to two hours long (normally 15 minutes).  We were hoping that the problems with the ferry would have been resolved by now.

That turned out to be a false hope. We got to the road crossing before the ferry and found ourselves already on the queue. A queue that was not moving at all. We took our books out and Claudio bought a newspaper from a guy walking past us, and started reading, resolving crosswords and sudokus (we failed at both tasks) and trying to entertain ourselves. In the end the wait was 3hours and 15 minutes. Apparently when we arrived only one ferry out of four was operating, but they managed to fix a second one which helped speed up things a little. Eventually we got across to the other side, fueled up at the petrol station and got on the road out of town – just to hit another traffic jam. We joined a long line of trucks driving from Mombasa harbour to Nairobi. When our first queue was not moving, Claudio decided to turn back and try an alternative road out. It was marginally better but also completely jammed. The jams went on for a long time. Eventually Claudio got so tired of them he started passing on whichever side he could, in the African style – left, right, center. We even drove on the shoulder of the road several times when Claudio got really fed up with the trucks, buses and minivans. To be fair, many of these cars should not even be on the road anymore. The engines are in such bad condition they can’t get the trucks up even the smallest hill – which further adds up to the jams on the single lane roads.  In addition, many of the locals drive horribly badly. There are lots of close calls when a truck or a bus decides to pass the slower one in front but doesn’t have patience to wait for a proper moment with a long enough break in the meeting traffic. Well – what can one expect. TIA – This Is Africa. This is how they drive here. All in all driving from Mombasa to Nairobi is pretty exciting (some would call it nerve wrecking). I would say it’s an interesting drive to do once or twice but I would not want to be on this road too often.

The ferry to Mombasa.

The traffic jam after the ferry crossing.

Once we arrived in Nairobi, we headed back to Wildebeest. We still had time for  catch-up with two of my Singaporean friends who are now working in Nairobi on a short term basis but other than that it was work – unpacking, packing and cleaning. The trip had come to an end and it was time to clean the car and the equipment, and prepare the Landy for a few months of standing until Claudio would return. It was sad to part with the Landy and also sad to part with Claudio.  We had been travelling together for 3 months and the Landy had become our home. At Nairobi airport we would board different flights. Claudio would first go back home to Switzerland and prepare his motorbike for the next trip, and then head off to Canada at the beginning of June with the bike. I was on my way to Dubai to stay with my friend Farah and look for a job in Dubai or the Middle East.

Landy is getting a wash - also from underneath.

The Big Clean-up! Everything had to come out, get cleaned and
be put back in.

Singapore in Nairobi. (Photo: Aaron Fu)

In summary, it was a great trip.  It has been completely unforgettable and almost life changing. The beauty of the continent struck me, especially the amazing opportunities for outdoor life and observing wild animals. The national parks are mostly well looked after and have a good variety of animals, big and small, in them.

That is of course what Africa is known for. It is also known for being poor and underdeveloped. We were pleased to see a lot of development projects going on when we drove across from South to East. Yet we discussed several times during our trip that first of all the major development projects  (roads, housing and other infrastructure) were all foreign funded. The local governments don’t have the money, which is understandable, yet the money spent on development will go to a complete waste unless the locals will take ownership and responsibility of maintaining what has been built. This will require money, but it will also require an attitude where things are fixed before they are so broken that they are unusable. In many areas where we visited, it still seemed that this was not happening.  We saw equally houses, roads and cars in such a state of disrepair that some of it had to simply be due to neglect. For the governments to get money, they will need businesses to be set up by locals and people employed. At the moment it seemed that it was mostly the Chinese and Middle Eastern doing business in Africa. They do employ locals but if all businesses are foreign owned, the money will not stay in the country.

Africa is developing, and particularly the bigger cities had many modern amenities – although there are still problems, there was also progress. I do hope for the best but I can also see a lot of work that needs to be done and many changes are required on local level to make Sothern and Western Africa more prosperous.

To come back to our trip: We have crossed 10 countries and spent 84 days on this continent. We drove in total 17,500 kilometers, used up 2,070 litres of diesel, visited 9 national parks, climbed one very high mountain (The Kilimanjaro) and one low peak (Mount Mulanje), experienced two broken back windows, got twice bogged in the mud, ripped 1 shock absorber, found a 1 pair of completely worn-out break pads and one damaged belt, had numerous encounters with wildlife (mostly amazing or cute yet some were a little scary), made many new friends and had a lot of FUN. Truly an adventure of a lifetime.

Despite all the time, there are always still things left to do. I want to return to Tanzania and visit Serengeti and Ngorongoro, see Maasai Mara on the Kenyan side. I will return to these places when I have the money to do it properly – they are not the best for self drivers on low budgets. I also want to spend more time in Zambia, and definitely include a visit to South Lwanga national park (see the leopards! Bloody leopards were hiding from me!). I would also like to go and have a nice holiday in Zanzibar on the beach, and maybe visit Pemba Island for diving. I didn’t see much of South Africa, either, where we started the trip – I need to return for a trip to the Southern and Eastern side of the country and make sure I visit the Kruger National Park. Add to that all the places I would like to return to: Namibia and Etosha, Okavanga delta (Chobe and Moremi national parks), Mana Pools national park in Zimbabwe and Diani Beach in Kenya… Yes, I will need at least another 3 months to cover all of this.

I will try to find that time. Life is short – it should not be spent all at work. Go out and play! You will not regret it.

The route that we drove from cape Town to Nairobi.

Bye-bye Green Mamba. I will miss you, dear Landy.
It was fun seeing the desert roads of namibia with you, cross the
Tropic of Capricorn and the Equator, see Messum crater,
see all the wildlife (even the zebra skeleton),  sleep on the roof,
have lunch and dinner under the shade of the awning, adopt an
extra passenger (cat pictured on top right) - and last but
not least, even getting bogged in the mud in Zimbabwe &
Malawi was fun.
Be safe in Nairobi, I hope to see you again, Landy!

Rwanda and Uganda. Akagera national park, a genocide museum and world's coolest whitewater rafting.

Part 10 of "From Cape Town to Nairobi in a Land Rover"

We arrived to Rusumo border crossing on the 20^th of February. We knew that Rwanda allows no plastic bags – yet we had various things in the car packed in plastic bags, plus a number of plastic bags that were intended to be used as bin bags. So – before starting to drive over to Rwanda, we had hidden them as well as we could, in the different lockers at the back of the car. We were wondering if they will also want to go through our luggage, like they do at the Rwandan and Congolese border in Goma/Gisenyi.

No. They did not. The man who checked our stamped passport looked at us very confused (all other cars at the border crossing were wither trucks, minibuses or locals), handed them back and did not even ask us to open the back door. We also think his English was not very good. He asked Claudio to “show me your paper for the car” – so Claudio showed him the carnet that the customs office had just stamped. We had no idea what “paper” he meant but we were counting not hat he did not know, either. That was a good guess. We got across to Rwanda and smuggled all of our plastic bags in the country (and later out of it).

Rice fields soon after border crossing.

Landy at the rice fields.

Getting towed up a very long hill. Not safe - but saves you
the hard work of pedaling uphill for a kilometer.

 We were contemplating on whether to go first to Kigali, or whether to make a stop in the small Akagera National park. We decided for staying two nights in Akagera. On the first night we camped at a lakeside with some hippos (we couldn’t actually see them as it was almost dark when we arrived but we could hear them). The second night we camped at a bigger campsite on top of a hill and had quite some company of the Kigali international community who seemed to come to Akagera now and then for a weekend. A brilliant idea, considering Akagera is less than two hours drive from Kigali.  Akagera is a beautiful park despite its rather small size. It has lakes, hills and plenty of greenery. It had recently been burnt in a bushfire, though, particularly the North side of the park. The rainy season had started but the fires had probably taken place the week before, before the rains arrived. It was actually so wet in some parts of the park that we could not access all of the roads (including the area where the elephant s are usually spotted. We didn’t need to get bogged into more elephant prints). In our two days in the park we saw antelopes, bush bucks, zebras, impalas, dik-diks, tsessebes (they call them topis in Rwanda), buffalos and giraffes. Still no leopards – but we met someone who had seen one – they do exist. Not bad at all, I would recommend a visit if you are in Kigali and have the time to spend a night or two in Akagera. It is very much possible to do it as a weekend trip, even leaving Kigali on a Saturday morning and returning on Sunday night although spending an extra night makes the trip more worthwhile.

 

Map of Northern part of Akagera national park.

View of the lake in Akagera.

Antelopes hiding behind the burned bushes.

Buffalos on the road!

A beautiful Landy in a beautiful landscape.

 We then continued our visit in Rwanda in Kigali. I did a quick visit to the genocide museum. Claudio did no come and waited for me in the car – he has already been there twice when he was living in Goma in Congo. I therefore only went to the first floor, which holds the exhibition of the Rwanda genocide (second floor is  other genocides). I didn’t want to keep Claudio waiting for too long. I managed to get through the museum in about 50 minutes.

After the museum we tried to find one of the two campsites that were marked on the Tracks4Africa map on the GPS. We drove around in the area but could not find either of them. After a couple of stops of looking for a place we ended up at Mamba club hostel in Kimihurara. (Based ona  recommendation from Tripadvisor) It was actually a club but they also had a hostel on second floor. A nice place! We stayed in a big bedroom with an ensuite bathroom, but they also had clean looking 4-bed dorms (I was of course being my curious self and peeked in a couple of the dorms. They were empty). The Mamba Club also had a bowling alley, a volleyball court and a small restaurant downstairs. We had dinner at Papyrus Italian restaurant with Tim and Lynn whom we met in Akagera National Park.

Next day we drove off to Gisenyi on the Congolese border (Congo DRC). We took a “scenic” route option that went right up the mountains. The roads undulated up and down mountain slopes. I have to confess I was feeling a little sick. Claudio had lunch, I did not. The views on the road were well worth taking he longer route – including seeing the volcano on Congolese side.

The Nyiragongo volcano.

 

Amazing views over the rice fields on the hills. This was on the part
of the road that made me feel sick. The road went up-down-and-around.

How to transport a mattress to the next village.

Unfortunately none of Claudio’s friends from Goma were around, so we could not meet any of them for drinks on the Rwandan side. We could not cross the border, as we had thought of going over to Congo so late that we could not have got our visas processed on time (even the national park visit related visa takes about two weeks to process) We found a lovely campsite and hotel called Discover Rwanda Gisenyi Beach. They were located near Serena Lake Kivu hotel and had only finished building in October 2014 – just before Claudio left Goma.  The proceeds from the hotel go towards maintaining the genocide museum in Kigali. Discover Rwanda was indeed a lovely place. It was an old colonial building with a nice garden, and a nice decoration. Another place I would warmly recommend. It was cheap, good and clean and their food was good, too. If you are driving yourself you can camp at the backyard – enough space for either ground tents or a car with a rooftop tent.

Me and the lizard having a drink at Discover Rwanda.

After Gisenyi we were headed for Uganda on the 24^th of February. First we sorted out some practical issues (such as exchanging money at the border, paying road taxes and topping up Claudio’s Ugandan SIM card,). I have to say the Ugandan customs were probably the friendliest we encountered. The customs officer did not only give us some advise on road conditions but he even  helped us find a reliable money changer when we had to pay the road taxes I local Ugandan money instead of US dollars. What a service!

We stopped for food in a town that looked far bigger on the map than in reality. (It was probably in Kabale – I can’t remember!). On the 25^th of February we continued towards Jinja where we wanted to go for the famous whitewater rafting on the Nile. We drove close to Kampala, missed the road that would have taken us around the city and ended up inside it. Mistaaaaakeee! We got completely stuck in the lunch time traffic. In the end one of the cars next to us made a u-turn and drove off. That left enough space for us to turn the Landy around and follow suit. We drove back to the main road and passed Kampala from a distance.  Not going back there any time soon,. That was some of the worst traffic I have seen in a long time.

We had lunch in this little town.

Landy - as seen from the balcony of the restaurant.

Another EU funded road. No potholes.

Landy at the Equator.

Stuck in traffic in Kampala. Not moving an inch!

We eventually arrived in Jinja and went to sign up for our whitewater rafting at the Nalubale office. We were in luck, they had a group going out the next day that we could join. They also gave us directions how to get to a campsite (Nile River camp).  Before going to the campsite we visited the starting point of the Nile River (there is a small entrance fee).  Nothing much to see but at least I can now say I have seen where the White Nile starts from.  We then drove off to our campsite. Nile River camp was another pleasant surprise. It was well maintained and clean, had a nice bar area with a splendid view over the river. The campsite also came with a free cat. It seemed the owners cat was very fond of the Land Rover. It climbed all over the car, settled in on the roof, later on moved on the spare wheel attached to the rear door. It did not refuse the small piece of meat that Claudio offered it, either. Whenever the campsite dogs came around the cat also quickly climbed to the safety of the Landy. Watching the cat was very entertaining.

Starting point of the White Nile.

The Cat.

The Cat goes exploring.

The Cat spots a dog.

THe Cat likes it inside the car.

The Cat has moved in.

26^th of  February was a full day of whitewater rafting. We got picked up from our campsite at 7.30am and had a small breakfast at the Nalubale rafting office. We had actually already had breakfast at the campsite already, as we are always up early. We met our two team members (two American ladies , Hannah and Maddie, who were doing training courses on how to run your own business for locals), got our helmets and life vests, jumped on the back of the truck and drove out to the river. We were also introduced to our three safety kayakers and the safety raft crew. They would be picking us up if we fall off and helping us out if we wnd up in any trouble after falling out. We left our change of clothes, towels and shoes in the car in dry bags and then walked down to the river. We were first given a briefing on paddling and safety procedures by our team captain Brian - including practicing falling off the raft and flipping the raft. At the latter exercise I let go of the rope and ended up under the raft – oops… The first rapid was a grade 5 – and we made it through without flipping! Apparently it was only the third time that our guide had made it through that one without flipping the raft. We are awesome.  The day continued with going in and out of rapids – we were always given the options of taking the safe route (I contemplated on this one once), flipping the raft intentionally (I was not keen on this one at all)  or seeing how it goes. We always opted for the last one – if it flips it flips and we swim. It was an awesome day. I was both excited and a bit scared.  The rapids were huge (particularly the grade 5 ones) and when I saw us going straight at the wave, I almost without exception found myself squatting at the bottom of the boat instead of sitting on the side. I however still continued paddling as I knew that was the only thing that would stop the raft from flipping upside down. We got soaked – and it felt good. We also had a chance to surf a wave – something I’ve only done with a kayak before and on much smaller waves. We nearly flipped the raft three times while surfing and Claudio and one of the American girls fell out whilst me, our boat captain and the other American girl stayed in. Eventually the flow of the river allowed Brian to steer the raft off the wave and we picked up the other two from the safety raft that had picked them up. The day include in total 8 awesome rapids and a stop for lunch half way through the day. It was great – go try it out! Scary and fun at the same time :)

Straight into the waves!

It looks like we might flip - but we survived this one.

Ready for our lunch break!

"Heeeeelp! I'm going to drooooown" is probably
what I am thinking at the time of taking this photo.

Ooops! This time we did flip, on the last wave of the final rapids.

After we were done with the rafting we contemplated on whether to go to Murchison Falls national park, or perhaps drive to that direction to do a boat trip towards the falls, or just go to Kenya. We checked out the entry fees and confirmed that the car entry fee to the park was USD 150. Although it was a one-off fee, not a daily fee, we didn’t think it was worth it as we would have only had a couple of days there. The park was also about 600km away from where we were, which was an additional factor in our decision to drive straight to Kenya instead. Murchison Falls can wait until our next visit.

Sunset at Nile River camp on our last evening.

So, on Friday 27^th February we crossed border at Busia border crossing to Kenya,  and started a long drive towards Nairobi. We overnighted on our first night at Tea House hotel and campsite. In the morning there was a man on our campsite selling souvenirs – although I had decided not to buy anything from him I ended up changing my mind when he gave me such a good price for a few decorated ceramic plates that I thought could make a good present for my friend in Dubai. We had now arrive to the last country of our trip – but we still had more than a week of time to spend there.