After our whitewater rafting in Jinja, we
crossed over to Kenya at the Busia border crossing on the 27th 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.
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| Another chaotic border crossing. What are those trucks in front doing in our lane? This got into a complete standstill jam. |
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| Another piece of evidence of that you can transport anything on the back of a motorbike. |
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| 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. |
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| 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.
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| Despite a modern city centre, the slums were rather prominent when entering the city from the west. |
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| 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. |
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| There were also a lot of suicide sheep. |
Despite having decided to leave the car in
Nairobi, on the 29th 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.
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| Baby elephant drinks water |
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| 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?" |
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| Even wild animals cross the road when you are driving towards them. I have started believing animals are all suicidal. |
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| Buffalos by the roadside in Amboseli. |
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| This is the lake. No, there is no water in it. |
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.
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| The lovely house on Diani Beach that Claudio's friends live in. |
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| Views on the beach. |
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| The schools, the children and the building projects. |
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| 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.
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| The ferry to Mombasa. |
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| 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.
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| Landy is getting a wash - also from underneath. |
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| The Big Clean-up! Everything had to come out, get cleaned and be put back in. |
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| 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.
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| The route that we drove from cape Town to Nairobi. |
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| 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! |
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