21st October 08

Date: 21st October 08
Location: Voi, Kenya
Weather: Starry night followed by a gorgeous sunrise and good weather all the way. 32°c
Status: M&D suffering from a cold each, rest of us pushing on just fine…

After a great night’s sleep on a really comfy bed we headed out for an early breakfast which was included in the cost of the room, packed up the truck (it somehow all fitted just as before!), and took the 20km track through Masai land back to the main Mombasa to Nairobi road. Its renowned for being a poorly surfaced, heavy traffic route which takes hours to travel along…..so what the hell happened? A perfect surface and such long straight sections that overtaking, even in a fully loaded Land Rover, was no problem at all and we got to Nairobi for a late lunch.

Popped into the DHL office to collect my new carnet de passage which the ADAC in Munich have sent out to me, I have used all of the 25 pages in the old one and need this document to allow me to import and export the Colonel into the remaining countries without further hassles!

Departed after bite of lunch from the capital and took the road north out towards Narok along the escarpment which leads into the edge of the Rift Valley and what an amazing road. The views stretch far off in to the distance with storms lurking ominously over the great plains with the occasional flash of lightening illuminating the closing evening gloom.

The newly surfaced road which gave us a speedy route towards the entrance gate of the reserve abruptly ran out after a small village and left us with a terrible unsurfaced dirt road with heavy corrugations and slippery mud sections…..progress predictably slowed to a crawl.

We finally arrived at the entrance to the Mara at around 6pm just as the sun was setting, our lodging for the night had telephoned a couple of times to check we were still coming, and after paying the entrance fee entered the park in near darkness….something I didn’t think we’d be able to do but it was amazing!! Elephant, impala and loads of little night birds and creatures ran in front of the truck as we covered the 22kms to the camp.

We arrived after 7pm with all of the staff awaiting our arrival. There haven’t been nearly as many tourists as they’re used to in the last few months due to the impending global recession and the international media projecting an image of a troubled Kenya since the problems following the elections way back in February. We were the only ones staying there in a stunning location right beside the Talek River with frog calls all around and the splashing of hippos in the pool outside Mum and Dad’s tent!

Dinner then bed…..

End of day location: Masai Mara, Kenya
Distance covered: 620kms