3rd October 08

Date: 3rd October 08
Location: Nairobi, Kenya
Weather: A good day for driving, scattered clouds and sunshine, 34°c
Status: Looking forward to the next challenge!

Up at first light to use the last of the free wireless and to get the last of the emails sent from the comfort of Wildebeest Camp, we then made use of the complimentary breakfast with Allen cooking me scrambled eggs and preparing Bre fruit salad with yoghurt. It’s a really damn awesome setup here and one of the most comfortable places we’ve stayed so far on the trip, the hospitality is second to none.

Got on the road finally around 9am after filling up with fuel and air in one of the tyres which appears to have developed a slow puncture. The morning traffic out of the capital slowed us slightly so we stopped at the supermarket to buy some last minute bits before getting back on the southerly road towards the border.

Initially the road was the typical broken tarmac but this slowly deteriorated until we hit the road works where they’d scraped back half of the surface and left a crappy unlevel side deviation which slowed our speed significantly. After a dusty and bumpy hour passing through the first parts of the Masai tribal lands, passing zebra, ostrich and other game, we arrived at the border between Kenya and Tanzania.

We’d had to cover Baccus over with a blanket to avoid him being spotted by the authorities as they hate animal products being exported from the country. I do have a letter of authority from the farm it came from but the hassle of having to explain it to some pompous official doesn’t exactly grab me!

A fairly simple border post with a simple out and in, tried to persuade the official that we shouldn’t have to pay for another visa as we were still within our three month one, but as we had passed out of ‘East Africa’ and into Rwanda etc we’d have to buy another one at a cost of $50….arse.

We left after bite of lunch and the road improved and with it out average speed increased so the 120kms flew by, on the way we stopped by a boy selling ostrich eggs at the side of the road….perfect for the three of us, once Jimmy arrives, for breakfast! It cost us £3 and we were very happy with our purchase.

A little while later we arrived in Arusha after climbing some 800m in a few km’s, raising the engine temperature significantly and making me paranoid in the process about an engine problem, which turned out to be nothing at all! Still I stopped at the garage and picked up a diesel treatment and chucked it in the tank as we’d been putting out some smoke due to the crap quality of the fuel recently, things improved thereafter.

Drove into Masai camp,our meeting place for High Peaks in a few days time and much to our delight there were three overland chicken-freight trucks there already, balls. So we found a corner and tucked ourselves away for the night.

Jimmy arrives tomorrow so early night.

End of day location: Arusha, Tanzania
Distance covered: 280kms