Blogs from Kenya, Africa - page 9

We set off early with the aim of making the border, we didn’t expect such good roads but we didn’t expect such hassle crossing the border. We’re here now all safe and sound though. We got up early expecting the roads to be busy and not so good but we were wrong. We were treated to ever emptier roads heading toward the border on ever better roads. As such we made the border crossing at Moyale for lunchtime. Unfortunately in classic African style the border was closed from 1200-1400 for luch. When the Ethiopians returned the exit was relatively speedy and efficient, they didn’t seem to care much about the content of the car but were very keen to check the engine number of the car (perhaps this is a smugglers tactic?). Unfortunately when we got ... read more

We packed our bags and had a tasty cooked breakfast in time to set off at 7am for our hardest day of uphill. We started by retracing our steps from yesterday afternoon up the track, then turned off onto a footpath through the Hygenia forest and then out onto the more open heathland before climbing through the dramatically named 'Vertical Bog' (not that dissimilar from many peatbogs back home. The first half of the day’s walk was the steepest and after lunch it levelled off a bit through more open areas of tree heathers and lobelias (including Lobelia deckenii & L. telekii) fading into grassland in the Teleki Valley. There were lots of vole-runs through the grass – made by mice I was told. We arrived at MacKinders Hut, on an outcrop of moraine ... read more

We headed north out of Nairobi early the next day heading to Ol Pejeta Conservancy, home of the world’s two only surviving northern white rhinos. We had a brief stop to get some water & peanuts and other to go to the loo & look around a souvenir shop we bought a couple of bracelets. During the drive we also got our first sight of Mt Kenya with snow-capped peak & a growing cover of cloud. We checked into our room at The Stables and had a late lunch before heading out on my first safari drive! This also included a visit to Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Baraka, the black rhino who being blind was removed from the wild to his own large enclosure and now acts as their rhino ambassador. We also crossed the equator ... read more

We had a relatively leisurely start in the hope the roads could only improve as we approached Ethiopia, but that was an incorrect assumption. The roads through the park were even worse as we headed North to reach the Ethiopian border, so much so that along the way we managed to bend the front bumper backwards on itself. In the end Nelly just couldn’t handle hitting so many rocks along the way. Eventually we cleared the park and got on to a proper road toward the Ethiopian border, except it wasn’t a road at all. The highlight of the road was it ending in a 6 foot high wall of mud. It was clear where our road stopped and the road kept going but somehow we had to get the truck 6ft up a vertical wall. ... read more

We are now at lake Turkana at a place called Loyaglani (or something close). We left Nanyuki this morning and past Archers Post after an hour on tarmac we got onto dirt tracks for another 6 hours of eventful driving to the remote North of Kenya. The road started OK in that someone at sometime in the past had tried to make it a road, but very quickly the road got worse with parts falling away through dried up river beds. After a while we got corrugations which are like mini speed humps across the road and they shake the car apart. The secret is to go fast enough to ride over them and not fall in the holes the other side. However getting to the right speed is often a bone-rattling experience. We passed a ... read more