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Published: July 13th 2014
Total Distance Travelled Today: 301 km
Elapsed Time of Travel: 11hrs 22 min
Lodging for the Night: Meserani Snake Park Campsite
Today was our first real day on our adventure from Nairobi to Cape Town. We woke early, had a great hot breakfast at the hotel and boarded Umfolonzi, our overland truck. By leaving the hotel around 7:30 we were able to beat most of the Nairobi traffic on our way south to the Tanzanian border.
Still jet lagged, we had only slept a couple of hours overnight, but we managed to stay awake for the journey. We entertained ourselves by watching 'TV' (eg looking out the windows) for the drive.
The roads to the border were, mostly, excellent, although we we're detoured off the main highway about 6 km from the border (and these detours were windy dirt roads with lots of bumps). Due to construction of a new border post we had to drive through the Kenyan town of Namanga. The roads were rough. The going slow. But the view was incredibly interesting. The town was busy, with everyone going about their business. The streets were lined with a series of shops including many butcher shops
with sides of beef hung on display in the front window. Being in an overland truck though, we stuck out like a sore thumb. The locals seemed or like seeing us, however, and would wave when we went by. One man yelled something in Swahili to our driver and pointed at the rear tire. He was warning us that a large rock had been embedded between our rear tires. Antony and Masivu, our driver and guide, pounded the rock out with a tire iron and we were back on the road.
The process of crossing the border went incredibly smoothly. With the exception of being accosted by aggressive touts hawking bracelets on the Kenyan side, it couldn't have gone smoother. The bracelet people were putting bracelets on your wrist as you got off the truck to approach immigration. Although these were "gifts", they were not free. When you took the bracelet off and handed it back to the saleswoman, she would aggressively put it back on your wrist and say 'For mamma'. Back and forth the hand off would go until someone broke down and kept the thing. We were both able to make it through the gauntlet without
having to pay for free bracelets.
The immigration/customs posts themselves were fairly difficult to spot. We were surprised at how easy it would actually be to accidentally go right past them! They seemed pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and we had to get out of the truck and walk through the Kenyan exit border crossing to the Tanzania entry border.
On the drive in Tanzania we spotted some ostriches near the side of the road. It was a definite reminder that we are a long ways from home!
We stopped for lunch around 1pm at a spot near the side of the road where there was some shade in the trees. As soon as we stopped a bunch of local Masai children who were minding their cattle came over. Because this is the dry season, the cattle caused a lot of dust which is the last thing you want sprinkled on your sandwich. The boys came over to beg for food and to ask us to pay them to take their pictures.
Since this is a participation camping trip, we are organized into groups and rotate through different chores every day, and we're all
Kids playing football near Namanga, Kenya
Namanga is the town at the border crossing with Tanzaniaexpected to help out. There are five rotations in total: cooking (you're expected to help cut up vegetables and do a few preparations for the meals- usually just dinner), dishes (you wash the general cooking dishes after the meals- everyone is expected to wash and dry their own dishes though. Our method of drying is by what we call "flapping". This just means you wave your dishes and utensils around until they air dry), truck and iceboxes (sweeping out the truck and emptying ice boxes), packing (putting everything back in the truck- but usually everyone helps with this), and campsite/day off (it's really a day off, but the role is to make sure that we haven't left anything behind when we leave the campsite).
The Masai people are a polygamous tribe in Tanzania that survive through subsistence cattle farming. Their main food sources are milk, meat and blood. They tap the jugular vein of a cow to extract some blood without killing the cow and mix it with fresh milk to drink.
We arrived at our campsite in Arusha around 5pm and setup camp. We stayed at a place called a snake park. They had a snake exhibit
Namanga
Just north of the Kenyan/Tanzanian border, the road is closed for road work, so all vehicles are diverted through the town. The road is very rough. in cages, but we decided not to go see them. Didn't want to know what might escape and join us in our tent overnight! A few new campers, named Matt and Anna from New Zealand, and Beau from the US, met us at the campsite. They had just climbed Kilimanjaro, and decided to meet us closer to where they were.
The campsite bar uses its profits to run a snake clinic which offers free snake antivenom to people suffering snake bites.
For dinner we had beef stew with fresh green beans and rice made by our guide. It was a great meal. We went straight to bed afterwards because we were still exhausted from the jet lag - it was only about 8:30!
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