Sitting writing this in the shade with a Tusker beer in my hand in the middle of Nairobi in a overlander’s campsite called Jungle junction.

What an adventure the last two weeks have been. So much has happened that I really don’t know where to start but here goes…

We left Lalibella in Ethiopia on Sunday morning and started our long drive to Addis with only battery power. Our luck was with us and it didn’t rain so we were spared using our wipers. The road was really tough going as we wove our way through the Mountains and after 3 hours we finaly reached the main tar road but this was almost just as slow due to the winding countryside and amount of cattle constantly blocking our path. After another 3 hours we arrived in Desee where we decided to spend the night. After consulting our wallet we had to find a hotel we could afford. Because it was Sunday all ther banks were closed and there were no ATM’S in town so we ended upin the local “hostel/motel”not bad for €2.-!

Not much to say about Desee just another Ethiopian town so I’ll continue. The next morning we jumped in the car and continued tio Addis, the road improved and we arrived at 5 in the afternoon at Wim’s holland house. Our reward was Dutch Bitterballen and pint of beer, just whatwe needed.

The owner Wim was a fantastic host who 22 years ago did a project to bring food to Ethiopia and just never left, we were glad beacause he had created an oasis of calm in bustling Addis.

While we were in Addis we managed to find a Landrover spares shop and buy a new alternator, lets hope that will be the end of our car saga… We also arranged our Kenyan visa and met 2 couples who wanted to travel with us to Kenya, as the route we were contemplating would take us through the south western border and there would be no contact with the civilized World for 4 days, hence the long gap in posts.

So after 3 wet days in Addis (it rained almost all the time) we departed last week Friday for lake langamo. Now we were an official Group with three overland cars in formation traveling south.

Lake langamo was super, a very nice camping place with a magnificent view and fresh Talapia caught for our dinner. This is what the whole overland experiance should be like! The 2 couples were also great in Total we were now with 1 South African, 1 Dutchman, 1 Frenchman, 1 German, 1 Tajikishtan?, and a Danish guy. What a combo!!!

After lake Langamo we continued south to Aba Minch where we went on our first boat ride to go crocodile and hippo watching, we saw huge crocodiles some as long as 6 meters and weighing 1500 kg’s. And the strange thing is that on the way you pass local fisherman sitting on a log raft fishing the same waters, we were told that a few fisherman had lost limbs to the lake monsters because they got into an ownership quarrel about the fish they caught…

Next on the list was Jinka a small town close to the Omo’s tribes, this is where the German wanted to go, we were a bit hesitant because we had been told that it was an hour and a half drive to the villages and that they were extremely unfriendly and you had to pay to visit them and take pictures. But only once you have the experiance can you really talk about it, so early next morning we went off to see the Omo tribes. And exactly what we heard is what we got.

We arrived at the “tourist village”(big mistake as we should have carried on to the next village) , and were promptly asked to pay 100 bir per person to enter the village. Maurice and I thought that this was rediculous and decided that only one person should go into the village and take pictures and the other could stay by the car. So I went into the village and took some pictures and when it was time to leave we had 10 tribes people around the car saying that we had not paid for two people. After arguing for ten minutes I told to Maurice to put foot and drive the hell away. Unfortunately Maurice had two men holding his arm the whole way and we dragged two Omo tribesmen with us for the first 50 meters, they finnaly let go when they realized that we were not going to slow down. That will teach them!!!

After the excitement! We headed on to Turmi where we would spend our last night in Ethiopia, I can’t say that I was very sad to be leaving. Ethiopia is a beautiful country just the people aren’t that great, always asking for money,clothes even your car??

Early the next morning we all headed to a border town to get our exit stamp for Ethiopia. The reason we had to dio this is that we would be crossing into Kenya via the North west and there would be no official border crossing. On the way to the town I started feeling a little sick and had to stop the car a few times to throw up. It wasn’t something I ate so it must have been a stomach bug, this was the last thing I needed, 40 degrees in a bumpy car!!!

When we arrived we got our exit stamp in our passport and headed into the bush to cross the border. The drive was good fun, we crossed a few dry riverbeds and had a real adventure getting there, just a pity that I wasa feeling so lousy. Just before the official border we arrived at a sort of police checkpoint. We did’nt know that we had to stop there so we waived to everyone and drove on, this was apparerntly the wrongthing to do, and before we knew it we had two men running after us with AK 47’s. We were suppposed to stop and show trhem our exit stamp.

After saying sorry a thousand times we were allowed to go and cross into Kenya. Quite strange to drive from one country into the next without any official border.

After 20 minutes we arrived at the first Kenyan village and we could see that we were in a different country straight away. The people were a lot more friendly and coulorfull and they were’nt asking for money all the time. We went to the police station and registered there, not that anyone would ever look to see that we had done that, but after the way the Ethiopians treated us better safe then sorry.

After the formalities were done we entered Sibiloi national park to camp on the shore of lake Turkana,there was no offical gate and you just drive in, this would have consiquences the day after!! In the mean time road had deteriorated badly and we were driving over tracks and volcanic stone, our poor tyres were being eaten up at a drastic pace, so.

After arriving at the shore we all pitched tent and the rest of the Group ate some fresh nile pearch that had been caught earlier in the day, I was still recovering from my stomach bug, so it was crackers and bed for me. The next morning we split up, the french couple wanted to head south and so it was only the 4 of us driving to the east and a town called Marsabit. After an hour we arrived at the official park gate, but as there was no one there and we did’nt feel like paying 45 dollars for a park with no animals we decided to cut through the bush and skip paying, halfway there I saw a man with a AK47( everyone appenrently has one) starting to run toward us but our descision had been made and we put foot. Bad mistake!!!

We made it to the road and thought that we had gotten away without paying, but 25km’s later we were overtaken by Kenya parks board and 8 soldiers all with…… you guessed it AK47’s!

They stopped us and said they had gotten as call from the park ranger saying that 2 cars had not payed the entry fee, we said that we had not seen anyone at the gate and were in a rush,this being the reason for us not paying. All the time I thought that this was going to be a very expensive lesson or in the worst case a little trip to the local jail. But the very friendly Kenyan official said that he understood why we did it and if we could pay now we could continue on our way??? So with great relief we payed him the entry fee, he appologised to us for the inconveniance of no one being at the gate when we were there and also holding us up we were free to goJ In two days time we had had more guns pointed at us than in my whole life!

The road to Marsabit got worse and worse and eventually was just rock and corrugation. I don’t want to know what other car parts are going to break now because of it. We slept in Marsabit and the next morning contiued our bumpy ride to Nairobi, lucky for us the chineese are builing highways all over Africa and 120km’s later we hit pure virgin tar road, nothing could have felt better at the time.

The landscape started changing as well, we were getting nearer to the equater so it was getting a lot more green. We arrived in Nairobi at 6pm and then got into our first trafic jam since Europe. 2 hours later, we finally arrived at Jungle Junction, it’s a sort of campsite for overlanders in the heart of Nairobi.

Now that we are here we will service the car(again) and get our passport stamped at imigrations, then relax for a few days and plan our next leg witch will take us to Nukuru national park(We’ll pay to get in this timeJ) and then to Uganda for the Gorilla’s.

As a german overlander said to us (Het was een plicht om hier te komen maar nu begint de kuur). So we’re both looking forward to the remaing two monthes as now all the fun begins.