Nairobi, Kenya 27-28 June 08

We had a really long and drawn out journey to get here. Basically, we had been in Madrid because the One World Alliance (who we’ve got our round the world tickets with) didn’t have a partnering airline that could take us directly to Johannesburg from Istanbul, hence the jump back up into Europe and then down into Africa on Air Iberia. So our journey went something like this. Midnight overnight flight from Madrid to Jo’burg and that landed at 1140. We then had the rest of that day and half that night in Jo’burg airport before our flight to Nairobi at 0140 in the morning. The Nairobi flight only took five hours so there wasn’t much time for sleeping once the plane had taken off, done the catering thing then prepared to land.

So, after arriving in Nairobi at 0500 after two overnight flights in a row, we were absolutely shattered and it felt really cold. It was 15 degrees so not cold in the greater scheme of things but we had got used to temperatures in the late 30s and really felt it for the first few days so had to layer up big time with whatever clothing we had. We stayed at a place called Karen Camp which was about 25mins out of Nairobi central and we were leaving for Tanzania the next day (we actually thought we had a day spare but we'd lost track of time with the overnight flights and got it very wrong!). The entire area is called Karen and I think its where Karen Blixen (from Out of Africa) was based during her time in Kenya. For this African leg of the trip we opted to do an overland truck trip from Nairobi to Cape Town then up to Johannesburg, a trip of over 10,000km in a truck with a group of others. Its cheap to do, very basic by all accounts and we were curious to see the truck. As it turned out, the chap who ran Karen Camp is a Kiwi who had done truck tours in the early 80s I think and now Karen Camp seems to be where many overland trucks are stored, come in for maintenance, where crews come and camp out between trips and also used by groups (coming through from Uganda or the Congo) who camp for a few days before moving on. Karen Camp was locked up like Fort Knox and patrolled by three very fat German Shepherd dogs who could actually move damn fast when they needed to so seems fairly secure.

There were some great stories and one came from a group who was there the same time as us who’d just come through the Congo. They had been kicked off their truck by some rebels who then abandoned them and stole the entire truck. Contacts in Angola were called in and the militia got involved apparently and the truck was recovered. Some of these folk are on these truck through Africa for 9 months or more. Epic trips but they sound like hard work.

We met up with the crew and the group we were travelling with, got a look at the truck and sussed out what was where. Its quite a cool setup. The truck carries tents, all cooking gear, basic food (herbs, spices, staples like canned tomatoes, tuna, pasta and rice etc, breakfast goods), stools etc – all of which are accessed from the outside. All cooking is done over open fire which will be interesting. I’ll post a few pics on another posting but this truck and a tent will be our mobile home for the next ten weeks.

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