Day 25 – Moshi (Tanzania) to Namanga (Kenya) (200km)

23.01.2012

Jules writes:

Dad and I emerged from our room the next morning to the sight of Shan and John packing up their tents. We left them to it, and the pot of oats, while we went off to enjoy our breakfast of eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, fruit, coffee and fruit juice. I did manage to sneak out a cup of coffee for Shan, who is a raving coffee fanatic back home. As we finished loading the bikes, John realised that he couldn’t locate his wallet, and so we had to spend a little while unpacking his bags, until it was eventually located in the tent. Our unspoken rule is that if somebody can’t find something, they are allowed as much time as they need to find it. After finding, we jumped on our bikes and started them up…

…except for my bike, which coughed sluggishly before deciding to ignore me altogether. When attempts to push-start it failed, we resorted to using jumper cables, with some much appreciated help from Peter, who was traveling down to Cape Town along a similar route to the one that we had taken. The bike started with no problems, and we drove up to the main road, where we were greeted to Kilimanjaro in all her glory. She is notoriously shy, and when my dad made the climb about 15 years ago, he never even saw the summit until he was standing on it. But this morning, she had thrown propriety to the wind and we could see her in all her splendour. She is tall enough that even when we were well out of town, we could still see her rising majestically from the surrounding plains. We passed through a small town, about 40 km away, but just after we exited, as I was overtaking a truck, my bike shuddered underneath me and died, leaving me with no option but to drift off onto the side of the road. When inspected, there was more than enough fuel, and so we decided to check the battery. Once we had it out, we found that it was completely dry. Well, that would certainly explain it. John rode back to town to pick up some battery acid, and we topped up the cells, put the battery back in and voila! Life! John’s biked looked like it might also be a bit low, and so we topped up the battery as well, but his was almost full. At this stage, it was now just past midday, and so abandoning all hope of reaching Nairobi, a mere 350 km from our camping site from the night before, we pressed on towards the border.

The scenery continued to change in the space of eye-blink. Simply crest a hill, and arid scrubland would give way to grass covered hill. Pass a small town, and lush forests would await on the other side. We stopped in Arusha for lunch and fuel, and managed to spend the last of our Tanzanian shillings on padkos, nuts and dried fruit. The managers there were very curious about our trip and we stayed chatting for a while, even posing for some photos for their next magazine. Finally, at around 3 o’ clock, we headed for the border, about 110 km away. The roads were fantastic as usual, and we raced along, passing Masai shepherds in their colourful robes until eventually, we arrived at the border post.

Getting through the border was quick and painless, although as usual, the touts and trinket sellers were relentless. eventually my dad was reduced to singing the no-no song, whose words are: NO, no-no, no no no no, NO NO, no no no no…..etc” And he actually sang it!!

We managed to find a great campsite to stay at, about 500 m from the border, the River Camp Lodge (not sure if that was exactly it, but there was definitely something about a river in the name). After a hot shower (our first in over a week) and a great meal, we turned in for the night! We are now in country no. 6: Kenya.