Days 83 & 84: Kenya

Day 83

With Caz’s flight arriving in the evening we had a day to kill in Nairobi, but after the horrendous roads from Moyale the Landrover needed some attention and so we set about fixing all of the parts that had rattled off due to the corrugations.

Although it was day 83, I still hadn’t wired up the fog lights that had purely served an aesthetic purpose on the Landrover so far on the trip. The problem was that every time I tried to wire them, the wiring on the Landrover didn’t match the diagram in the Haynes Manuel, or some of the switches and relays had broken. After an hour of taking apart the entire dashboard to feed the wires through, the fog lights were finally up and running.

In the evening Caz arrived and I had prepared some cottage pie for the three of us. Caz had brought a tent with her, but the rain was so bad that night that the three of us had to cram into the roof-tent to avoid the flooding below.

Day 84

We left Nairobi heading for Kisumu on the shore of Lake Victoria hoping that the journey would not take too long. The roads were all tarmaced, but the potholes and Matatus were proving rather tricky obstacles to our intended velocity.

The Matatus are the Toyota Hiace minibuses that are restricted to 80kph and seem to have a special driving licence requirement whereby drivers must have an IQ of less than 53. Reading the papers I wasn’t surprised to discover that in one day there had been three separate road traffic incidents in Kenya killing over 30 people – all of which involved a Matatu.

We drove over the hill and down towards Kisumu just as the sun was descending over
Lake Victoria creating the most amazing red and purple sky in the distance. After finding a hotel and getting some dinner we headed back to our rooms for a cheeky drink to watch some DVDs.