Northern Kenya

The drive from Nairobi, Kenya to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia was always going to be tough with five days of rough roads and bush camping. For the first part, the road was being constructed by the Chinese but then it changed from tar to dirt abruptly and from that point on, it became incredibly bumpy and dusty.

Our drive took us past donkeys, camels with bells around their necks and Samburu villages where women wore large round beaded necklaces that fell over their bare breasts. The yurt style houses we went past reminded me of Central Asia.

In a small village called Marsabit, we refilled our water containers, again, as per West Africa, much to the amusement of the locals.

Naturally we had a lot of time to kill with our long drive days so I finally finished off ‘Long Walk to Freedom’ by Nelson Mandela. The highlight though was the ‘Truck Olympics’. Oli won the (very bumpy) ‘truck surfing’ singles (stand upright on truck without moving feet)

and Kris, Dom, Sonny and Garrett won the relay. Dom and I tied the first game of ‘bucket ball’ (throw ball in bucket) and Shaun won the second game. Then ‘cage ball’ (throw ball in back container) came down to sudden death and Tom won it. Hours of amusement.

Our bushcamps were quite memorable too. One night it was so incredibly windy that our tents nearly blew away and packing them up in the morning was near impossible. But our first night was the most bizarre as we were told to watch out for lions as we were near a national park. Villagers warned us that a lion ate a man from their village last month. A car full of police and park rangers turned up later and insisted upon staying with us to ‘protect’ us – we even played Scrabble by gunpoint! – but as it turns out they were fast asleep when Nev got up at 3am.

Then when we crossed the border into Ethiopia, a whole new manner of chaos ensued…