2Taylors

Even though we asked the rangers and various other people which was the best road out of the Masai Mara to Nairobi in an attempt to prevent further damage to our car, the road out was worse than the road we took in! The road consisted of huge lumps of gravel deposited in some dirt as well as corrugations and dips. It was a most unpleasant drive until we finally reached the smooth tar – something we hadn’t seen in quite some time.

We spent 4 nights at Jungle Junction whilst we attended to our list of things to do. First on the list was to clean and reorganise our car. After having had milk spill in the carpet a week or so ago we had not really put things back the way they should be. It took us all day to wash our clothes (which were absolutely putrid), reorganise and clean the ten ton of dust out of our car.

The next day we had our trip to Toyota – what fun. We arrived at our appointment time, explained that we needed at least 1, if not 2, front shocks and a new battery, and told them we needed it back the same day. As usual this was a drama and had to be confirmed with the supervisor etc This took probably an hour before the car was booked in and we went to sit in the lounge. 3 hours later we tried to check on the status of the car and they were only just replacing the shocks! After 5 hours we were told that they didn’t have any batteries, oh and both of them need replacing! I’ve been pretty patient with Africa time, but this time I was NOT impressed! I politely told them that it would have been nice to have been told that several hours ago as then we would have had time to organise a battery ourselves from the heap of spare parts shops literally across the road, especially as the batteries run our fridge which we need to be working! They then decided that we could go with them to their battery supplier 500m down the road and they would fit the new batteries there, thank goodness! So after wasting our entire day at Toyota we left with 2 new shocks, 2 new batteries, the second battery compartment welded so the battery isn’t falling through the engine bay anymore and a clean car.

On our third day we decided to visit the David Sheldrick Trust and the Giraffe Centre. The David Sheldrick centre cares primarily for baby elephants that have been orphaned either through poaching or human\animal conflict. Some of the elephants that arrive at the centre are only a few weeks old whilst others are maybe 2 years old. They are raised at the centre until they are able to be moved to Tsavo National Park where they are continued to be looked after until they are ready to go off into the wild. They also have 2 orphaned rhinos that they care for. You can only visit the trust between 11-12 and it is a worthwhile quick stop if you are spending time in Nairobi. At the Giraffe Centre you are able to hand feed the giraffes and obviously see them extremely closely. They are HUGE animals up close! At the time of our visit there was a baby giraffe only a few weeks old which was very cute.

Whilst at Jungle Junction we met another Aussie couple, Jean and Malcolm who shipped their vehicle over from Aus. They arrived here a few weeks before us, however they are heading up to London and then who knows from there. We spent quite a lot of time chatting to them, sharing route info and talking about the joys of overlanding (such as showers) that other people just don’t get. We also had dinner with them at a local Chinese restaurant, which was quite nice, cheap and a pleasant change. They are hanging around here whilst they wait and see if they can join a convey to Ethiopia.

We are off to Amboseli for a few days and then will return to Nairobi before we head off again.

After spending yet another couple of nights at Jungle Junction in Nairobi, and meeting up again with Jean and Malcolm who were still there awaiting their departure north, we decided to head north to Samburu National Park. The park is definitely worth the visit due to the different animals you will see there, but the entry fees are ridiculous. It cost us $US70 per person, yet if we were a non resident on an organised tour then it would only be $US40 – how does that logic work?? We tried to get them to only charge us the tour rate but needless to say we weren’t successful. At least this time the car was only 300Ksh ($3).

We had not decided if we would camp or not, and seeing as it was our wedding anniversary we decided to check out a couple of the lodges. The first wanted $US560 for a tent in the dirt and wouldn’t budge. We then tried Samburu Lodge who originally wanted $US440 but we ended up paying $US286 after pleading poor and telling them it was our anniversary. We had a lovely large banda with a fantastic hot shower with full water pressure, the food was plentiful and quite nice and the lodge itself was pleasant – they even feed the crocodiles right next to the bar each night. Our park fees only allowed us to stay until 5pm so mid afternoon we thought we had better check out where we were going to stay as it was too far to drive anywhere else. We negotiated at the park gate to let us go out and check out a community camp a couple of kilometres away and then either come back in and stay until 6.30pm, or, if we stayed in the park again, to only charge us $70 rather than the full rate as we needed to leave first thing in the morning to get to our next destination. The community camp was OK, but I didn’t feel quite comfortable enough as we were about as far north in Kenya as you can go and still be “safe” and the camp was pretty much in the village. We decided to head back to Samburu Lodge and see what deal we could strike. They offered the same rate as the previous night so we took it. Long story, but we ended up with a smaller, although still nice room, we had no water in the shower either at night or again in the morning (they did try to fix it and the whole camp had an issue) and then in the morning when we tried to collect our lunch boxes we were told they would be 40 minutes but we had to be out of the park by 9am and did not have time to wait. Not happy! The manager was quite understanding though and tried to appease us. In the end we paid less than the local rate – $US150 which was pretty good.

Samburu had some new animals for us, namely the Gerenuk, Grevy’s Zebra, Reticulated Giraffe and the Beisa Oryx which made it worth the trip. We also saw elephants, lions, dik-diks, impala, buffalo, baboons, vervet monkeys, hare, crocodiles, black-backed jackal, mongooses, waterbucks, warthogs, grant’s gazelles, squirrels and a leopard tortoise. The highlight though was finding a leopard sitting on a fallen tree trunk about 10 metres from the road, elevated just above the bushes with no branches or leaves obstructing him AND we had him all to ourselves for about 10 minutes. A tour van then turned up, sent out the call on the radio and within minutes every vehicle in the park was crowded around him stuck in a traffic jam on a track that was only wide enough for one vehicle at a time. Needless to say we moved off shortly after they arrived and had the rest of the park to ourselves.