Stuck in Nairobi for the time being it seems

We slept like babies and got up at 8h30, but only because the sun fried us out of the tent. Since we couldn’t blog the past two days we stopped at the first filling station and had coke and cake for breakfast while updating the past two days’ blog posts. The weather was acting up again so we donned our drizzly finest and set off for the capitol of Africa. The camera was again wrapped in plastic so our only photos are from the campsite this morning:

We camped on the best lawn we’ve seen so far:

And Tania’s favourite (sorry!)

The riding today was the same hair-raising stuff as yesterday. Buses and minibuses overtaking ANYWHERE and not giving way even if you flash and wave your arms. The best option is to ride right off the road when they approach. We are also getting used to overtake slower trucks on the left. Madness!! In the beginning (in Tanzania) it was amusing, but after reading about all the road accidents in the paper yesterday I have had enough of this recklessness. There really is no excuse!

We reached Nairobi at around 14h30 and easily found the Jungle Junction. It is THE place to camp out on a Crossing Africa trip. The owner (Chris) used to be a motorcycle mechanic for BMW in Germany. Since we will be staying here for a couple of days I’ll leave the details of what it looks like here for later… all I can say is there are LOTS of interesting vehicles standing the yard full.

Upon arriving we decided it is best to head straight for the Sudanese embassy toKFC (yep, Nairobi is not your average little African village, which helped bring the smile back to Tania’s face!

We’ve already met a great group of people.  I unfortunately cannot remember all of their names, but Peter (from Oz) has been to more than 50 countries the past three and a half years and Rob is waiting for his mates from Holland. He’s gonna ride the one guy’s  BMW GS800 from here to Cape Town. Then there’s the Kiwi (sorry mate, forgot your name, but will ask again tomorrow) who has been on the road for more than two years in his Land Rover, coming down West Africa and now going up again. He shocked himself in a shower (which also happened to me in Rwanda), but his was a bit more serious with him being out of it for more than two months. He was glad to get help, but he is still struggling with his neck muscles and lost some hearing and sight in the one eye. These Japanese contraptions used to heat water in the showers are not earthed and is very dangerous. Since my shock I don’t take showers in them anymore. At least not hot ones. Hope you get better soon mate! We also met two guys from Germany travelling down in a Land Cruiser SWB.

This is the perfect place to regroup (there is a workshop) and meet travellers to get useful info on the road ahead. We just heard the Marsabit to Moyale road had some heavy rain (it’s a desert out there so it don’t happen often) and that the road was closed for a few days. One guy on a KTM990 had to hire a truck to get his bike to Ethiopia. We’ll wait for next week and see if the conditions improve. Hopefully we can also been someone going North with whom we can ride.

More from Jungle Junction and Nairobi over the next couple of days…

Ps. Today was the 45^th day, so we are exactly halfway on our 90 day trip!