Visa: No visa required for South Africa staying 30 days. Car Road Tax: Free unless staying more than 7 days otherwise $20

Upon entering Kenya, we were shocked by the automatic increase in camp prices. Kenya Wildlife Services charge $15ppp/n for camping. Camping! I just turned around and we drove straight out for the Marsabit Road. I might as well add that it was 3pm when we started driving the road. The Marsabit road was a pleasure after Ethiopia. We didn’t see people for at least a half day. Even though we bust all 4 shocks and both rear springs we loved the Marsabit Road. We spotted new birds for our lifer list and got to see gazelle and elephant for the first time on our trip. We made camp in Marsabit where the dog greeted us, so we let ourselves in. The showers were hot and we didn’t mind being joined by a 10cm spider. We were happy to fall asleep clean that evening.

We rose early the next day to inspect the damage to our poor vehicle. Apart from all four our shocks now leaking our exhaust was now also loose. I spent a couple of minutes trying to tie it up, but was not that successful. With inspection and patch jobs completed we headed out of Marsabit. It was already 10am by that time. Marsabit happens to be in a national park so we were fortunate enough to see a herd of elephants grazing not to far from the road. We also encountered another couple that were cycling to South Africa. As for the road conditions, they were still awful. It took us five hours to get from Marsabit to the brand new tar at Isiolo. You can only imagine our delight at driving onto that wonderfully smooth surface after so any ours of having our teeth rattle loose in our sculls. Unfortunately our day driving was far from over. We still had almost 400k to go and for those of you that might know, driving in Nairobi at any time of day is never easy. Trying to negotiate there four lane highways that have no light or road markings was an ordeal all on its own. Never the less, we arrived at Jungle Junction in one piece. I can happily report that it is as nice as people say it is. The place is filled with the most interesting vehicles and the most colourful assortment of people you could ever hope to meet on a trip like this.

The following day was operation ‘fix Big Red’. Surprisingly this turned out to be far easier than what we had anticipated. Nairobi is pretty organised. Out first port of call was the Toyota dealership, where we were directed to a reliable exhaust specialist. With that completed we headed over to Rob’s Magic to have our suspension sorted. Unfortunately they did not have our TJM’s in stock, but we were quite happy to have them replaced with the Rob’s Magic oil filled shocks and rear springs. Once that was completed, we headed to the shopping centre to have a bite to eat. Neil was pleasantly surprised by the fact that one of the restaurants served ‘Boerewors’ pizza. We headed back to camp where we met up with 4 South Africans driving North on motorbikes. We spent that evening with them ordering in pizza and drinking beer from the well stocked fridge at Jungle Junction. Michnus, Elsebie, Harold and Linda, all from the Eastern Cape, were good entertainment that evening with their stories of driving fun in the Southern Hemisphere.

We spent the Sunday doing laundry and trying to reattach the snorkel, but gave up and just tightened it as best we could. It was on this evening that our laptop chargers and phone died without us realising it. There was of course the mother of all storms and no electricity, so we thought nothing of it.

We left the next day for Uganda. After a good day of driving we camped at the Flamingo Camp where we were the only people. We had a lovely evening cooking and relaxing to views of the Lane Elementaita. The next day we crossed the equator for the second time and made sure we stopped to take the all important pictures. We even bought trinket chess board. We entered Mount Elgon National Park that evening where we paid $80 for entry and camping for 24hours. We were the only people there once again. The stack of braai wood was higher than the car and there was water and shade. Not to mention the waterbuck, impalas and baboons parading around the campsite. We went for a stroll that evening into the forest. We saw bushbucks which bark like dogs when alarmed. At first I thought it was the baboons barking. We saw impala which could easily make it into the Roland Ward record books. The next day we rose early, packed a picnic bag and headed for the caves. The day was nice and cool and we didn’t see another person. There was plentiful evidence of elephants, but we didn’t see any. We spent a lovely time at the cave where the water was seeping off the cliff to cool us down. We walked back to camp and were packed up by 3pm. We reached the border by 4pm on a very dilapidated road. As we drove in we could see the road off into Uganda going up the hill. What we saw was a little disturbing. There were hundreds on people walking down the road heading toward the Uganda border side. Neil mentioned the crowd with brief concern, but we thought nothing more about it until we walked out of the immigrations office. By that time the crowd had reached the border line and were toy-toying around. Apparently it was only the local governor on his campaign run. Well happy or not, there was no way we were going over until then crowd either disappeared or settled down. We were officially in no mans land having just been stamped out of Kenya and not wanting to enter Uganda. After about a half hour the crowd miraculously disappeared. We did all the bits and bobs necessary to enter and we were surprised when we walked out the customs office to find Michnus and Elsebie at the pillbox immigration office. It was the start of a beautiful friendship.