Pack and go

Tuesday July 2nd. Our last day. We fly tonight so we get the bikes out for their last outing round to the packing area. It is very hot so with plenteous sweat we get the bikes dismantled and lashed onto their pallets. We feel we have packed them better than the way out. The lids go on and within an hour or so all is done.

Done and dusted

The Mombasa traffic is very bad as we travel out so we get back to the hotel for showers and final packing as well as the purchase of delicious vegetable bahji's from the little shop down the road to make sure we dont starve on our journey home (as if!).  These turn out to be the culinary highlight of the trip home as we wait at Nairobi for our connecting flight.

Crates have held up well for the return trip

The flight home is uneventful and we get seats with max leg room which is a huge bonus!

This has been one truly fantastic adventure and whilst we are glad to be home and - let's face it - in the company of other people at last, we take with us a once in a lifetime experience of an incredible continent. We will ad bonus pics and footage in the coming days so be sure to check back for that. Now we have more bandwidth we can add more stuff!

Thanks for accompanying us on this epic journey. 

"I think our work is done!"

We got the bus and train home!

Spicing things up

OK so we are fast coming to the end of this amazing trip. We took a 'tuck-tuck' down to the spice market in Mombasa. It is supposed to be a colourful place and good for buying up a variety of spices. Colourful it certainly was but the hassle from everyone wanting us to spend money with them rather spoiled things. We got into the spirit of it though and toughed it out with the various stall holders.

One of the few who did not hassle us

Spices turned out to be quite pricey so no purchases were made after all which did not endear us to anyone! But we did get the full treatment as you can see from the video where Paul is learning all about the Cumin!

All the colours in all the sizes!

We did work up a bit of an appetite though so the quest for street food to vomit by continued! We took a back street tour of the market and bought some samosas that had been beautifully stirred in boiling oil with a stick. They were absolutely delicious and by far the best samosas either of us had aver had. That was fun and a great experience to meet with the locals as they cooked up all manner of food stuffs.

Mombasa food market

Tuck-tuck fun!

Tomorrow is pack up time and flying home. We meet Peter to pack-up the bikes first thing in the morning (Tuesday).

Last Sunday

We have around 48 hours left before we head home. Today we decided it would be mad to be in Mombasa and not see the beach so, courtesy of the guide book advice, we went 20km out of town on the bikes to Tiwi beach. We caught a quick ferry which we seemed to manage to not pay for and followed the road out of Mombasa. We missed the turn and pulled off the road to ask for directions. The beach we were told was straight down the road. The road led us to a very minor track which led past dwellings and into smaller and smaller paths until we arrived at a clearing where there was a tiny mosque and a well. We followed on deeper into the bush and finaly hit the road we had missed. 

Mucking about

 After some mucking about we went into the Amani resort club where we were told for could have a drink and some lunch and hang out on the beach. Perfect! So that is what we did from around 11.30am-5.00pm 

Indian Ocean

Martin's feet

  

Paul with his new friend

The colours on the beach were stunning and the people around were also so colourful. It was yet another experience of Africa we were glad to have had.

Martin did buy a few trinkets from the guys on the beach. (Remember the Auribeau necklaces?? Does he never learn!). This is the moment at which they asked him - genuinely - if his father would be interested in buying anything from them. 

 He isn't my father he is my grand father

Selling beach wraps

Local Muslim girls

Stunning Colours

We caught the ferry back and popped out for supper into Mombasa town and had an excellent end of trip Chinese. We discussed highlights and disappointments of the last four weeks, we both struggled to find any disappointments and could not single out the highlights as there have been so many. We took a ‘tuk-tuk’ back to the hotel which was great fun.
 

Tomorrow is a down day. We need to contact Humphrey our shipper, sort out our flights home and visit the spice market. Tuesday flights are very late so will go armed with books and ipods to pass the time.

Last Leg

We left the Impala Hotel at 07:30, packing our “boxed breakfasts” into our panniers. The deal is that we will ride to the border at Taveta (estimated at 2 ½ hours), get the paperwork done (estimated at 1 hour), ride to Voi (estimated at 3 hours) have lunch and then decide if we want to continue to Mombasa. 

Having stayed at Voi previously, it is a one horse town, with one very basic hotel and I for one do not wish to stay there; Martin, on the other hand is concerned that it may be too much to complete in one day.

We fill up with fuel at the first available station and are off! Despite a couple of fruitless stops to buy water, we set a reasonable pace, stopping at Moshi for a quick break and for Martin to be sick (although he isn’t). Martin writes…I was actually wretching in my helmet for the first section of the ride, once I had downed a ceral bar and some water and my empty stomach had something to go on I was fine.

We reach the border quicker than we think and have everything completed by 09:53 putting us ahead of our schedule by nearly an hour. Result! Looks like we’re going to Mombasa.

The road from the border at Taveta is truly the worst we have encountered, rough, bumpy and with large patches of sand that snatch the handlebars from our hands which makes steering the bikes impossible. 

 

Just 70 miles of this

 Both of us have a number of “moments” when it looks like we’re going to be thrown off; fortunately there is only one occasion when Martin drops his bike but it is at such low speed that the crash bars do their work, preventing any injury or damage. It is also good that the road is virtually deserted although passing vehicles do kindly check on us when we have a pit stop.

 

We stop at 10:53 to eat our breakfast. Martin is concerned that as we are in the wildlife corridor of Tsavo National Park we may be eaten by lions! (Reasonable thought given that we have just ridden past a wildlife corridor! Why do you think the road is deserted and everyone looks strangely at us when we stop). Paul remarks that it may be the equivalent to having a picnic on the M25. I suggest it is more like having a buffet at Longleat!

  

Here kitty kitty!

"Breakfast Box"

Breakfasted, we resume the ordeal, stopping only when the windscreen and mudguard on Martins bike have lost so many screws from the vibration that remedial action by way of cable ties is required. The one thing we do know about this road is that it will eventually end. And it does. Sand becomes gravel becomes sort of hard bumpy surface and eventually utter tarmac! 

 

We head into Voi on said Tarmac and find the ‘Fine Breeze’ Hotel where we stayed in 2010. Martin particularly remembers the night we had there as he got the most horrendous cramp in the middle of the night and had to empty a salt seller from the restaurant into his water bottle at 3.00 in the morning whilst still in his underpants. It did relieve the cramp which was in a leg muscle he did not know how to stretch!

                                 Cramp Hotel. I don't have cramp in my mouth I am sucking a mint!

I digress…

We both had half a chicken with chips and the ketchup that Africans have which tastes nothing like ketchup. Martin ordered a Coke but the girl who was serving us did not understand so after several failed attempts Paul asked her for a Cock and all was well.

Martin’s earlier wretching is long forgotten and after a brief breather and a ‘just what the doctor ordered’ meal we agree to continue to Mombasa and set off. But not before we told the waitress what happened in the episode of the soap on the TV as we had seen that one in the Continental hotel in Uganda…they must be a week ahead there!

We set off for Mombasa refreshed and hit the east Africa highway. One can never be complacent on African roads but we have got a little better at handling the craziness of this road which includes some of the most unpredictable overtaking decisions ever seen. We make good progress with MP3 players keeping us going. Martin says he felt a twinge of emotion as Mombasa coast line came into view knowing that we were almost at the end of our journey. The bikes were amazing yet again taking everything we threw at them.

Back to the beginning

We hit the Mombasa traffic and start looking for the Lotus Hotel - the one from which we started this journey. Martin pulls over to ask Paul to get two sachets of dioralyte out of the depths of his pannier as he had cramp in that same muscle and could not stretch it any-which-way. It was ridiculous that this should happen but the dioralyte in double dose did the trick and we went back into the traffic. After some canny navigation by Paul and some asking for directions we found the Lotus. Happy Days!

 

 Weigh bridge queue coming out of Mombassa

What was lovely was the huge convoy of bikers from the city who had heard we were coming into Mombasa at the end of our trip and they all followed us through the street beeping their horns and creating a convoy of two wheeled vehicles! (No…not really!)

 

Celebrating with a nice cold beer 

Heart of Africa

We had always planned to have some R&R days during our last week and because we arrived in Arusha slightly ahead of schedule and thanks to Hoopoe Safaris this plan has come together nicely. We had a completely down day at Impala on Tuesday where we caught up on emails to family, some skype calls and some snoozing around the Impala Hotel pool. All very welcome.

Wednesday we set off at 0700 with our driver and guide Elias. We left our non essential items at the Hotel courtesy of the very efficient Philipina who rules the front desk at the hotel with a great sense of humour mixed with genuine efficiency and a ‘can-do’ attitude. She also arranged for us to leave the bikes there for the two nights we are away and to book us back in for Friday. All good. All very good.

 Hat borrowed from William!

We set off for the 2 ½ hr drive back to Tarangire which is re-tracing our steps from our journey to Arusha a few days earlier. It was interesting to review the route which included some very dire road surfaces and road works from the vantage point of a Toyota Land Cruiser. The unmade roads are very dusty so, get this, the African way is to wet the mud roads to reduce the dust. This has the effect of making them like butter.  The 4WD Toyota was sliding all over the place most of the way there and we were very glad we had ridden in dust rather than this. Paul tried to locate the place on the road where he had had his accident in 2010 but the landscape looked very different and it was hard to tell. We will try again when we go back to Arusha on Friday.

Tarangire is spectacular and the landscapes are absolutely vast. The views go all the way to Lake Manyara in one direction, to Kilimanjaro in another and across huge planes to the Masai Steppe on the other. There is not as much wildlife to see as Samburu but what we have seen has been fantastic and the park is stunning to drive around. It covers 245,000 square Kilometres!

Our camp is just half an hour from the gate to the park and is basic but very comfortable thanks to Emily’s ‘budget friendly’ itinerary. The small terrace outside our tent leads straight into the bush and we have a whistle on our room key ring should we need to call for the Masai to scare away an elephant in the night!

As Paul has a terrible cold which we think he caught on the Mwanza ferry his snoring is likely to keep the elephants at bay without the aid of the Masai or a whistle!  That said, if his snoring doesn't, my flatulence will!

 

 Masai!

 We have been right at the heart of the Masai lands of Tanzania and the views have been amazing and there have been very impressive masai everywhere. So colourful and so spectacular.

We have also been in the heart of the Tanzanian part of the great rift valley and again, we have been spoilt by the incredible ‘huge Africa’ landscapes. 

 

 Vast plains still littered with Masai herdsmen

Here are some of our pics from the past couple of days in the wilds of N. Tanzania

 African Sky

 Lord Of The Rings trees. They can grow for up to 2000 years!

 Trampas and the Virginian!

 Looking out from Taragngire to the Masai Steppe....amazing view from our picnic site!

We head for Mombasa tomorrow Saturday for our last leg. Speak soon!