Driving alongside the Great Rift Valley

We got up at 7.30am to shower and get packed up. We had breakfast and were ready to be picked up by Omondi at 9.45am. Unfortunately, he didn’t turn up until 11am!! This did not bode well! Patrick, the hotel’s concierge, was concerned for us and wanted to call Omondi. Just as he was about to, Omondi messaged to say he was stuck in traffic. We were very worried that we wouldn’t get to the Masai Mara in time for our evening game drive. Omondi had told us yesterday that the journey would take around eight hours!

When we got in the car, there was a distinctly frosty atmosphere. We headed out of Nairobi. Within minutes, we came extremely close to running over a pedestrian! We stopped for fuel and again to pick up paperwork. Then, we turned back towards the city. We were still in Nairobi at 12 noon. It felt like we were getting nowhere! I asked Omondi if we would get to the park in time. He said we would. He explained that we were taking a short cut! There were loads of speed humps, which made for an uncomfortable drive. The upside was that there was plenty of local life to see!

We joined the main highway for a while and then turned off to drive along the edge of the Great Rift Valley. The valley is a series of geographic trenches that run for about 7000 kilometres from Lebanon to Mozambique. It is a divergent plate boundary that geologists believe will one day split Africa apart. They refer to the two evolving plates as the Nubian Plate and the Somali Plate. Several deep, elongated lakes, called ribbon lakes, exist on the floor of the rift valley. These include Lake Malawi and Lake Tanganyika. The region has a unique ecosystem and contains a number of Africa's wildlife parks.

As we drove, it was very hazy, but we still had good views down onto the valley floor. There were dozens of baboons by the roadside. There was also a huge amount of traffic, mainly trucks travelling between Kenya and the landlocked countries of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and DRC. The only seaport serving these nations, and many others, is Mombasa.Read more