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- 22. aug. 2022
- ☁️ 24 °C
- Høyde: 1 664 m
- KenyaKajiadoIsinya1°42’54” S 36°50’30” E
Arusha to Nairobi: School start
22. august 2022, Kenya ⋅ ☁️ 24 °C
Today, we travel back to Kenya, to Nairobi from Arusha. In Arusha, we had a lovely little hotel in a strange part of town. The bright star hotel is great value. Two rooms with breakfast for 6 people cost only $55. If you stay here, you might be disquited by the approach as the road is a total mess, and the area at 1st seems to be poor, but the hotel is well protected and has good rooms and nice staff. It also provides a good dinner for $5, but expect to wait longer than an hour that they say it will take.
I also investigate how to get to the border. There are apps like Gettransfer.com & Rome2Rio and advisory sites like TripAdvisor, and if I had used them, we would pay $100-$220. So I asked the hotel and called the local taxi company, who both quoted $100. So, I resorted to the African approach. I contacted the friend of our driver in Moshi ( Praygod - really his name!), called Erasto, and asked him if he had a friend who could take us. Of course he did, stupid to even consider he didn't. Price $60. Stilla bit high, but should I waste time and take risks for maybe $10-15 savings? So we take the friend of the friend Felix. His English is not great, but he has a good car, but it looks like there isn't enough space for luggage because he has four large drums in the boot. I suggest he offload them and pick them up later. No, no, he has to deliver them on the route. heh, this is Africa, and so it all fits somehow.
Kids are happy to start the school year by sending whatsapp photos to friends to tease them as Geneva school restarts today. They are schooling in the car. Then we have a surprise, we encounter 4 giraffes on the road. This is the main Tanzania to Kenya highway, so more photos, more stuff to tease friends in Geneva.
Soon after, Felix stops at a post office to deliver his drums. A very small amount is spilt. It's cow's milk🥛 . Turns out Felix's sideline is to deliver milk in whatever drums he happens to have.
After 90 minutes, despite the odd duststorm, we reach the border. We had already had our passports checked twice, 30km, and 10km from the border, and we are about to find out why.
Felix is paid $5 to negotiate a good price for a taxi to Nairobi. So we cross the border at an unofficial crossing , where locals have damaged a concrete barrier enough that a car can cross. This is the unofficial taxi stand, whereby optically it's not like anything you would find in Europe. Cars, small busses, chaoticly parked, currency dealers, and plenty shady guys. Felix tells some locals what we want, and then two sprint off at high speed running to find their friend 😤. Two minutes later a car arrives. Felix negotiates $80 , so he gets his $5, and we go. By comparison, I paid $150 the other way.
Bernard is our new driver, namesake of Flo's dad and Oscar's middle name. He tells us we are in Kenya as we drive aling a dusty narrow street. We then pass the official border, and to be clear, we pass it by, with no control at all. The shuttle bus has to stop there for 2 hours. So, the official route is 6 hours. The unofficial route is 4 hours. Onward to Nairobi with kids studying in the back 😀.
I was intending to end there, but the fun continued. First, we saw vultures, loads of them feasting on a zebra carcass, and then later, the road is blocked by a herd of 🐫.Les mer
Reisende This sounds awesome! I'd love to experience more of the chaos 😄
Ezyian The film is the border crossing