Made it! Sort of.

We're settled in, bags dropped, and sitting in a park with a cold drink and it's not even 530pm! A bus scheduled to leave at 10am for an 8.5 hour ride to Lodwar... So how did we do it you ask? Simple! We're in Kakamega. Let's face it, it's much more fun to say out loud! Kakamega!

Thanks to our preview from yesterday, we were expecting for the bus to leave later then 10am, but arrived on time just in case. Around 12pm we decided to have our packed lunch because we were getting hungry, still parked in front of the ticket office. By 120pm, Jack and I simultaneously hit a point where we were both tired of sitting on the bus, and we hadn't even left yet. 3.5 hours sitting on a parked bus is tiring, no distracting landscapes, nothing to change your mind from the obvious frustration. People on the bus were saying the bus can actually take up to 10 hours to arrive. Seeing that it's 130pm, we weren't arriving before at least 11pm, and without a map or guest house in mind, we both thought it was no longer worth it. Furthermore, this landscape is suppose to be absolutely beautiful as you arrive closer to Lake Turkana. It's this emerald lake, and you see volcano peaks around it, should be gorgeous. But we would have had the last 4 hours of our journey in complete darkness; it ruins the point. Plenty of other places to visit, no need to torture ourselves for another 10 hours.

Jack had to argue quite a bit to get a refund, even if our ticket was written "no refund after departure", which clearly doesn't apply. Finally, someone came in just at the right time, wanting to buy tickets. So we sold ours. And by sold ours, I mean the guy working at the ticket office was holding our tickets, and gave them to this new customer. So as Jack was complaining that he wasn't being sympathic, she slowly grabbed the money and walked away. To which he responded he wanted a coca cola. Done.

Walking off the bus felt wonderful. I'm so done with this town, I couldn't care less where we go, just somewhere. So the closest town of interest was Kakamega! There's a forest reserve with apparently great walking trails that we will attempt tomorrow. I assumed the town would be tiny since the lonely planet doesn't even mention the town... Boy was I wrong. FYI - lonely planet continues to fail us. We use it to know where we're going, and loosely follow the town maps, but that's it. We've found better and cheaper accommodation in every single town we've been in. Even transportation is still turning out cheaper in some cases then what's in the book. And since I highly doubt the prices were lowered in the last year, it still leads me to believe no one actually came to these countries to revise the information provided.

Matatus here are confusing... 9 passenger seats, and 9 passengers... I actually had my own seat. So did Jack. And we only picked someone up along the way twice, that's after we let someone off of course, because again - we each had our own seats... Hm...

And we've gotten fair pricing so far! Buses haven't overcharged, not even matatus. Same price as others. Local restaurants have been charging real prices. Street vendors, real prices. It's a nice change. I don't need to argue the price. I just bought a power bar and the guy selling said 300. I looked confused so he said 200. I didn't even have to say anything and he dropped 100. Just for the heck of it I said 150 and he said OK. Lol. The power bar is because the guest houses we're staying in tend to cut electricity during the day, which means we can only charge things at night. I have both our cellphones and Jack's tablet to charge, so we've been putting alarms throughout the night to switch what's charging. 150KSh (2$CAD) not to have to wake up at 1am and 4am, money well spent.

I'm now sitting in a well maintained park, in the middle of Kamamenga, which turned out to be huge! And for it to have a park in the middle of downtown has been amazing since we haven't seen in city green spaces in a long time. I get to people watch while Jack reads. Perfect. That is of course if you ignore the time we had to change spots because the begging kids decided to sit next to us and mock us for the longest time. They seemed to be sniffing something out of a bottle. A bunch of what appeared to be homeless 8 year olds high as kites.

Side note - Throughout this trip, I feel like we've had quite the ability to pick good accommodation. Even today, we visited a few different options which confirmed our first spot to be great! It's the cheapest we visited, yet it's the cleanest and the staff was so nice and attentive. When we said we were going to walk around and visit other options, she responded "no problem, but please come back, we would love to have you stay with us". Yes mam! Hot water, shared but squeaky clean bathroom, 500KSh. Score. Most guest houses are set around courtyards behind restaurant or store fronts. Our place yesterday had again, clean shared bathrooms, hot shower at night thanks to the fire they lit under the water tank, 450KSh. The lonely planet doesn't mention any places for under 1500KSh. Pft.

Also a side note - I don't really mention boring daily routine stuff, but it is an important part of our day. As backpackers, you have a limited amount of clothing, and you don't always know what you're next place will look like. So you always do your laundry when you can. Always. Everyday when I'm showering, I wash my underwear. You do the classic sniff test for your shirt. Wash if needed. Also a daily must is water bottles. Obviously with the warmth, we always make sure to have water available, and that often means stopping to buy some in the evening on our way home. Our malaria pills in the morning, which we are surprisingly taking. Sunscreen used to be a daily thing, but I seem to have gotten used to the sun, because I no longer need it when in a city. Actually I think I only put some one maybe the first 2 weeks... You should see my farmers tan "spell whistling here*. Just simple daily things.Read more