13 March

13 March

Today is Ralphs Birthday ( Our Son)!!!  The first one we have missed in 26 years!!  That’s one of the problems with travelling, life goes on without you!!  Our granddaughter, Leigh, is crawling, and will soon be walking, and now has teeth!

On Friday, we left Jungle Junction, Nairobi, and rode about 230 km, out of the city, through huge road works, where they seem to be building about a 6 or 8 lane highway.  Dusty, rough, but ok.  It was fairly hot, but fairly high.  We crossed the equator again, where they have buckets of water, to demonstrate the rotation of the earth.  Arrived at Timau River lodge at about 3 pm, set up our tent, went for a walk, and waited for Angela ( German lady on bike) and Harry and Linda ( South African couple from Port Elizabeth) to arrive. Nice place, saw Colubus monkey again, and added new species to my bird specie list.

On Saturday, we left at about 7.45, to tackle the 320 km stretch to Marsabit. Temperature was initially cool, at 2300m, but by the middle of the day, it was about 43 deg, and 500 – 700 m altitude.  Past the well known Isiolo for fuel, a breakfast stop at Archers Post, and onto the 120km of gravel at about 12.15.  This turned out to be about as bad as we had been warned, with average speeds of less that 30km/h.  Dusty, with “fesh fesh”, a soft baby powder like sand, continuous very bad corrugations, past volcanic rock formations, sometimes through almost desert area, which turned to woodland closer to Marsabit.  Very deserted, with a few Samburu tribes people along the way, herding cattle, camels or goats.  We past a group of young men, who tried hard to stop us, but we idled past, until I got to them, riding at the back of the pack, and they became aggressive, even throwing their sticks at me, once I was past.  Most of the people we met along the way, at hour 20 km stops, were friendly, mainly wanting water from us.  This area is very arid, and water plays a huge role in lives here.  Linda offered a youngster a sweet, so he promptly snatched the whole packet out of her hand, with a big smile!

Our bikes handled the bad roads well, and everybody coped well with the conditions.  Now, we have another 265 km of the bad gravel to do, and then one could ride the rest of the way on tarr, if so inclined.  We will have a rest day, and then take two days to complete that bad stretch.

We arrived at Marsabit, at about 5.30 pm, tired and dirty, from the long day.  Our accommodation is at Jey Jey’s, a local hotel, where we have room, which cost about R50 ( 6.50 $ )for the two of us.  Beef stew for supper was tasty!

This morning we walked about 2 km out of town, to the wells, which supply water to all the people, donkeys, goats, cattle etc.  There are a number of deep wells dug down about 10 m, and men climb down, passing buckets of water up, about 6 men to a chain, often to a chanting song.  This is the poured into troughs, which supply all the people and animals. The whole town seems to rely heavily on this source of water.