Packing up was an easy affair and by 9:30am we were sitting under one of the palm roofed shacks sipping on coffee and saying good morning to Sammy and Kara from the Dragoman truck and a few of the other crew from the over-land trucks who’d surfaced.

The Kenyan border was only a few hours away and should be a pretty simple affair. Ma had gone for a morning knap and so we found BJ and said a very big thank you and asked him to pass on our thanks to Ma when she got up. We’ll be seeing them in a few weeks again on way South.

Fuelled up we headed back to Arusha to pick up the A104 North to Nairobi and on the way passed a small group of Massai in their ceremonial dress, dark cloth and white face paint. We waived-they stared.

The good tar road led us through small villages, each one with more speed bumps than the last. An hour into our ride and we’d spotted a distant village in the scrub to our right and for no particular reason drove off the road to go and say hello and see if we could pick up some veggies for later. ½ hour later and we’d bought a few onions a couple of tomatoes and a rough looking avocado and were tearing back across country trying to find the road. As we finally approached the border it looked very civilised, not at all like the Zambia-Tanzanian border, which was chaos.

Looks can be deceiving…! After 3 hours we were still there. The insurance, which you must have, was crazily expensive and we eventually haggled someone down to 4,500 K Shillings (around $60) for two bikes for 1 month. We eventually got our Carnets stamped but only after 4 different officials had spent 2 hours, yep two bloody, F%**^g, so*”%ing hours deliberating whether motorcyclist should pay road tax. We ended up paying $40 for the two bikes for 1 month and then being told that the license automatically expires as soon as you leave Kenya and so if we plan on going to Uganda then we’ll need to spend another $40 just to get to Tanzania even if our two Kenyan crossings fall in a 1 month period. We’d only planned on spending maybe 2 weeks here and so $80 seems pretty expensive. We picked up our Kenyan Visa pretty easily for $50 each. Neither the customs nor immigration officers accept payment in Kenyan shillings, everything is payable in US dollars.

We eventually left the border at 4:40pm and now had to get a move on if we were to reach Nairobi before dark. We were heading for Rangis place about 12 km outside Nairobi itself.

By 6:30pm the large white painted gates of the site were being opened. The tent was thrown up, bags thrown in and two dusty bikers tucked into food that was being served up at 350 K shillings.

Marcus from Exodus and Kara from Dragoman turned up and hour after we arrived. Nice to see some familiar faces.

Night, night.

Caroline who runs Rangis was heading into Nairobi (fondly renamed…nai-robbery) in her 4X4 and had offered us a lift and so by 11am we were immersed in the chaotic traffic that snakes around Nairobi centre.

Out on the street we made our way round to several book shops in the search for better Kenyan maps and by 12 noon had a couple in hand and had booked our seats at the 2pm showing of ‘Spider-man II’ at the very dodgy looking 20th Century Cinema, yeah, yeah, travel broadens your horizons but I had to see it all the same.

So here we are back at Rangis, having watched my favourite ‘wall-crawler’ on the big screen and having paid a visit to one of the supermarkets in Nairobi. The Taxi back cost us 8,000 shillings.

Rangis is only 12 Km outside Nairobi centre and offers camping and rooms, hot showers, evening meals at 3,500 K-shillings, internet and a pool table. You can find it at GPS: S1 20.359 E36 45.854

Over coffee we’d spoken to Marcus and Ninka from another over-landing truck and both had suggested a few visits as we are feeling a little frustrated by not being allowed into National Parks or Game Reserves. Not forking out the $150 to get to and go into the Ngorogoro crater in Tanzania had been a difficult but important decision and we both wanted to see some of the wildlife for which Kenya is renowned.

So, jumping on the 1100GS our first port of call was the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a short 7km from Rangi and found at GPS: S1 22.682 E36 46.536. The sanctuary is home to orphaned elephants and Rhino and was established following the death of David Sheldrick in 1977 and now headed by his wife Daphne and daughter. The trust is opened to the public from 11am to 12pm and so by 10:50am we’d parked up and had joined the group being taken down to see the star residents.

It was disappointing to see how many people put nothing in the ‘donation’ box, bearing in mind that the sanctuary does not charge an entrance fee and relies solely on donations to keep operational.

Around 50 people had lined up at the bottom of the small steps and were heard to gasp with delight as the baby Rhino trotted down from his enclosure without a care in the world. This little guy was only months old and was already a bit of a ‘lady-killer’. For the next 20 minutes we watched mesmerized as he played for us in the mud pool and chased his keepers around.

As the Rhino trotted back the next stars were already nose to tail and making a big entrance. Four baby elephants knew it was feeding time. With their keepers firmly holding the large plastic feeding bottles the young ele’s sucked and chewed until all was gone to the delight of their cooing audience. With food done it was playtime and so for the next 30 minutes these beautiful but now sadly orphaned animals rolled, frolicked and wrestled one another in the mud pool.

Susan, our tour leader went to great lengths to explain how alike humans and elephant families are in terms of their interrelationships and bonds and how similar the intelligence and habits of the young elephants we were watching were to human children of a similar age. With this thought in mind the true horror of the experiences prior to being rescued by the trust slowly begins to dawn. These young ele’s probably saw their parents killed for ivory, which sadly is still poached. The trust’s work with the orphaned animals is aimed at rehabilitation and reintroduction of the young back into the wild and to date the Trust has reintroduced over 40 orphaned elephants back into their natural environment along with over a dozen orphaned Black Rhino.

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust operates their own informative and fun website, which is well worth a visit at www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org, where more information can be found and donations can be made.

Note: Funds and support are naturally always welcome by the trust and who actively encourage ‘animal adoption’. By adopting an elephant or rhino you’re helping support the centre and save lives in the future. In return you will receive regular emails and updates. Not a bad idea for a birthday present for the person who already has everything.

Contact details are:

Excited by our close encounters at the Trust it wasn’t long before we were back on the bike and heading for the Giraffe Centre. With our entries fees paid of 500 K Shillings it wasn’t long before we’d climbed the steps of the circular feeding hut and came face to face with the centres long necked residents; the interestingly named and endangered Rothschild Giraffe.

For the next hour we marvelled at these wonderful animals as they delicately plucked feeding pellets from our hands with their sticky pink tongues, with all the dexterity of an operating surgeon.

Giraffe centre website can be found at

We finished our day with a visit to the home of the late Karen Blixen, author of the book ‘Out of Africa’. It wasn’t hard to see where she gained her inspiration.

We are on the road again and today heading up the A2 for a stop just shy of Nanyuki and North of Nairobi, Rocky Mountain Lodge

Happy 60th Birthday Dad! XXXXXX

A pretty good pack up, no messing around or forgetting to pack something we thought was already away and so by 7:30am we were on our way and aiming to Nunyuki with the first order of the day being to find an ATM machine. Of course we had to stop for a photo as we passed the Equator for the second time on this journey, the first time being onboard Barry’s plane. The fact that we were now riding the bikes made this one special.

As we finished our business with the ATM, Ninka’s over-landing truck pulled in one lay-by ahead and was pit stopping for coffee. Cash in hand and we followed her passengers into one of the small low-lit cafes. A cheese toasty and a coffee can really kick start your day and so fuelled up we were soon back on the road, this time heading for Samburu Game Reserve. We knew we couldn’t get in but as the reserve doesn’t have fences we’re taking a chance and bush camping just outside in the hope of seeing a few animals.

The small town of Isiolo came sooner than we’d anticipated and so did the throng of vendors who were at our side the moment we stopped for water. Bunches of small sweet bananas to my left and jewellery and knife vendors to my right. A couple of guys kicked off an argument over a donkey over my shoulder just for good measure.

No sooner had we entered Isiolo than we were leaving it. Large planks with lethal looking nails had been placed across our path 50 metres up, which meant a check point of some type. Three guys in army fatigues greeted me inside the small wooden shack and instructed me to sign ‘the book’. Name, country, from, going to and of course which tribe? All the questions we’d now become accustomed to.

Past the plank and nail barriers the tar road stopped and was replaced with a very dusty and corrugated track, which if you follow for long enough will bring you to Ethiopia. We aren’t going that far. It felt perversely good to be off tar and to be once again doing that kind of riding that really makes you concentrate. The bikes once again squirming alive underneath us as we speed up, skimming only the top of the corrugations.

By early afternoon we’d arrived at the gates to the reserve and found a spot for the tent and bikes behind some scrub and not too far from the borehole. Several young boys watched with inquisitive eyes as we unpacked. We exchanged a few ‘Jambo’s’ (Swahili for hello) but it didn’t go any further.

As evening drew in Lisa and I just sat outside and toasted my dad who celebrated his 60th Birthday today. We’d eaten a thrown together spag bol', had a roaring fire going, were being serenaded by a chorus of frogs down by a small brook to our left and in birthday style had baked 8 sweet bananas covered in honey on the glowing embers of the fire.

As heavy dark clouds just touched by the pink light of the sun brought the horizon line and the last of the light silhouetted the Kenyan tree line seen so often in TV wildlife documentaries I thought of my dad and wished for the first time on this trip that I could have been back to celebrate his big day with my family. I know he’ll think that’s funny as normally I’m notorious for forgetting birthdays.

Happy Birthday dad. XXXX

Our only concern tonight is the arrival of elephants, which we can see use this area, so we’ll be sleeping lightly.