After our jaunt to the Kenya coast, we decided to join an 'overland tour'. Sean in particular likes to stay away from 'organized fun' when he can. However, we weighed up the pros and cons as follows:
PROS
- National parks here are hard to reach unless you pay taxis or hire cars (both of which come at a price we can't afford)
- Some parks have hefty conservation fees per vehicle which split between more than two people helps with cost
- With overland tours you can get into camp sites outside of tour more easily so save on accommodation costs
- I was getting a bit bored of Sean and so the new people to talk too would be welcome (hee hee - only kidding!!!!)
CONS
- We have to go where we're told
- You have to pitch in and cook and wash up, so no room for laziness... (I'm starting to see why Sean dislikes tours so much)
We found a company called 'African Trails'. They are by far the best value company on the market right now and they do this by only including your accommodation (by way of a tent), breakfast (cornflakes, wheetabix, pancakes or omlettes) and dinner (eaten off the back of the truck using a two stove gas hob and local produce purchased that day) and some of the attractions in the price. They leave other attractions as 'optional extras' allowing you to stretch your budget as you see fit. They also don't include a chef which means that the group takes it in turn to do the cooking and washing up is always to be done. So given that you're still vaguely in charge of your own destiny when it comes to what to do and what to eat, this company suited our needs to a tee and we signed on the doted line for a 28 day trip from Nairobi, into Uganda, back to Nairobi and then down to Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania.
We arrived at our starting point at Karen Camp in Nairobi (a rather dishevled camp but with a kind of charm - plus it had three lovely Alsatians). We were invited to join some locals for a drink and immediately wondered what we had gotten ourselves into. It seemed they were the second/third generation of (mainly) white locals - basically all the ones with money... and they were smashed. It all got rather racuous as Sean and I watched on sipping our one and only afforded beer. I kinda gave up after one of them slowly spat on another's head. Fortunately more overlanders (this is the term given to one on an overland tour) arrived and we managed to mingle with them. Here's the link to the Karen Camp photos:
We joined our fellow African Trails travellers in Nairobi - Dave (an inbetween jobs Pharmacist from Scotland) and Jake (a sabbatical Nuclear Medicine Technologist from Australia). Yes, it was just the four of us - how bloody fantastic was that! Our driver's name was Chris (another Aussie). Chris would be our driver all the way to Dar. Jake and Dave informed us they would be leaving the truck shortly before we got back to Nairobi after week two (Dave had already been truck-bound for several weeks, having come up from South Africa). The truck itself is awesome with onboard library, stacks of space and roll up windows.
I don't want to jinx things, but I'm pretty confident that we're going to have a blast.
Here are the photos from our first few days travelling through the rift valley:
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