Unfortunately, that was not how today went. Not in the slightest.
We started our days early, waking up before the sunrise to pack up our tents–a bittersweet goodbye. Will I miss the dust? No. Will I miss it there? I already do. We were on the road by 7:30 with everything going according to plan. That didn’t last long.
One of our Land Cruisers suffered a very unfortunate breakdown (the fuel line stopped pumping?) just after leaving camp. Thus ensued many, many (8 hours) of misfortune. We stopped every few miles so that our wonderful, lovely, amazing, perfect drivers, Muhammad and Kristin, could manually pump more fuel into the tank. As we were skirting the rim of the largest caldera on Earth. Enough said.
Even with our difficulties, the crater was still astoundingly beautiful
The drive was, frankly, brutal. None of us had had a very big breakfast, and with all the stops, it was hours before we reached a bathroom. Muhammad, in a very well-intentioned fashion, refused to let us pee in the bushes.
Descending the crater was slightly less eventful, but it was still hours before we reached Karatu, where our lunches were waiting. We ate on the road, holding onto a desperate hope of reaching Nairobi before nightfall (spoiler alert: we didn’t). After reaching Arusha, we had another difficult goodbye with our drivers. They had been with us for almost all of our time in Tanzania, and had helped us navigate breakdowns in the Serengeti, hours and hours of dirt road driving, and approximately a billion trips between the Olduvai camp and museum. We switched over to a bus at the Arusha mall (by then, a familiar sight).
Crossing the border into Kenya proved yet another obstacle. For legal reasons, I will not go into detail. Suffice to say, it was interesting.
While I won’t discuss the events that occurred at the border crossing, enjoy this picture at the border instead
We arrived in Nairobi at an airport hotel just before 10 pm. Fourteen hours of driving. Those of us yearning more for a meal than a nap went to the airport hotel restaurant, which was perhaps our last culture shock in Africa–it took two hours for us to eat, at which point we collapsed into our beds for the shortest night of sleep of my life.
At 4 am the next day, plagued by motion sickness, stomach troubles, and sleep deprivation, we departed for the Nairobi airport, narrowly missing civil unrest that has been wracking Nairobi for weeks. Boarding the plane was the greatest sigh of relief I’ve taken on this trip (besides our arrival at Ecoscience Lodge).
Trying not to throw up on the plane,
Rose
