May 15, 2016

This is my third wildlife “safari” tour through a total of four parks in Africa, and they have all been a little different, as the terrain is different in Namibia, Botswana, and Tanzania. I have to say that while Etosha National Park in Namibia was impressive, the Ngorongoro Crater, while much smaller, is definitely the most impressive so far. 

The crater floor is around 100 square miles, and is 2,000 feet below the rim of the crater. There are 25,000 large animals in the crater, including Cape buffalo, black rhino, elephant, wildebeest, lion, waterbuck, gazelle, hippos, eland, and zebras. Because there are very few trees in the crater, the animals are easily viewed. 

I spent the night before near the entrance gate to the park, at a place called Panorama Camp. This place has these cool little igloos for rent.

Looks like a beehive from the inside.

The rim of the crater is nearly 8,000 ft (2,400m) above sea level, and climbing up to the rim to enter the crater felt like driving through Jurassic Park. The clouds were thick, and the jungle is dense. I kept waiting for the dinosaurs to step out of the jungle. Eventually the road crests the rim and descends into the crater.

There are few trees in the crater, so the wildlife is out in the open in constant view, allowing for close interaction and photos. 

Looking into the crater from the rim.

Hippos in the grass.

Yes, he really walked that close. Probably six feet from me.

Flamingos. Thousands of flamingos.

Here’s a reminder of why you always have to be alert in Africa. I was taking photos of these really cool yellow birds in this thorn tree….

Then I looked at the base of the tree and saw this…gotta look hard.

Better view from the other side of the tree…

This lake was full of hippos. If you stood and watched they would surface every few minutes then duck under again.

If I wanted to see a lot of wildlife and could only go to one place, I think the Ngorongoro Crater would be it. Due to the lack of trees in the crater, there are no giraffes here, but just about everything else you’d want to see is here and easily viewed. 

May 19, 2016

It’s been an interesting but relatively relaxing week. I’ve met a number of travelers and made some new friends this week. I hope to be moving again soon, and new posts will be up by the first part of next week if all goes well. Thanks for continuing to check in here.

Hakuna Matata!

May 15, 2016

I had applied online for my “E-Visa” to Kenya, and received it about a month ago. On the application, they asked the date I planned to enter Kenya, and after some guess-timation, I put May 15th. I was actually slightly ahead of schedule, but a couple of rest days along the route in Tanzania, along with the trip to Ngorongoro Crater filled my time and I ended up right back on schedule.

I spent one last night at Meserani Oasis Lodge in my nice comfortable $11 room, and then said goodbye to Mama before heading north.

Mama and me. What a nice lady. She bought this six acre bare piece of land over 20 years ago, planted all the trees herself, then built the restaurant, bar, and lodge. It’s a beautiful, relaxing place. I hope to see her again when she comes to Texas to visit her daughter and son-in-law who live near where I lived.

Chips Mayai: basically an omelet with french fries cooked in it. Good stuff. I had this for dinner two nights at Meserani.

Heading north out of Arusha toward the Kenya border. Mt. Meru in my rear view mirrors.

And very hard to see, but Kilimanjaro off to my right in the distance (between the tank bag and rear bags).

The border crossing was a bit confusing due to construction of a new checkpoint facility. The road looped around the new construction, and it was quite easy to miss both the exit from Tanzania and the entrance to Kenya. Eventually I was able to get both done, and on my way toward Nairobi.

These flowers were thick along the way in southern Kenya, as were the Maasai men herding goats and cattle.

On the way through Nairobi to my camp I stopped at an ATM to get some Kenyan Shillings, and the woman security guard at the ATM was helpful in guiding me to the ATM that would accept my card (there were four different machines in the same room on the side of a gas station/convenience store). I decided to walk around to the front of the building and buy some bread and water in the store. When I returned, the female security guard was leaning on my bike, watching it for me, and studying the route I had written out in the top map pocket of my tank bag. She pointed to the coordinates for “Jungle Junction”, the overlander camp I was headed to, and said, “You must take me there some day”. I couldn’t help but smile. I’m sure she wanted to see the jungle, and wasn’t aware that Jungle Junction was in the middle of Nairobi.

While we were talking, more security guards showed up, along with two guys that worked in the pizza place next door. They were very curious about the bike, the GPS, and as usual, struggling to accept that I had ridden this same bike from the United States to South America and then through Africa.

My first encounter with Kenyans. A very happy bunch.

I pulled into Jungle Junction and set up camp for a while. Here I would wash and crate the bike, and sort the shipping for the next leg of the trip.

Home for a week or so in Karen, Nairobi.

Crating the bike.

A lot of overland travelers use Jungle Junction to store their vehicles for a while.

A LOT. Yes, even the two pink buses are overland travelers (from Sweden).

I also met Nino here. He’s from Switzerland, traveling by bicycle, for years (he couldn’t say how many kilometers or how many countries he’s ridden through). He jokingly called himself a “Luxury Traveler”. He has both a tent similar to mine, and this Exped Ergo hammock, as well as a laptop. Not the typical minimalist bicycle traveler I’ve met in the past. He’s been camped here at Jungle Junction for 8 weeks now. Just taking a short break before continuing south.

Aussies Jen (whom I met in Arusha a few days earlier) and her partner Craig were also here on their CRF250L Hondas. They are working on obtaining their visas to enter Ethiopia in the next few days. They were a wealth of information for future Africa travels, and I was able to help Craig with some service on his CRF as well as a quick troubleshoot on Jen’s.

May 22, 2016

I’ve been at Jungle Junction in Nairobi for a week now. I spent the first three nights in my tent. After the third night (two of which it rained quite a bit, but I sleep well in the tent in the rain), I had to pack up the tent between rainstorms so it could go into the crate with the bike. So I moved into a dorm room, which raised my nightly lodging from $5.95 to $11. I was the only one in the dorm, so it was like having a private room with a bunch of extra beds.

I had a lot more mosquitoes in the room than I did in the tent. I’ve learned how to enter my tent without letting the mozzies and flies in, but the room has open windows and no screens, so the mosquito netting on the beds is essential. The first night in the dorm I didn’t use the netting and slept terribly due to the constant buzzing in my ears.

Once the bike went into the crate (early in the week), I had no transportation, but Craig and Jen from Australia were nice enough to let me ride one of their CRF250s to the bank (through flooded Nairobi). I had to take out a cash advance on my credit card in order to pay for the bike shipping. That took a couple of hours, and a bunch of forms, and the bank had a limit of 100,000 Kenyan Shillings per day (about USD$995), which wasn’t enough to cover the shipping cost. A few more trips to the ATM over a couple of days eventually got me enough cash to pay shipping, lodging, meals, etc. By the time I got enough cash to pay for the shipping, I felt like I had applied for a mortgage at the bank. The amount of paperwork for a cash advance on a credit card, not to mention the time involved was suffocating! Similar to banks that I experienced in Argentina, you take a number when you enter the door, then sit in a large waiting room and wait for your number to be called. There were two teller windows open, and regardless of the transaction, each involved a lot of paperwork, a lot of conversation, and a lot of running back-and-forth by the teller.

I eventually got the bike onto a truck and delivered to the shipper’s office near the airport, along with my carnet, where it sat for another day before they finally took it to the cargo terminal and cleared it through customs (More on all of this in the next post). After five days, it was now officially stamped out of Kenya, and one step closer to leaving on a plane. Closer being the key word. Not done. Just closer.

Unfortunately, without transportation, I was unable to visit several places I had hoped to see in Nairobi. Particularly, the Karen Blixen house and museum, which were only about three miles from where I was staying. I had considered taking a taxi, but due to the ongoing shipping issues, and the weather, I was stuck at the camp most of the time.

For those reading along that may be considering a similar trip into Nairobi, this is the place to stay. If you have trouble finding the entrance, note that the sign outside the gate doesn’t say “Jungle Junction”, but simply “JJ’s”.

The area of Nairobi where I stayed is near Karen, which I thought was an odd name for a suburb in Kenya, until I realized it was named after Karen Blixen, the Danish author whose autobiography under the pen-name Isak Dinesen was later made into the movie Out of Africa. The farmhouse where she lived here in Nairobi was also used for the movie, and is now a museum. Much of her once 6,000 acre plantation is now suburban neighborhood.

Across the street from the Blixen museum is Marula Studios, the home of Ocean Sole, a “flipflop recycling company”. According to their website, each year thousands of flipflops are washed up onto East African beaches. These are collected by volunteers and at Ocean Sole they are turned into sculptures. Pretty cool recycling, actually.

Yep Used to be flipflops.

Near Jungle Junction is the Giraffe Center. On my last day in Kenya, I walked to the Giraffe Center, and fed the giraffes.

The giraffes know where the food is at the Giraffe Center.

Put a pellet in your mouth and get a kiss from a giraffe.

There’s an elevated deck where you can interact with the giraffes at their level.

This is my buddy Eddie. He actually knows his name, and will come when you call him. Either that, or he thinks “Eddie” means “Food”.

Eddie was my buddy as long as I had food. Once the food ran out, he quickly became somebody else’s buddy.

Also near here is the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and Elephant Orphanage, which focuses on raising orphaned baby elephants for return to the wild. This facility also allows public interaction with the baby elephants for one hour a day.

Craig & Jen saw a break in the weather and packed up their Hondas and headed out Friday afternoon towards Lake Turkana and Ethiopia.

Craig & Jen, off for Ethiopia.

I was jealous and wished I was going with them, but with a U.S. passport, I would only get so far heading north through Sudan and Egypt. I still want to do that route, and I will, but it may be a few years. Hopefully by then the political climate will be better.

May 25, 2016

Having lived in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, very near the border with Mexico, in the mid-1970s, I learned the meaning of “mañana” early. Not the literal translation meaning “morning” or “tomorrow”, but the more general meaning of that “laissez-faire”, easy-going, things-will-get-done-when-they-get-done attitude that invariably teaches patience.

I hadn’t experienced a lot of the “mañana” mentality in a while, having spent more than a dozen years in hectic Southern California, and then another decade in the laid back but trendy Austin. Nor did my job allow for that lifestyle.

When I left last July and headed into Mexico, I was reminded of “mañana” and readily adjusted to it, since I was on no particular time schedule and had been preparing myself mentally for the inevitable breakdown or delay that might leave me temporarily stranded somewhere for days or even weeks at a time.

Over the seven months spent heading south through Latin America to the end of the world at Ushuaia, I had a few mañana encounters, but never anything that caused me more than a day or two delay. I easily laughed them off, especially when I observed other foreign travelers stressing out over things not going exactly as they had planned. (Note: if you can’t handle the idea of a waiter taking an extra 10 or 15 minutes totake your order or bring you the check without exploding in a tirade, it would be best if you stayed in Los Angeles or Chicago or New York.)

Then came Africa. A continent that has embraced “mañana” and taken it to extreme new heights. Nothing happens here quickly. Or even slowly, by most standards. The concept is evident nearly everywhere, in the physical surroundings as well as the daily interactions.

In most of the countries I passed through after Namibia, the road conditions were unpredictable, at best. In many cases, the road would go from deteriorated asphalt with large potholes, to no asphalt and simply dirt, mud, or sand with large potholes, to beautiful new pavement. I later learned that the Chinese have taken over road construction in much of Africa, and this explains the new pavement. Yet the construction times are still extremely long due to the use of mostly local labor and the lack of mechanical equipment to build the roads. Much of the construction process is still done by hand, even on the major highways.

It’s also evident in the buildings. Even in Nairobi, as I walked into a shopping center, the sidewalk was unfinished, and the tile-work on the stairs was unfinished, even though the building had clearly been open and operating for a couple of years. No one was working on these unfinished areas; they were simply unfinished, and walked away from. Parts of the parking lot near the building were still unpaved or crumbling. People walked through the mud puddles and across the unfinished entrance as if everything was normal. Which it is in Africa.

In many (but not all) of the places I stayed in Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania, there was a common theme of frustration by business owners. They complained that they would hire people, train them, then have to re-train them again almost daily, as they seemed to forget the most simple of tasks overnight. I think much of this may be due to a “mañana”-type approach instilled over a lifetime.

People in Africa seem to begrudgingly accept this way of life, and it is often referred to as “Africa Time”. Things get done here in Africa Time. Nino, the Swiss cyclist I met at Jungle Junction, used the term “TIA”, for “This Is Africa”, any time a story was told about something taking a long time or multiple attempts to accomplish.

That’s not to say that everyone in Africa adheres to this regimen. Many of the employees I met along the way at various camps seemed to have a dedication to their work, and were able to perform their required jobs daily without supervision. They arrived on time, worked hard, and accomplished what they were asked. But the longer I traveled through East Africa, the more I realized that these people are the exception.

Things eventually do get done. Just don’t expect them to get done when promised, or on a schedule that you initially think may be reasonable.

I’ll use the shipping of my motorcycle as an example here. It took approximately three and a half days to put my motorcycle in a steel crate that already existed as a motorcycle shipping crate. Granted, in order to save a bit on shipping, the crate needed to be reduced in size, since the airline bases the price on volume. After two days, the crate’s length had been shortened. It was now actually about ten inches shorter than the bike, and the rear fender and taillight stuck out of the back of the crate. Oops. Well, TIA. Time to take a break (for a day) and reconsider the options. The next day, the solution was to try to pull the motorcycle forward in the crate using tie-down straps. This achieved the result of the front fender of the motorcycle sticking out of the crate, while the rear was still sticking out. Also, the crate was too narrow, so the panniers had to be removed from the bike. Unfortunately this left no place for the panniers to fit in the crate without either sticking out themselves, or rubbing against other parts of the motorcycle.

Oh well. TIA. A few zip ties and another tie-down strap, and the panniers were pulled tight against the engine of the bike.

Next was to reduce the height of the crate. Fifteen minutes later, the uprights were shortened. Now the handlebars were taller than the crate. Another day was taken off to consider the options again.

The next day, the handlebars were rotated back slightly, and the front of the bike was pulled down tighter using the tie-downs. Also, the right handguard was removed, as it was still taller than the crate.

At this point I had both accepted Africa Time, and given up on my bike actually arriving in London undamaged. This was the worst crating I had ever seen, especially since the starting point was a perfectly usable BMW motorcycle crate.

During the crating process, I contacted the shipping agency to arrange the shipping from Nairobi airport to London Heathrow. This also took several days of back-and-forth emails and phone calls. Each day, I would receive an email saying that they would email or call me again later in the afternoon with more information, but of course since we are on Africa Time, that email or call either came late that night, or the next day, and only after several follow-up calls and emails from me. Eventually I was told by the owner at Jungle Junction that nothing happens here unless you call every couple of hours.

Ultimately I informed the shipper that I would deliver the crate to them on Thursday afternoon at 3pm, not waiting for them or giving them the chance to drag it out further.

The bike was delivered, and I continued to wait for shipping details. Initially I was given an Airway Bill on Friday with information that the bike would go to London on a SwissAir flight via Zurich, but no specific date on when it might leave Nairobi. I continued to watch both the SwissAir tracking system online, and my GPS tracker (which I left in the crate so I could see where the bike was). Not surprisingly, there was no movement over the weekend. I kept reminding myself, “TIA”.

On Sunday evening I was advised via email that the crate would not fit on the connecting SwissAir flight from Zurich to London, and the shipping would have to be rescheduled. Later that night, I received a new Airway Bill with information that the bike would now be on a Turkish Airlines flight via Istanbul, but again no specific date on when it would leave. I continued to monitor both the Turkish Airlines tracking system online (which at this point didn’t even acknowledge that the Airway Bill number existed), and my GPS tracker. In anticipation that the bike might actually get on a plane in the next few days, I booked a flight to London and a hotel room near Heathrow. This was probably not wise, for several reasons. First, once I left Nairobi I would be unable to handle any additional shipping snafus in person if and when this failed, and secondly, the cost of a night’s stay in Nairobi was $11, versus over $100 a night for the London hotel room.

As of this morning, the bike has left Istanbul and is on its’ way to London. Hopefully by tomorrow I will know the condition of it and whether or not all of my gear that was also packed into the crate is still there.

For now at least, in hindsight, as long as you can accept TIA and Africa Time, things eventually do get done, and I would definitely use the same shipper again, though I would either crate the bike myself or use a different company to crate it.

More updates in a day or two. Barring any major damage, I hope to be on the road Thursday or Friday and headed for Scotland.