Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Moyale and southward, Kenya, December 14-15, 2015

Along the way-


The Dida Golgolu Desert (Plains of Darkness) is black lava rock where alll that seems to grow is scrub bush.  There is no grazing or life of any kind, except the odd bird-


What appears to be useless land stretches for miles.

Lucky for us and future travellers, they are in the process of building and paving a new road, which we are on, some of the time.  When we're not, we travel about 15 km/h and with all the rain, it's a little bit slippery-


There are few homes but this one has a dish so obviously some sort of power supply-


Other village homes look like patchwork quilts, covered in plastic, probably to keep the rain out-


We haven't seen many towns, but those we've passed through are pretty rubby-


Wildlilfe-


There are few people along these 400+ km and when we do see some, they rarely wave or holler.  I've only been here one day and it's already very different from Ethiopia.

Our first bushcamp of three was in a lovely, grassy spot.  We had a few visitors while we were cooking  but then peace and quiet  for the rest of the night.  Our second camp was in a quarry where we set up on a soft, black dirt spot.  Everything was going really well - no visitors, nice fire, until about midnight when it started raining.  And it rained and rained!  I haven't mastered how to properly use my ground sheet, (duh) so once again it collected water and about 3:30, the floor was soaked and I was on my way to the truck.  Thank Allah for the truck!  Only, I had to walk through about 3 inches of mud to get there!  I didn't sleep very much, imagining a mudslide and losing my tent and everything inside.  Around 6, once we were all up, it was a challenge to get the tents down, flip flops off and feet washed before we destroyed the inside of the truck.  We stopped for breakfast at a dry spot down the road.  Our shoes and flip flops are still sitting in the muddy garbage bag, waiting for a wash!  Our third night was in a nice SANDY spot, however, fresh elephant dung was everywhere so we were advised that if we had to get up in the night, to shine our torch around to make sure we were "alone''.  Are we having fun yet?  You bet!







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