The five days we spent in Nairobi felt like ‘time off’ from our trip. We camped in a place called Jungle Junction, almost in the centre of Nairobi. It’s a popular place for overlanders to stop and the facilities (which include wireless internet) make it feel like a home away from home. A good place to spend Christmas…

After some routine maintenance on the bike we headed west for the start of our circuit around Lake Victoria which will take in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania. On the first stretch up to Lake Naivasha we saw our first giraffe. We were really excited and many pics were snapped. But by the time we saw the third, fourth and fifth we didn’t even bother to slow down
What was supposed to be a good road turned into a mini off-road session and meant we ended up riding into the evening. Tired and without any road signs to guide us, we ended up at the wrong lake - Bagoria instead of Baringo - an honest mistake It wasn’t all bad news though, as we were joined for breakfast by Ostrich and monkeys.

Staying off the main road we crossed into Uganda using a small border just north of Mount Elgon. Seldom used the road leading over it is a rough track. The immigration post on the Kenyan side was empty when we arrived, apparently because the officer was ‘enjoying himself by the river’. Once he returned the formalities were straightforward and easy. On the Ugandan side it was a different story. The immigration officer took it personally when we asked to see the price list for visas and suggested we go back to the Ugandan embassy in Kenya if we didn’t believe him! Things finally calmed down and we entered our 21st country of the trip.

Ugandans are the friendliest Africans we have met so far. They are genuienly happy to see us and don’t ask for money when we take photos with them. They constantly wave and yell ‘Jambo Mzungu!’ - basically ‘hello white guy’. We stopped at some villages for a coke and were swamped by kids. For some it was the first time they had seen a white person and stared at us with amazement. Some were scared of us and ran away when we rode by waving.

At one village Iza tried to carry a piece of wood on her head, a typical daily chore of African women. She needed two men to support it as it weighed more than 30kg!! How the local women manage to carry it just by balancing it on their head, we have no idea.

We finally made it to a place called Sipi Falls where again the tarmac returned and so did tourism We caught up with some motorcyclists we’d met before in Nairobi and rode together to Jinja. Chris from Germany on a new BMW F800 and Gideon from South Africa on a BMW GS1150 are riding from Hamburg down to Cape Town (www.wuestenritt.de)

Jinja is Uganda’s adventure capital and lies at the source of the river Nile - the longest river in the world. Here we ushered in 2009!
In a few days we plan to enter Rwanda.