Intrepid: the Overlanding tour begins

Intrepid: The Overlanding tour begins.

The below is the map that Intrepid supplied for the entire trip.

Last night we meet the Crew from Intrepid John (our guide) Phil (our driver) & Wilson (our cook) as well as the rest of our intrepid travellers.

Tracy & Daniela, two teachers who were travelling together

Isobel, “The Doctor” (not that kind of Dr) originally from London now working in Edinburgh.

Ulla, a retired teacher from Germany who’s into plants.

Vivian, originally from China, now living in Manchester

Dennis, the accountant from London

Helen, originally from Holland now living in London with Laurence

Christin, from Sweden (who was on the previous leg of the Intrepid trip)

Then there are the Australians…

Noah, from Vic, currently working in Nairobi his partner Samantha (vet nursing type stuff)

Marina, works for Bunnings

Carla, a teacher from Perth

After the formalities and introductions were complete Lisa and I got a big table for dinner so others could join us if they wanted to, It was a nice dinner with some of the new “family”.

Today's drive

Nairobi to Mto Wa Mbu

Day 2: Monday 17th December 2018 

If you looked outside our bedroom window which was on the 5^th floor you could see what effectively would be a shanty town just behind the hotel swimming pool wall. Which was amusing because at some ungodly hour a rooster started to call to his mates, which they would reply too. The rooster sounded like he was on our window sill, whilst his mates were at a reasonable distance. I had to laugh because it was pretty hilarious listening to them having there early morning conversation.

Once we were up it was breakfast and then the Intrepid part of our trip started with a 7:30am drive through the streets of Nairobi. The streets are crammed with people and traffic even at this time, traffic management and road infrastructure is not that great here, but it is interesting to see. However given the traffic chaos there is very little to no angst amongst the drivers, they simply just accept it and get on with it. We did get to see a car v’s power pole accident on the corner next to our hotel, other than that the drive was uneventful, its just one big traffic jam until you are out of the “metro area”.

Once we cleared the traffic it was onto the Kenyan / Tanzanian Border crossing which was really easy, John refers to it as a one stop border crossing. Which basically means you walk into the Tanzanian side show them your passport, visa and yellow fever documents and your good to go.

Lisa changed $300 US which turns out to be a gazzilion Tanzanian shillings. They really do seem to have thought about everything at this border crossing including having a bank / money changer at the border, who knew.

We stopped for lunch on the side of the road as is the tradition of overlanding trucks in Africa. It was the basic sandwiches and fruit with the local Masai cows. This is where you get to see how people work / or don’t work together when it comes time to help with the setting up and pulling down of the lunch stop, pretty much everyone helped out.

Once we arrived at Arusha it was a case of pile out for the toilet, coffee and for some snack shopping. Nakita and I went to Arusha back in the day and stayed in a place called Meserani Snake Park, lets just say it wasn’t a place I would recommend going to, the snakes were okay but the cultural museum was a place I could do without. However it seems that Arusha it’s a much bigger town now.

Once the shopping was done it was onto Mto Wa Mbu, (otherwise known as mosquito river) it’s a small town with a pretty decent campsite. Lisa and I upgraded (no real surprise there), we packed our day bags, cameras and snack foods for the 2.5 day Serengeti trip.

I tried the Wi-Fi, unfortunately it was a complete waste of time, my checkpoint anti-virus thought it was a phishing attack so I didn’t get to update any of the blog. Then it was off to bed for a big day’s driving in 4x4’s.