Nairobi - 5000km and counting...

Hello Everyone!

We realize that it has been over a month since our last blog update, but we've been having some blogger troubles with the computors/internet in Ethiopia. Mostly we were unable to actually upload to the site, so many of you probably received our e-mail updates...But now that we are in Kenya, where internet it abundant and works at a reasonable speed the blog is back!

We will also be trying to upload some of our blogs we wrote while in Ethiopia, so watch for those coming soon.

Where to start...So much has happened! First off we crossed into another country (Kenya) and are currently in Nairobi, the capital for a rest day. This city is incredibly modern, and for that matter so is this whole country. The roads are actual roads with sidewalks and curbs, there are fixed prices in stores (no more "tourist prices" for us) and our campsite two days ago had a swimming pool at it. So nice for those 35+ days! There is such a huge contrast between Ethiopia and Kenya, I think there are two big things that make this so; the first being that Kenyans value education more than anything, and boats an 85% literacy rate. (Pretty impresive if you ask me) The second being that Kenyans have so much pride in their country. There is little garbage on the grounds and people are incredibly friendly, more than willing to help if they can. Just this morning Andrew & I were running around trying to find a place that we could scan some documents that we needed to e-mail back home. Where we are staying there are only a few internet cafes and we had a hard time. We eventually walked into a store that sold computors and asked the woman there if she knew of a place where we could accomplish what we needed done. She was like "well lets just do it right now for you guys, you can use my work computor". Then she called another store that did scanning and charged us half of what they were and didn't charge us for the internet time. Incredibly generous and kind. But people in Kenya are like that, so far we have found that like in small towns in Canada people go out of their way to be helpful. A huge contrast to Ethiopia, as well as all the other African countries we have been to.

That being said Kenya hasn't been without hardship and frustration. The first few days in Kenya were on the worst roads we have ever seen. Picture a combination of deep sand and six-inch deep corrugations, intermixed with loose gravel and boulders. The only reason we knew we were on a road was that it was built up 4 feet higher than the surrounding area. As well, we spent a night in "lava rock camp" which I'm pretty sure everyone renamed "Mud Bath Camp" as we got our first big hit of rain there, and man did it pour! Incredible amount of water descended from the heavens and literally slaughtered our campsite. We were in an area that hadn't seen rain in about a year, and it turned into a complete watering hole, filled with inches of H2O. And the winds that whipped and brought the storm in were ferocious! Nearly everyones tents were flat on the ground and we thought for sure that everything inside was going to be soaked. I have to say, we love our tent! After 2 hours of rain beating down and winds blowing there were 2 drops of water inside. We were delighted.

We had some other hartimes when bad news from home made us realise how very fortunate we are. We learned on Feb 15th that a dear friend of ours, Teri Murray had passed away in a tragic car accident. Driving on winter roads from Canmore to Calgary. I think what made it so difficult for us was that we were the ones travelling the globe supposedly doing high-risk things and someone we loved was at home doing a normal thing that we do often. It hit so close to home. The other part of course was being unable to be at home with her friends and family to say our last goodbyes.

On a happier note, although both Andrew and I suffered some scores of illness, we are both now very healthy and back on our bikes. Nothing too serious just local food wreaking havoc on our bodies, there was something that went around our group througout Ethiopia and it seemed that as soon as you got healthy it had mutated in other people and came right back for you. We've belittled and berated whatever it was into submission though and are back in the full swing or riding. In a few days we will be crossing into Tanzania which will mark our official "half-way" through the trip. We have three whole days off from riding in Arusha there, and are looking forward to vegging out a little bit and enjoying our time away from everything!

Thats all for now, we will try posting our previous blogs soon!

Judy & Andrew