Friday morning I was walking up to the clinic and saw a sign on the door. “The clinic will be closed Monday in celebration of Jamhuri Day”
“Sweet,” I said. “Jamhuri Day! What the heck is Jamhuri Day?” I soon learned that Jamhuri Day is Kenyan Independence Day and we were getting a three day weekend. Matt and I had scheduled a meeting in Kisii on Saturday so it was the perfect opportunity to go the extra three hours to the Mara. The Masai Mara is the big game park near us. It is the Kenya side of the Serengeti and Kisii just happens to be halfway there.
We were so excited as we got up early to pack the car with our cameras and binoculars. We drove the two and a half hours to Kisii and had our meeting then started planning our trip. “Well,” Matt said, “there is this road that goes way out east and then back down, or there is another road that goes straight from here to the park. Should we try the shorter one?”
“Sure,” I replied. “Sounds good”.
The first hour of the drive south from Kisii was amazing. Not only was the road paved (yes, paved!) but it even had signs and a painted middle line. It was by far the nicest road we had been on in Kenya. We had the Ipod cranked up and it almost felt like we were in America. Then we got to Kilgoris. The tarmac abruptly turned into a dirt road. “I guess this is where the pavement ends,” I commented. Oh, I had no idea.
About 50 meters in we approached a giant mud hole. There was no way to go around it, so Matt powered the Land Cruiser in. It got stuck. As he was shifting back and forth from first to reverse trying to free the car a small crowd was forming to stare at the white people stuck in the mud. As Matt finally got the car moving it was sliding from side to side. “Please get out of the way.” He said to the people in frustration. Unfortunately, this only confused them as now the white people stuck in the mud were calling to them in a language they didn’t understand. He finally freed the car and we continued down the road. We should have taken that as a sign and turned around right then.
The road only got worse from there. Now, I have written about the roads in our area with the rocks and craters. This road made those look like a four lane interstate. The craters were canyons two feet deep and the rocks were boulders larger than me. We crawled along maneuvering as best as we could (By “we” I mean Matt. He was the one doing the hard work. I just sat in the front seat praying and trying not to puke). And then . . . it started raining. Now the craters were filling up with water making it impossible to tell which were a few inches deep and which approached the center of the earth. At points the road was nothing more than two meandering parallel tracks elevated a foot above a river of mud winding up and down the mountains. The car spun out three or four times, landing us perpendicularly across the road. Fortunately, we were pretty much the only people crazy enough to be on that road, so we never had to worry about oncoming traffic.
After about two hours of this my hands were aching from holding so tightly to the door handle. I began wondering if we were ever going to make it. The rain had finally stopped, but the sun was quickly reaching the horizon. If there is one thing we know about driving in Kenya, it is that you don’t do it at night; especially on a road like that. As I contemplated our impending doom, I looked out Matt’s window. “Hey, is that a giraffe?” Matt slowed the car as we came around a grove of trees and there, right in front of us, was a herd of 12 giraffe. We were sitting there in awe, staring at them as they stared at us. Then they began to cross the road no more than 5 yards in front of the car. A young giraffe stopped directly in front of us, bent his neck down to the side, and tilted his head to look in the car. “Since when do they let the white people out of the park?” he seemed to ask. Once the giraffes and the zebras that followed them had passed we started up the car and moved on Not 10 minutes later we came around a curve and suddenly the whole savannah was spread out before us. We had reached the edge of the Great Rift Valley Escarpment. The rosy light of sunset mixed with immense relief made it the most beautiful site I can ever recall seeing. I nearly cried. “Wow, that’s amazing.” Matt said. “That totally makes the whole drive worth it”.
“I don’t think I’d go that far. Eyes on the road, Sampias” I joked as I began to relax a bit.
A few more minutes down the road we started seeing signs for our lodge. We got to the front office and checked in. “I see you brought your own vehicle. Do you want to go on one of our game drives tomorrow or drive through the park yourselves?”
“Game drive.” We answered simultaneously and then began to giggle. As we walked back to the tents I leaned over to Matt. “I vote no more short-cuts without extensive research.”
“Agreed,” he laughed.
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