driving to mombasa

now that even laura is beating me to posts, i'm gonna get on my horse. but don't get too excited. the horse is really just a fat, slow, three-legged donkey.

the drive from dar es salaam to mombasa was supposed to take 5 hours, but when has africa ever followed a schedule, especially my schedule? so it was over 12 hours of cramped riding, sitting in the hump seat with my feet wedged amongst bags, the largest drum i could've ever bought squeezed between my knees. i mean, there were so many small manageable drums, but no, i had to buy the monster. and to top it off, the ignition would randomly shut off after every couple of minutes, which not only made driving nerve wrecking, but also rendered it impossible to listen to any type of music. we had to stop the car every half hour to let the engine cool off, and we were afraid to push the thing past 40kmph.

we managed to make it to the kenyan border before the customs office closed. everything went pretty smoothly, until simon left the keys inside the car, and the car locked itself automatically.

From mombasa 3-2009

luckily, they keep a spare inside the tent on the roof.

the stretch of road on the west coast of kenya isn't the safest, and once it got dark, driving a wonky car became all the scarier. the empty road was pitch black except for whatever light our headlights cast. every time we stopped, i was sure some car would come careening out of the unknown to sideswipe us, and gerwin insisted on getting out of the car from the driverside to open the hood. has the boy never seen meet joe black? yeesh. one car passed us at speed, and then backed up until it was directly in front of us. while it was drawing near, ash was entreating gerwin to drive away. just drive, just drive, just drive. who knew what the car wanted from us, and with all of us wedged in like sardines...even running would've been hard. the man from the car turned out to be just a good samaritan. he had stopped to tell us that it wasn't safe to stop here. we explained our car troubles, and he offered to drive behind us slowly until we got to the next town, where we could find a roadside mechanic to offer a temporary fix. i felt a tad sheepish for the melodrama, but it's easy to overreact sometimes.

we told him we couldn't break 40kmph, but i guess our car felt just as eager to get out of that spot as we did, so as soon as it started up, gerwin hit 70kmph, and we quickly lost our friend. as we got closer to mombasa, the roads got better, but our car got worse. the last 10 miles took us over an hour, and the closer we got, the slower we went. i remember thinking that i could run faster than this car.

when we finally arrived at ash's mom's timeshare resort, it was past 10pm, and we were told that the kitchen would close in another half hour. having had nothing but bananas and cokes since 6am that morning, we were starving, and boy were we glad to sit down at a nice place and eat. what an exhausting day.