Google maps says it's 5 1/2 hours of drive time from Nairobi to the border, then another 20 minutes to Tarime. An aid worker we met at the Mennonite Guest House in Nairobi said it was more like 6 or 6 and 1/2 to the border. In the end, the entire trip took 13 HOURS!!!
Here's how it went down...
We started out making great time through the Rift Valley...
But then about 2 hours into the trip the car started sputtering every time we started going up a hill. It did this a lot. So much so that we often had to pull over, stop the car, and start up again after a few minutes. Naturally, this slowed our progress.
Our driver did the natural thing in this kind of situation; every time we went down a hill, he would floor the gas pedal to pick up speed to make it up the next hill. It seemed to solve to work for the most part.
But then there happened to be a radar camera on one of those down-slopes, and a few miles latter we were pulled over. It wasn't just a quick speeding ticket and then we were back on our way. No. There was a lot of negotiation. Our driver was trying to negotiate his way out of a court appearance in addition to the ticket, but he wasn't being very aggressive and it was taking us a long time. Finally, Steve told him to get back in the car and figure it out later.
Total delay at this point was over an hour for the speeding ticket, and whatever time we were losing due to the sputtering car. And the car still wasn't fixed.
We pulled over in a small town to see if someone could fix it, but they couldn't. They sent us on ahead to Keroka, and there is where they changed the spark plugs before figuring out that the problem was the fuel pump; it was going out and not strong enough to pump the fuel when we were inclined going up a hill.
So they fixed the pump by going in through the floor boards as we walked around town for a while.
During the over 2-hour delay, Roslyn made friends and had fun getting dirty. The girls actually did really well with all the delays, and it was sort of nice to not be sitting in a car all day.
After the car was fixed, we headed on to Kisii. By this point our friends from Tanzania had come that far to meet us because they knew we were having car trouble.
So we met Bishop Amos Muhagachi and his driver Shumari in Kisii, said good-bye to Steve and his driver John and continued the rest of the way to the border. It was actually nice to have Bishop with us to navigate the border crossing.
We left Nairobi at 8:30 am. We arrived in Tarime at 9:30 pm. We had an excellent supper and then went to bed glad to have finally made it.
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