10 Month African Trails Epic Adventure: End of Part 4

Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt

End of Part 4 - Nairobi to Cairo

So the 4th segment of our trip was over. We left the Kenyan capital and arrived in the Egyptian capital in roughly 7 weeks. Once again the numbers and names shifted around on the truck, we lost several: Hannah, Kirsty and Hisashi, the latter who had been with us since the beginning. We only gained one: Andy from Canada although we would also welcoming back 'Toms' a few days into our fifth and final segment.

we were sure to give Hisashi an appropriate send-off: we went out for chips and a beer, something which Hisashi seemed to always have an uncanny ability to sniff out no matter where we were. As long as he had those two things for lunch he was always a very happy man! It seemed like such a great way to go for a farewell dinner!

This segment has certainly been the most problematic by far. We had trouble getting Ethiopian visas, trouble getting Egyptian visas for our North Americans, trouble getting everybody into Sudan, Gav was arrested several times, our breakdowns were all to frequent and to top it all off we were travelling in a brand new truck which most of us didn't love nearly as much as the faithful old 'gal' that had faithfully transported us around the majority of the African continent. Not to mention the fact that the old one fared much better on the worst roads in the world, yet the new one was breaking down and blowing tyres on relatively easy terrain!

But I don't mean to be negative, far from it. It's still been an absolutely wonderful and mesmerising experience, kinda like all the other segments. Northern Kenya all the way to the Egyptian border felt like old times (i.e. like West Africa and the early days of the trip). In other words we were roughing it properly, driving through beautiful yet rough and far less developed lands which just heightened our sense of adventure. Admittedly we didn't have nearly as many bush-camps or camp-fires as I would have liked but it was still far off the beaten track compared to the 'Milk Run'.

That was at least until we got to Egypt! After all it's probably the most visited country on the continent and so was perfectly equipped to deal with the demands of visiting westerners to hot countries. Such as freely available beer, lots of cold drinks and air conditioning! The latter was more that necessary in the blistering heat of Egyptian summer.

The start of the next segment will also mark another highly important occasion, the time when we will leave the African continent! Technically Sinai isn't part of Africa it's actually part of the Asian continent and our departure from Cairo would mark the start of our time in the Middle East. So from now on we can't really call our selves African Travellers, we're now 'Eternal Wanderers of the Middle East'. Or something like that.