The road through hell

It’s always great to get out of the city. Our last experience was towards lake Victoria and we were thankful for the ride we got from our friends at the guesthouse. This time, however, we were on our own. We recently purchased a 1991 Toyota Carib (think Subaru outback – sport utility wagon) it is four-wheel drive – something we have learned is not just optional here in the developing world. There are two roads that lead up to the national park that we visited. They are about the same length, but one is paved and the other is not. We were told by both friends and a guidebook to take the paved road, as the other is impossible. We followed two 14-passenger taxi’s carrying our visiting friends from San Antonio to the park during the 6.5-hour drive. The speedometer in our car works about ¼ of the time, which is ok since the car begins to shake violently if you approach 90 km/hr (about 50 mph). The roads here simply won’t allow you to go that fast – that is unless you are following a taxi. The normal method of driving here would lead you to think that people are all drunk. The first priority is missing the potholes (which outnumbers the pavement most of the time) followed by avoiding oncoming vehicles (most of which are coming at you on your side of the road). The potholes we encountered for most of the trip averaged about 3 feet across and about 9 inches deep – there were smaller ones and there were MUCH larger ones. Our little car held up fine and made it all the way to the park – although the horn stopped working by the time we arrived. I later found out that some of the connections had just been shaken apart and was able to fix it. On the dirt roads we got to taste the local scenery – our air conditioner didn’t work (it does as of 8PM last night – hooray for the mechanic!) so we had the windows open the whole ride. Any drive is followed by a shower here. After this drive, we decided to stay an extra day to avoid having to make the same drive twice in as many days. As we were leaving the park, our friends who had left the day before, called us and said that the other road (the dirt one) had just been paved and the guidebook needs to be updated. We took the new paved road – it’s the closest thing we’ve seen to a real road since we left the UK. Most of this road even had lines painted on it! WOW, now if we could just let the other drivers know how to stay on their side of the road, we would be in business ☺ It still took about 7 hours to get back since that road is a bit longer as it turns out, but the journey was much more comfortable. I remarked to Nicholle that if we had the tires balanced and the AC fixed, we would be in heaven. Well, the ac is fixed, so I guess we’re half way there ☺

Andrew Franke