Nairobi on our own - Matt

Beating up the dusty dirt road our bikes rattle and moan against the bumps and the incline. I beep my horn a couple of times to get Sams attention and we bring our little convoy to a halt. 'Can we check the map again? This can't be the road.' Sam gets out his battered Wal-Mart smart phone, examines it for a bit and 'yep, this is it. Check it.' He passes the phone to me which shows the little blue dot (that is us) on the nice solid yellow line just west of Lake Naivasha. On the map the road looks like any other highway in Kenya. In reality the "road" looks to be the spawn of a poorly maintained dirt bike track and a riverbed. Comparing the map with what lies in front of me I try to trace our "highway's" path up the steep ridge line in front of us but have little luck. Just then little wet droplets appear on my hands and our shortcut has just become a race to the top of the valley. 'You know, those giraffes and warthogs on the side of the road were really cool and all,' I said as I restarted my bike 'but I really wish we hadn't missed that turn back in Mai Mahiu.'

Did I mention we'd bought motorbikes.

A week ago we arrived in Nairobi, Kenya. Sam and I have emerge triumphant from our multi week long quest to acquire motorcycles. You are now reading the blog of two proud owners of Bajaj Boxer BM 150s. In short they are awesome and riding them in Africa is awesome. However traffic laws here are a little bit different than in the states. Even the laws regarding motorcycles seem a bit different from the regular cars here. Motorcycles can basically do what they want. Is there a space on (or off)) the road that a motorcycle can ride on? Then that is considered a perfectly acceptable route for motorcycle travel. Is traffic at a standstill on the highway? Then feel free to fight your way between the semis, matatus (decked out buses with bumpin' tunes and a sweet paint job) and other standard 4 wheeled vehicles up to the front of the congestion to get where you're going. With some liberal application of the horn all options are possible.

Delivered from the oppression of public transportation we wasted no time getting out into the Kenyan country side on short excursions outside Nairobi with the twin objectives breaking in our motorbikes, since we are not supposed to take them over 55 km per hour (35mph) for the first 500km, and just practicing the feat of riding bikes in Africa. This has taken us to some beautiful and remote places allowing me to realize my purpose for coming to Africa in the first place; to get off the beaten path, out of the tourist trail, into the bush and into rural Africa without the shackles of guide or group. The day after we bought them we went on a ride and saw a hill covered in windmills. Said to ourselves, 'that looks nice let's go there'. Lo and behold 40 minutes later we were underneath the majestic twirling arms of modern clean electricity on top of a ridge that looked down into the Rift Valley. The day after that, a long 250km day sent us down into the Rift to the town of Magadi, where we remembered that Africa is quite hot actually, since Nairobi is quite cool, and where we were able to visit the Tata soda chemical factory sitting upon a lake of about five feet in depth and some two miles long. The road there allowed us to practice swerving our bikes along a road that appears to have received sustained artillery shelling sometime in the recent past. For there are miles and miles of road which is literally covered with potholes of no more than six inches in depth and in between six and 24 inches in diameter. I felt like an action hero zipping along at 50kmph weaving my way between the holes with only the numerous butterflies to contend with for open tarmac. Suffice to say, being freed from the tyranny of the bus, guest house, train, hostel cycle is exactly what I need.

Christoph showing Sam the ropes.

After all this driving practice we convinced our guest house owner, a German named Christoph but who's been in Kenya for over 30 years, to give us a quick motorcycle mechanics lesson in his garage behind the guest house. Christoph is a very funny man. Very happy and eager to please but also habitually gives ambiguous or sarcastic answers to things.
Sam asked him 'What time do you want to meet to work on the bikes?' '9:12 and 40 seconds' is his instant reply as he walks away.
Or I'll ask him 'Christoph, how much do we owe?' '5' is his response. '5 what? Hundred? Thousand?' I'd inquire. To this he responds "ho Ho! Dollars. I'd be rich then wouldn't I? Go on vacation I would.' and walks away. Sam later had to figure out how much we actually owed. Chris is always telling us to embrace Africa, give up on any expectation of the definite and just go with the flow. I tell him that 25 years of western indoctrination on the subject is hard to break but that I am trying. He also tell us that talking dirty to your motorbike is the best way to get it to do what you want. It's worked so far.

Once we'd settled up with our lodgings we struck out west for the two day trip to Rusinga Island on Lake Victoria, where we would be spending the majority of our February. We missed a turn and ended up at a nice bird viewing lake for lunch before we decided we knew a shortcut that would put us back on route. This resulted in what you have read above. All land is flat on maps. Luckily we beat the rain to the top of the valley and continued our bumpy ride through wheat fields down into the Rift., watching the rain pour down in the valley below. Even with the quality of the road being what it was, life in Africa must go on so Sam and I spent the ride avoiding motorcycles carrying 300+ lbs of baggage/people (this seems a prerequisite for African motorbike travel), herds of cattle, farm tractors and box trucks on three separate occasions. Eventually, we made it back to pavement both of us unsure if we were actually unhappy with our detour or not. Now I can say that I am quite happy with with it, even if we did end up riding the last hours of daylight into Narok in the rain and 100km short of our target for the day. We scrambled for a room in the mud drenched streets of Narok and found one for the both of us for 5 bucks. Shelter at that price wasn't much of an argument.

Up at six AM and on the road by seven, we road through the cold clear morning letting our shadows lead the way east to Rusinga Island.