Tutaonana baadaye Africa

Today's the close of another section of this trip as tonight we fly out.  Alex flies back to Sydney, in time for him to have a change of clothes and head off for a trip with the boys on the bikes. 

I fly to Zurich where Leanne should be transiting, and together we fly to Rome, where Sue & Roger will be waiting for us at the Central Termini.  "All we have to do" is get ourselves out of the airport, on to the train and find them among the thousands who will no doubt be at the main train station ...

The good news is that I have my laptop fixed!  woohoo!!  The interesting story is by whom.  Just after I'd added yesterday's blog, we went for a walk and then were having a coffee in the cafe next door from the hotel.  We watched as 2 bikes arrived, and we waited long enough for them to take their helmets off ...  Sheila and Robert are an English couple, our age, and Robert has a Yamaha Tenere and Sheila has a BMW GS800.  At the beginning of last year, Sheila was unexpectedly made redundant.  So they did what most normal, sensible couples of 'indiscriminate age' do.  They paid off their mortgage, garaged Robert's GS1200 BMW, bought new bikes, asked their neighbours to keep an eye on their place - and rode around the world.  They rode across Europe, Russia, across the Stans, had to ship their bikes over China to Bangkok while they went through China, rode down through SE Asia, around Australia and while they were shipping their bikes from Sydney to Los Angeles, they headed over to New Zealand for some time in a campervan, and then rode their bikes across the USA and shipped them home.  They had a lot of stories of course, but they weren't really ready to get jobs again, so at the beginning of March they left the UK again and we met them yesterday as they are on their way to Cape Town.  As you do.  Needless to say, none of Sheila's previous workmates are doing anything like this.

So we had a great conversation yesterday.  They needed to  check in and garage the bikes.  We headed off to Carnivore which one just has to do before leaving Nairobi.  This morning we met again over breakfast and that went on for another few hours.  Between news, stories, and future plans Robert fixed my computer.  We're meeting up again soon downstairs for another looooooooooooong chat before we fly out and they will organise heading off further south.  I have no doubt we'll meet them again, somewhere.  We have now got accommodation in Sheffield whenever we need it, as they do in Sydney - unless of course we all meet up in ?????

So this is my final blog post (this time) from Africa.  The rains are late, but it did sprinkle a bit overnight at Elsamere and apparently some villages in central Kenya have had one good rainfall - they just really need a few more so their crops won't fail.

There are lots of other stories but I could be typing forever, and you may get bored reading it all.

So I'll sign off and leave a few images for now,

Siku njema