Now it is here, the end of our trip! Proudly, exhausted and happy at the same time, we look back at 7 months of adventure. Unbelievable we managed the whole trip without any bigger problems. If we think of the millions of situations where we found ourselves almost getting hit by idiot drivers or what could have happend mechanical wise to our bikes during this almost 18.000km, we can truly say we are lucky!
Also our big worry, to get the bikes home safely, worked out just perfect in the end. But to make that work out is the story of our last 2 weeks.
After beautiful Zanzibar we swing back on our bikes and cross the last boarder of our trip. We have in our mind that the way to Mombasa should be our last kilometers together. It is boiling hot and things don't work out like usual. Marc's bike gets louder and louder, something is wrong with his exhaust. His board tools fall out while he is driving, get caught in the tire frame and end up lying all over the street. In the meantime Marianne's backpack happily melts with its interior over my exhaust and my indicator breaks of without doing anything to it. That is definitely not what we expect for this last trip. At least the border crossing works out quite well.
This time we don't have to pay anything, not even for our visa for Kenya, it is still valid. Only Marianne's isn't anymore, cause the people at the airport gave here the wrong one.
Marc uses the waiting time for fixing his exhaust with an old can of coke, which doesn't last long, but is indeed very creative!
It gets dark quiet fast and we don't manage to reach Mombasa on time, so we stop at a guesthouse which is, as so often on this trip, pretty shit! Heyho it is cheap!
Early in the morning we drive into Mombasa to find a place to stay.
It is never easy to find something decent in big cities, but this time it is particully hard. It takes us more than one hour in full gear and over 30° to find out that the address shown in the internet is wrong. A wee bit pissed off we finally find it. There is pool, free wireless lan (if there is no power cut), cheap good food with big portions and really nice people hanging out.
So our next days are a mixture of food, internet, pool, funny conversations and a hell of a lot of phoning people who pretend to know something about cargo. I talk to way too many people and after some days I am pretty sure I could do their job way better than they do.
Every time I want an offer which includes all costs of the shipping and every time, really every time, it is wrong, but not wrong in a rip of way, it is just purely wrong! Information wrong, price wrong, everything wrong! I get pretty frustrated and all signs point to Nairobi, so we make a decision: Drive to Nairobi!
This time we are no more 4 bikes, we are just 3. Marianne sells her bike to Romain, who is super happy to have now his own bike.
Old 321offroad crew is back on the road! It is amazing how our African driving skills developed. Now we drive like total idiots, wave in and out everywhere, overtake other drivers while they overtake, use sidewalks with a speed of 80 km/h or more to overtake inside or if the overtaking gets too close then on the other side. Sometimes 2 of us overtake one truck at the same time but at different sides. We will get so many tickets back home...
In Nairobi we meet Fabian, who is finally our man. He knows literally everything about airfreight! We get a really good deal (with the official prices from swiss air). We also find a perfect solution for palletizing our bikes, no wood which has to be fumigated and is on the same hand ridiculous expensive. We get our bikes, drained, cleaned, put apart and packed in steel-boxes for less than 30€.
On Monday the bikes reach at the airport, paperwork is done, all good!
Now it is time to say Good bye. Good bye Marianne, Good bye Tam, Good bye Africa! It is good and bad at the same time. GOOD because quiet often Africa is very exhausting and being dirty as well, SAD because now our big adventure is over, we come back as student, instructor, chef and teacher again. There is nothing so special left. We take of our last items which identify us with our trip, our heavy boots and our helmets, that's it... 321offroad!
P.S. Already searching for some new adventure! ;)
Also our big worry, to get the bikes home safely, worked out just perfect in the end. But to make that work out is the story of our last 2 weeks.
After beautiful Zanzibar we swing back on our bikes and cross the last boarder of our trip. We have in our mind that the way to Mombasa should be our last kilometers together. It is boiling hot and things don't work out like usual. Marc's bike gets louder and louder, something is wrong with his exhaust. His board tools fall out while he is driving, get caught in the tire frame and end up lying all over the street. In the meantime Marianne's backpack happily melts with its interior over my exhaust and my indicator breaks of without doing anything to it. That is definitely not what we expect for this last trip. At least the border crossing works out quite well.
This time we don't have to pay anything, not even for our visa for Kenya, it is still valid. Only Marianne's isn't anymore, cause the people at the airport gave here the wrong one.
Marc uses the waiting time for fixing his exhaust with an old can of coke, which doesn't last long, but is indeed very creative!
It gets dark quiet fast and we don't manage to reach Mombasa on time, so we stop at a guesthouse which is, as so often on this trip, pretty shit! Heyho it is cheap!
Early in the morning we drive into Mombasa to find a place to stay.
It is never easy to find something decent in big cities, but this time it is particully hard. It takes us more than one hour in full gear and over 30° to find out that the address shown in the internet is wrong. A wee bit pissed off we finally find it. There is pool, free wireless lan (if there is no power cut), cheap good food with big portions and really nice people hanging out.
So our next days are a mixture of food, internet, pool, funny conversations and a hell of a lot of phoning people who pretend to know something about cargo. I talk to way too many people and after some days I am pretty sure I could do their job way better than they do.
Every time I want an offer which includes all costs of the shipping and every time, really every time, it is wrong, but not wrong in a rip of way, it is just purely wrong! Information wrong, price wrong, everything wrong! I get pretty frustrated and all signs point to Nairobi, so we make a decision: Drive to Nairobi!
This time we are no more 4 bikes, we are just 3. Marianne sells her bike to Romain, who is super happy to have now his own bike.
Old 321offroad crew is back on the road! It is amazing how our African driving skills developed. Now we drive like total idiots, wave in and out everywhere, overtake other drivers while they overtake, use sidewalks with a speed of 80 km/h or more to overtake inside or if the overtaking gets too close then on the other side. Sometimes 2 of us overtake one truck at the same time but at different sides. We will get so many tickets back home...
In Nairobi we meet Fabian, who is finally our man. He knows literally everything about airfreight! We get a really good deal (with the official prices from swiss air). We also find a perfect solution for palletizing our bikes, no wood which has to be fumigated and is on the same hand ridiculous expensive. We get our bikes, drained, cleaned, put apart and packed in steel-boxes for less than 30€.
On Monday the bikes reach at the airport, paperwork is done, all good!
Now it is time to say Good bye. Good bye Marianne, Good bye Tam, Good bye Africa! It is good and bad at the same time. GOOD because quiet often Africa is very exhausting and being dirty as well, SAD because now our big adventure is over, we come back as student, instructor, chef and teacher again. There is nothing so special left. We take of our last items which identify us with our trip, our heavy boots and our helmets, that's it... 321offroad!
P.S. Already searching for some new adventure! ;)