The long road home

After exploring East Africa for several months, our intrepid adventurers finally start heading back to South Africa. But first Patrick and Marie Gurney find reasons to linger in Kenya and Tanzania…

Our journey started in mid-2018 when we left Marie’s home town of Valence in France. We arrived in Africa in May 2019. Now it was early October and suddenly a bit surreal to be contemplating our last two months of this epic overland trip.

After our ramble through Uganda, we basically made a U-turn and started the southward leg. We crossed into Kenya via the little border post of Malaba. There was a 7 000+km drive between us and Joburg and we planned to be home for Christmas. But despite the promise of gammon and mince pies at the finishing line, we still had a few spots we were keen on exploring as we passed through Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Red elephants and man-eating lions

Kenya’s Tsavo National Park was our next destination. The 800 km journey across Kenya to get there would require two overnight stops – at Lake Baringo and Lake Naivasha.

Between Malaba and Lake Baringo we passed through Iten, a small town on the Rift Valley escarpment. Kenya is famous for its long-distance runners, and many of them hail from Iten, which is at 2 400 m above sea level. Kenyans fondly call Iten “The Home of Champions” and we quickly understood why – we saw runners all over the place.

In the same region, we stopped to see the crazy cliff divers at the dramatic Cheploch Gorge. These local boys willingly flirt with death, diving from a 20-metre-high platform into a super narrow section of the Kerio River. As they jump you inadvertently hold your breath, and then you hear the splash with perfect acoustic amplification coming up from the cliffs before a head pops above the surface.