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We headed out from Nairobi earlyish in the morning - around 8:30 - which is good for the Jolly's. We are always optimistic about what time we will leave - but almost always leave after 9 no matter how hard we try! On the way towards the border, we took a small detour to try and see some of lake Naivasha - this turned out to be fruitless as we didn't really get a good view of it and we drove for a very long time keep thinking it would be just around the corner! Anyway, we continued on towards the border. We stopped at a crucial decision point on which way to go and asked the truckers which was the quickest way to the border. They pointed us in the direction up from Lake Victoria which was different to what we had originally planned - we took their advice and it paid off-the road was generally good the whole way, must better than the road through Kisumu. The road was largely uneventful except for the road works which seemed to be everywhere and took us a long time. We also got our 6th flat tyre due to the bad roads of the detours.
We arrived at the border as the sun set around 6:30. It then took us about an hour and $120 to get through the border. You can only get single entry visas which are $50 each. Unfortunately for the Ugandans this means we would not come back through their country.
Since it was now after dark getting to Kampala or Jinja was just a dream. But we hardly made it the 8km to the small town of Tororo since we hit a pothole at about 60km per hour! This bent a rim and we now had 2 flat tyres on the back of the car for a second time in a week!
We couldn't find a campsite on the map so headed for the first hotel we saw, a grotty affair with the African standard of dirty walls (do they not notice this doesn't look nice?). On top of this they wanted $45 for a room. Luckily we started chatting to a Kampala businessman, Ivan, who led us to Prime Hotel and negotiated a $25 room for us which was clean and easy. We had an interesting meal of chicken curry before hitting the sack - exhausted.
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