Day 57 to 59 - 26th to 29th December - Nairobi

Point of departure : Meru National Park

Point of arrival : Nairobi

Accommodation: the rooftop tent @ Jungle Junction

Km travelled today: 376 kmCum: 9 991km (gravel 27km cum 2 356km)

Countries so far: 6/16

Where to next? Isiolo, Northern Frontier District

An uneventful day of travel as we headed back south to Nairobi.For once, sections of the road were even quite good by South African standards but the overall trip of 370km still took over 7 hours.We returned to a fairly empty campsite at Jungle Junction with only Bob Foster, Noel Rogers and Sabine & Burkhard Koch in residence.

A few lazy days followed, including a very pleasant Sunday braai for all the above, dinner together with Peter & Liz and Brian and Carol who arrived on Sunday evening, as well as John and Karen Ashton (who we met previously in Tanzania).All this while we waiting to get our shock absorber fitted (it arrived Sunday evening with Maria Lira - Bob's partner - who flew in from South Africa) and planning the possible trip forward.

As they say however, all good things come to an end and it is time for us to hit the road to Addis Ababa.Part of our thought to coming back to Nairobi (apart from installing the other shock absorber) was to possibly travel in convoy with Bob & Maria and the rest of the gang. In the end, this was not possible mainly due to reasons of timing… they were in less of a hurry than we were and would have taken anything up to 10 days to get to Addis combined with only leaving on the 1st January.This timing did not work for us. Consequently we will be travelling on our own.