Life on the truck is settling nicely and we are all getting into a routine. Days on the truck are either long, medium or short with a long drive day being up to 9-12 hours driving and a short one being about 2-3 hours. Driving is quite rough at times and the further back you sit in the truck the more you get thrown around. The truck can seat 24 and has a 'beach area'. The beach is just above and behind the cabin and is 3 mattresses across the front of the truck where you can lay, sit or stand and poke your head out the top of the truck. The beach is great if you want to get some sun, wave at locals or take photos out the top of the truck. Some of the passengers tend to hog the beach, one being American Brian, but we have some plans to eject him more regularly. We only have 17 people on the trip at present so we get quite a bit of space in the main area of the truck and can usually stretch across 2 seats as there is usually at least 2 people on the beach also.

There are three roles you can have on any day. You are either on cook group, cleaning group or simply just along for the ride. We have 6 cook groups so we have to cook dinner, breakfast and lunch every 6 days and then do the truck clean the day after. Cook group does suck on long drive days as we usually leave at 7am so you are out of bed at 5am which to be honest when you are on holiday is just a bit too early!

We usually stop for lunch along the way. Hilariously the locals run along the road when they see the truck stopping and then stand about a metre away from us as we prepare lunch and then eat. Personal space is not a concept that the Ethiopians are very aware of, will let you know how the Kenyan's are on this front. We attract similar attention when we stop for a toilet break. Basically African roadsides are just one big toilet and it has been hard a couple of times to find a clean non-smelly bit to do our own business. At the bottom of the Blue Nile Gorge was particularly stinky with poop. Little confusing as the gorge was gorgeous, but certainly not scary so not sure why so many had a call of nature at that particular spot.

We regularly get stopped by police and other so called police along the road. They put an assortment of objects across the road to stop the traffic, including a wooden barrier that raises and lowers, a piece of wire, metal spikes, rocks, dig a hole and then block the road going round - really nothing surprises us anymore. When we do get stopped usually Nick and Ruth can just show them a list of our details, answer a few questions and we wave and smile from the back and we are on our way. Apparently the lower we go in Africa the more likely it will be that these 'officials' may just want to hop in the back to have a look at the ladies. So far us kneeling on the seats, waving, smiling and saying hi has satisfied the sometimes rather seedy characters who man these roadside stations.

We had a bit of excitement on our first day in Kenya. We were madly bumping along the worst road we have come across to date when we had our first real emergency and got to ring the emergency buzzer when Roger fell out of the truck! Remember how I said that it is a pretty rough ride, well he wasn't holding on and we went over a particularly large bump and he just - plop, out the side. Did I mention that the sides of the trucks are open with only canvas that we can have up or down? We always have them up otherwise we have discovered that a real dust storm is created and when showering is not a daily event, it is best to not have a daily dust storm. So back to Roger… you may be thinking - have I heard of Roger before? Which passenger is he? Why isn't she telling us how he is? Well Roger is just fine, he bounced with ease and was quickly recovered. Roger by the way is our stuffed hippo who sits by the stereo with the locker keys for the kitchen attached to him. But we would be killed by Ruth if he was to go missing - hence the emergency bell being rung for a quick recovery.

The weather has been interesting since getting to Africa and it was strange on the first day we had to pull out our sleeping bags for our day on the truck. We were literally frozen, but decided being cosy in our bags was better than the dust bath. Some of us have bags that we can zip open at the feet; others do not. It is difficult to move about the truck when one is not in one's sleeping bag and then just downright funny and at times death defying when someone does move around in their bag. A game of wink murder saw us hopping around to get into the detective seat and at times it felt like we were human bowling pins.

Most recently we played a game of Assassin which saw us all draw another's name and then we had to 'kill' that person by looking them in the eye and announcing 'I just killed you'. The catch was that you could not kill if another member of the truck was within 5 metres unless you were in a contained room like the truck itself or a toilet, etc. Tents and border crossings were neutral safe territory. I am sad to say that Ruth took advantage of me being on cook crew and distracted and killed me in the truck far too early in the game for my liking. The game is currently on it's 3rd day and just has 2 people remaining. It has certainly kept us amused for a few days.