I'm not sure where we went wrong. Maybe it was overconfidence. Maybe it was just bad luck. Either way, Nairobi, you got the best of us. It started out well enough. We decided that we would try to just cover the 500 miles between Mombasa and Mbale in one day. It would be a long day, but with not too many days left, we figured there was no sense in wasting two days on super long bus rides. These were deluxe buses, too. I mean, given the typical local conditions. We left Mombasa at 8am, were supposed to arrive in Nairobi "no later than" 5pm, well in time for the 8:30pm bus to Mbale. About halfway between Mombasa and Nairobi, we took a mysterious detour into the mountains. No problem, we got time. Then we took another, even more mysterious, detour to pick up the passengers on a broken down bus. Again, no biggie. But we dawdle in the mountains for a while. Sun goes down. Dawdle a bit more. We're really getting "down to the wire," which wouldn't be a big deal
For better or worse, this little corner of the internets has been sitting on ice cubes for awhile now. I no longer write on it because I no longer feel like I have anything exciting and noteworthy to say, and I'm not really dedicated or skilled enough to try and write interesting thoughts about mundane topics. I'm back home doing normal home things, which is kind of a let down after my life of fighting murderous baboons and drinking lumpy beer from gas cans. In the process of trying to find a company willing to give me money on a regular basis for use of my skill(z), it came to my attention that in this modern world of ours people really do Google your name to find out if you're some kind of weirdo. Such that this is the cornerstone of my web presence, I figure I should probably give my little soapbox one last lick of paint. So without further ado: Picture Me Walkin's Greatest Hits, as determined by a committee of one and in no particular order. 5 Sweeping Generalizat
(The end of Africa. Indian Ocean on the right, Atlantic on the left.) Cape Town, the end of the journey. I'm here. Forgive me if I get a bit nostalgic. I retired from my illustrious career in aid work on January 1 with the goal of traveling until I either reached Cape Town or ran out of money. On Monday, April 19th I pulled into the city limits of the southernmost city of note on the continent. Three and a half months, nine sovereign nations and roughly 11 thousand kilometers over the road. I spent most of this time not really thinking about the bigger picture of where I'm going or doing any significant planning. The map in head rarely extended much past the next town, and decisions were pretty exclusively made on a day to day basis. (Cape Town and Table Mountain as seen from the V&A waterfront.) The one constant, however detached, has been the symbolic destination of Cape Town. It's been my Mecca and I haven't turned away from it many times since I left Uganda. Ha
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