My time in Ethiopia has drawn to a close. Next stop: Kenya!

I’m in Nairobi — the capital city — for two nights before joining an 18-day tour of Kenya and Uganda with Acacia Africa.

I book my stay at Nairobi Airport Stopover House, which is relatively cheap for my own private room (around $25/night). It’s nothing fancy but it’ll do. The wifi speed is okay.

The next morning at breakfast I meet two very nice guys — Robbie and Robert of Abingdon, VA. They have spent the last two weeks in northern Kenya hammering out logistics for building an orphanage near a particular tribe, a project they’ve been working on for years with the support of their church in Virginia. This tribe believes that men under the age of 30 cannot get a woman pregnant and that if they do, it’s bad luck and the child must be abandoned. About 15 years ago Robert and his wife were living in Nairobi when they adopted a tiny baby who had been left outside to die for three days (his twin did not survive), so they have a special connection to this area and feel a great desire to help. For the last few summers Robert comes to Kenya for two weeks to stay with the tribe while he meets with local officials and navigates the red tape to set this orphanage in motion. Recently Robbie has joined him, and both men talk about how deeply moved they are by their experience with the tribe these past two weeks.

Robbie and Robert have a few hours before their flight back to the States so we go to a local mall, the YaYa Center. After picking up a latte, Robert takes us to the Bookstop, which he visited frequently when he lived here years ago. I pick up a few books for my impending overland travels.

Then we head back to the guesthouse and my new friends depart for the airport. I take an excruciatingly slow taxi ride downtown in heavy traffic for my overland tour’s pre-departure meeting at Hotel Boulevard. I had looked into staying at this hotel, but it’s around $80-$100 for a room, or about 3 to 4 times more expensive than my room at Nairobi Airport Stopover House. Hotel Boulevard is the main meeting point for LOTS of overland tours and it bugs me that these overland companies have picked such a high-priced starting hotel. Indeed, there are five of us at the pre-departure meeting and not a single person is staying at this hotel — we’ve all taken separate transportation to get here for this meeting, and will take it again to go home, and then again the following morning to come back when the tour officially starts. Such a waste! Plus, our Acacia Africa tour actually stays at a really nice campground — with cheap rooms and dorm beds — just outside the city. If I’d known that, I would’ve booked there to begin with and stayed away from downtown Nairobi entirely.

Back to the pre-departure meeting — it’s brief and only five of us show up! I feel silly having come all this way (over an hour in the taxi each way even though it’s three miles away — I would’ve walked if it was safe, but it’s not). Here’s the takeaway: if it’s inconvenient to show up for an overland pre-departure meeting, just skip it so long as you’re ready to go the following morning. More than half the new people joining the tour are flying in that night, which is why they miss the meeting.

I get back to my guesthouse and sleep fitfully all night. In addition to some first-day-of-school jitters about joining the overland tour, it’s July 4th weekend and everyone is posting fun photos on social media. This usually doesn’t get to me — I’m normally very content with missing fun seasonal routines in the States, knowing that in future years I’ll be back to enjoy them. But tonight I’m in a dark place and if there existed a magic button that would take me back home right now, I would press it.

I wake up with a giant swollen eyelid. Despite the mosquito netting over my bed, I’ve been bitten. What a way to greet my new tour mates! … Then three days later I wake up with a fat lip, also the victim of a mosquito bite. I sleep with only my face exposed, which is why these bugs have targeted that area. I decide that from now on I’ll leave a sacrificial arm outside my sleeping bag so they’ll feast on that instead of my face!

We get on our overland truck and begin the tour.

Not far outside Nairobi, we’re pulled over at a traffic stop and slapped with a fine for “speeding.” Except our vehicle has a device that records how fast we were going, and we were definitely under the speed limit. Doesn’t matter. We’re waved on to the nearby police station. Ten minutes later, Juliana (who drives our truck 90% of the time) comes out reporting that she talked the fine down to the equivalent of a mere $10 USD, and we can get on our way. (I find out months later that the fine was in fact several hundred dollars — which our guides must pay out of their own pocket — but they didn’t want to alarm us. It’s really shady but not entirely surprising that Kenyan police officials pull stunts like this.)

We stop at a viewpoint for the Great Rift Valley (the geographic trench that runs 3,700 miles all the way from Jordan to Mozambique), which is a bit clouded over at the moment. We’re about 8,000 feet in elevation now.

That wall of clouds is blocking our view, but we’ll see it again en route to Masai Mara in a few weeks.

Here’s me with Riaan and Juliana, the best guides on the overland circuit. Since it’s the start of the trip I hardly know them, but after a few weeks of travel I think the world of them.

Many hours later, we arrive at our campsite and begin to set up for dinner.

That night it costs only $3 to upgrade to a dorm bed in a giant tent — sold! There’s even electricity inside. About a half-hour after we turn off the lights, two German brothers on our tour silently prop open the tent flap and begin to fill the area with fog from a fog machine. Then they set off a fire cracker. And guess what? No one moves. Everyone is totally asleep — except me, and I’m thinking WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON — but since I hear giggles I figure it’s a prank of some sort. I only wish my camera was within reach for a photo. Deflated by the lack of reaction, the German brothers give up and retreat. The stench of mechanical fog keeps me awake awhile longer before I too pass out, like everyone else in the room. (Turns out our guides have a fog machine on the truck for fun occasions, and the German brothers swiped it for the night. I don’t want to know where they got the firecracker.)

The next day we pass by the equator in Kenya and stop for a photo op. We’ll pass by the equator again — multiple times — in Uganda.

We pass through the city of Eldoret en route to our campsite and stop for an hour-long break. I order a proper latte!

We spend the night at Naiberi River Campsite in Eldoret, Kenya. It’s a really unique place with elaborate stone hallways and thatched roofs that we joke looks like something out of Disney World.

Bill Gates stayed here once, but they still don’t have wifi.

Our guides tell us it rains here like 80% of the time (hence the rain covers on the tents above) so a few of us splurge for dorm beds. So far I’ve spent the first two nights of my overland trip in actual beds instead of camping… I like it!

Juliana outdoes herself at dinner. Our guide is one heck of a cook.

We do a round of introductions after the meal, followed by shots of vodka. We’re all a little closer after that.

The next morning we depart early for a long day of driving. After a few hours we reach the Uganda border and bypass a HUGE line of trucks waiting to cross (they are carrying goods, but passengers can go around them to a much shorter line).

There’s a little excitement when one of the German brothers gets arrested for smoking a cigarette in a non-smoking area… whoops! He’s ready to hand over several hundred Euros for his release, but Juliana works her magic on the officials and they let him go in exchange for a few dollars. Then we’re on our way into Uganda!

Thanks to Acacia Africa for discounting the 18-day Mountain Gorillas to the Mara tour in exchange for blogging and photography. Opinions are my own.