Nairobi to Arusha

A bit of a strop with the hotel for losing laundry which was disappointing, only to be presented with it at the Time Control as we left. Leaving Nairobi was less painful than we had anticipated, except for the bouncing around in the back which is pretty grim. Yesterday we did manage to get hold of some much stronger springs, made in Australia, but the new shocks we bought in Nairobi didn't fit so we kept the bump stops and put them on our old broken shocks and new springs and bushes made-to-measure by Matt with mud flap and mastick. We decided to attempt the time trials, we are not sure why other than it would be wimpish not to. It was basically a disaster as they were very difficult time-wise, obviously trying to spread out the leaders, but after driving a rudderless ship flat out, we still missed our maximum lateness so it was pointless. Rachel pretty upset at the end and we drove on forlornly when suddenly we saw a giraffe standing right by the road with its mates. That cheered us up. Then the rubber lining in the other wheel arch got in a mess so we stopped to rip it out and a Masai warrior appeared with the sharpest (15"!) knife we'd ever witnessed and calmly cut the rubber away like butter. The new shocks were let through customs, Paul Unwin met them at the border and Owen (who prepared our car, Alex) fitted them this evening so... tomorrow is another day.