B is for Breakdown

I woke up this morning with my lip blister twice as big and ten times more annoying. It is very difficult not to lick or touch it, but I know I shouldn't. The urge to pop it is enormous.

We drove through some amazing scenery today. It looked like we were on the moon. So much so that during our lunch break, Matt and I played "raise the flag".

In the afternoon, we bumped and rolled over volcanic rocks, all pretty big and all very sharp.

And then it happened. We heard a big crack and pop. We stopped and looked under Foxy and saw that the right rear bush on the spring was completely gone, as was the metal disc. After a few appropriate words better left unwritten here, we got busy.

We tried to screw on a new bush and nut, but the grooves of the screw didn't match the fine lines of the nut. Thomas tried to explain it to us, being an engineer who produces such springs: you may have one screw with different groove measurements at either end, like even a tenth of a millimetre difference. This is to ensure a more complete fit. But to us it was useless; one nut was completely missing, lost in the volcanic rubble somewhere.

In the end, Christoph and Chiho came to our rescue. In their Landy, they literally carry every single spare part to completely rebuild a Landrover from scratch. They had a brand new shock and in the end, we had to completely remove ours and use theirs just so the nut and screw combination would fit. Profoundly thankful - we don't know what we would've done if we were alone - we kept driving.

Just as the sun was setting, we got our first glimpse of Lake Turkana. It is indeed a beautiful lake, shimmering like a diamond, inviting all who set eyes on it to come closer to the edge.

Due to our delay with fixing Foxy, we set up bush camp around dusk. We had bbq'd hamburgers, vegetable soup and noodles for dinner. We each finished off with a Coffee Crisp for dessert, sent to us to South Africa months ago from various loved ones back home. THANK YOU! It's probably the first time Coffee Crisps have ever been appreciated in the great wild bush of Lake Turkana!


Start: Palm Shade Camp, Loyangalani, KENYA.
End: Bush Camp (at coordinates N 03 32.335' E 036 24.123'), KENYA. 17:22
Distance Traveled: 132 km
Road Conditions: Average speed all day was 28.5 km/hr
Temperature: we are just a little over 500 metres above sea level and it's extremely humid.