Back home

The travel back started with a mirror image of the day I arrived. Unplanned events with a taxi driver. Three months ago Dora helped a friend of hers get some extra income. Now that I knew the prices I could negotiate a better price for the taxi. 30,000 shillings, less than half of what I paid when I came. However, the best deal doesn't help when the taxi driver doesn't show up and my biggest night mare came true. I called him twice. Once five minutes before he was supposed to show up and he sounded sleepy. The second time I called him at 5:10 (he was supposed to be at the hotel at 5:00). I told him he had to be there in five minutes, otherwise I'd take a different taxi. He said OK, but wasn't there and I was lucky another taxi stopped by and gave me a reasonable price. 40,000. With me now needing to have to go to the airport desperately he could have asked for more. I didn't show it, though and that may have influenced his decision.

The taxi didn't look promising (the engine turned off when he stopped to ask me if I needed a ride). The driver also slowed down to a crawl every time there was oncoming traffic, blinded by the light. Fortunately, the ride took only 40 minutes, as he had said, so I was still there with plenty of time.

We had a short hopover to Mombasa/Kenya. Unfortunately, there we had to exit the plane and re-enter. At least it gave me the chance to buy some overpriced water. The dudes at the Kili airport were just as stupid as in Europe and took all the liquids, including a sealed juice bottle. Sigh. I gave my juice to some workers, emptied the water and still managed to sneak in a 300ml bottle of some carbonated lime drink. They did catch the juice in my Aluminum bottle as well, so next time it's time for a lead bottle, I guess.

Now I am back. It's weird. When I left the area looked like this.





Here is another display of fall colours:



Now all the leaves are gone, but it's not as cold as I had expected. In fact I am not sure why people ran around with bulky jackets, but maybe I was just longing for some cold after three months of no cooling off.






Here is a shot from approximately the same angle as the previous one:















And here is some proof there is snow in the mountains...