Perhaps I forgot to mention that while all this was going on we realised that our domestic batteries were well on the way out, so we had been doing our usual tour of the less touristy shops looking for replacements. We bumped into Ann and Clive again in town and had lunch with them at the "Shoprite" centre. I had njegere, which is a sort of tasty veg mix with coconut sauce, and chips, which were excellent. The others all had pizza, which also looked good. We had a giggle with David, the proprietor or waiter, while he and Barney tried on each other's hats. Then off we went to purchase our new Korean batteries. It all took a bit of time while they went off to get them from wherever, checked them and tidied them up etc, and B went back for the truck. Eventually the batteries were loaded into our living space and we set off for Masai Camp to meet up with Ann and Clive. We bought fresh but somewhat overpriced fruit and veg from a small market beside the road. I did manage to negotiate the prices a bit, but it wasn't a very friendly experience . Masai Camp was very cool and green with clean ablutions and lots of young English people. Barney spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening fitting the batteries. After that we were treated to champagne and aperitivos by Ann and Clive, who were celebrating their daughter's first wedding anniversary.
We had another terrible night's sleep as the influx of youngsters seemed to persuade the camp to put on an incredibly loud club night, which went on until 4am. Earplugs came in handy again for me but I still felt that I had a weird sleep.
6th July
We travelled in a convoy of two trucks to the Namanga border with Kenya. Ann and Clive had less to do here as they already had visas and road tax from coming through earlier. But we had rather a difficult time at this border. It took us quite a long time to get through and was very stressful indeed. We wished we had paid for Comesa in Arusha, which would have been better value. After the border we soon came across roadworks with poorly marked diversions, but after bumping along on these sandy roads we did get back to the main road. Ann and Clive were ahead and when dusk was nearly upon us they pulled into an under-construction fuel station as our campsite for the night. Ann led the way to chat with two Maasai men who seemed to be the night guards and they were quite happy for us to stay. The four of us had a drink together to relax before making our separate meals and trying to sleep.