Off we set from Engare Sero, `Backroads to Serengeti and Ol Duvai Gorge`I had told everyone and no one argued. First though we roared out of Waterfall campsite .... a good three kilometres before Mary asks, `you picked up your hat Hollie` Oops. so back we raced ... really like a rally car as the road was fun to drive ... hope everyone didn`t mind a bit of rally driving.
The road to Sale was absolutely fine with all the erosion to look at and from Sale to Mlambo the track narrowed but was no problem. At Mlambo (a name that will live on in our memory forever!) we found some rather lax looking men sitting on a street corner and asked them the way. They just pointed. `That was. Straight.` And off we set. Straight.
After and hour nothing and the road had become absolutely awful ... basically we were in desert in deep sand ruts that we could barely get out of let alone stop in for fear of sinking. At times I simply let go of the wheel and chatted as the dust was so talcum power like it swirled about us and we could not see where we were going. Marty was on the map in the front when we had to cross a stony gully that I didn`t know if I could make ...
`Mary go see if we can cross that,`and out she hops. `Yes,`she signals and we cross only to find Mary has made friends with a Masaai who had turned up. `Meet Julius,`she says.
`Hello,`says Julius. We ask him the way .. `yes, yes, yes I know the way,`he says. `Can I have a lift`
And as we have no space in the car he sits on the roof spear and all and off we set. How he survived teh dust and held on we will never know!
Another hour later we are beginning to doubt - what we are on cannot possibly be considered a road, there is NOTHING around and when I say nothing I mean just sand and an odd ostrich! Really we are in the desert when we pull up beside an older Masaai who appears on the road. Yes, he knows the way too so up he hopped on the roof!
Two Masaai on the roof!
Three hours later we hit a manyatta and ask again. Six kilometres they say.
Six kilometres later we come out of the desert and hit the Serengeti-Ngorongoro road. We pull up and as the multitude of tourist filled land cruisers whizz past we eat lunch and I hand a water bottle up to old Julius (the other dude departed at a random point where nothing was in sight but desert and off he wandered towards a very far off horizon).
Julius was gawped at by all the tourist vehicles .... and we had to leave him right there by the side of teh road - it not being appropriate to drive about with a Masaai on the roof on main roads!
Turns out Julius has just come of age, is an orphan and had hitched a lift with us simply because we passed. He had begun his search for a job, but he didn`t know where he was, what he might be good at, had no money, food or water and asked us for the direction to a village whose name we had never heard! We gave him as much info as we can and some spare change for food and trundled off.
So who knows where Julius is now .....
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