After successfully picking up the passport in Nairobi it was time to progress West into Uganda, which virtually everybody raves about.

Our first stop was at Lake Navaisha where we stayed right on the edge of the lake in beautiful surroundings, and our evening was shared with monkeys and acouple of Hippo which strayed to within 30 or 40 metres of the van. That was quite close enough for me.

We had not realised the extent of the post election trouble in Kenya, but we had been warned that most of the really ugly violence had occurred West of Nairobi, and we did pass two UN camps full of those made homeless by the mindless violence.

As we progressed next day towards Eldoret the mayhem became obvious with houses, schools and office buildings razed to the ground by mob violence. It was very depressing and a bit scary that all this had happened only just over a month ago,

Basically the election fiasco was simply the catalyst for the eruption of some simmering inter tribal issues between Kikuyu and Luo. The Luo are predominant in this area and we were told by our Camp site owner they just went looking for Kikuyu and hacked them to bits.

I can’t quite fathom why everything is ok now, just because Kofi Annan has said a few words. Most of the Kikuyu are still in UN camps and I can’t think they will forget all this in a hurry.

So as you can imagine we did not feel too comfortable in Eldoret, and we resolved to get into Uganda with all speed.

Although the roads are tarmaced they are in really dreadful condition, and effectively it needs Janets patience to negotiate them without serious tyre or suspension damage.

Also it will remain for me one of lifes great mysteries as to why a country will put up with hundreds of kilometres of truly dreadful roads, and then deliberately make them worse by inserting huge sleeping policemen on any stretch where you feel you can go faster than 15k per hour. These do more damage than the worst pothole, but again the visual acuity of my dear wife saves most of the damage.

Formalities at the Ugandan border were minimal and very pleasant and we were soon on our way to a place called Jinja which is near to the source of the Nile.

We camped right on the Bujagali Falls, with wonderful views spoiled only by a plague of mosquitoes, and other insects as soon as night fell. We had felt that right next to the powerful falls there would be no mossies but what do we know!!

From there we moved higher up the Falls so we had a wonderful panoramic view of all the white water, and all the locals going over them strapped to Plastic petrol cans.

Janet celebrated her 60th birthday with a romantic dinner overlooking the source of the Nile. What a wonderful husband she has.

From there to Kampala which is a busy but charming city with more Storks than London has pigeons.

Its started to get really hot as we lower altitude and the mossies are winning 26 nil.

Now we are off animal spotting and since we are allowed to park in the middle of the game reserve here with no fences I dont think we will be doing much star gazing outside the van. We will report in in about 7 days