Day 7 – Mariakani to Mombasa – The Final Push

Bruised, battered, beaten and broken – we sound in great shape, huh?! It sounds worse thank it is. If all the on road abuse wasn’t enough – Rob screwed up. No Kenyan greenhorn, he should have known better, but on the morning of Day 6 Rob drank the water.

I had made a similar mistake a couple weeks back after Val’s birthday, but I had hours of Kenya Cane to blame. Rob simply grabbed a glass at breakfast from the pitcher on the counter. We had similar results. Sometime around 5am I woke up to the horrid smells and sounds of a broken man on all fours over our squat toilet. I’ll save you the details, but Rob was ‘bum sick’.

Like I said in the last post – Nothing Stops Us! He spent the better part of the next 3 hours confined to our ‘shit and shower’ taking care of himself. Martina offered him some tablets to easy his pain and we hit breakfast – only dry toast and banana’s for Rob.

We suited up, packed up the car and Fred took us to the 50 Km marker. The team was concerned about Rob, but I just kept saying, ‘there’s nothing a 50 Kilometer skate won’t fix.’ Trooper that he is, we pushed off to end what we started. We both agreed we’ve not had a harder day. Winds were strong as they had been, the sun was blasting, hill climbs and speed bumps persisted and we were both just mangled. It was also very tough mentally to skate the 10 kilometers back to where we had been staying to start the day.

What was most interesting about Day 7 was the change in climate and ecology we witnessed. We seen a lot of “plains’ and desert like conditions for the majority of the distance – hot and dry. But the last 50 really shifted it to hot and humid. The air got saltier, there were Palm Trees everywhere, more lush greens and watering holes. The humidity and heat was actually tough because we just had to adjust and keep pushing.

The other notable part of the day was our first real cruisable down hill since my crash in Salama. We were pretty disappointed with the down hills and the wind making us have to push any ones we did find considering the drop in elevation from Nairobi to Mombasa. Everything was gradual a we were tired of it.

Finally, on the last leg of the trip we got an amazing, smooth 4 LANE (!) section of quick down hill to rip off and it was majestic. From the top of the winding road we could see out over a lush green valley to the water. We took it down, stopped at the end for some smiles and hugs and pushed the remaining few kilometers to the end of the shoulder.

As we entered the outskirts of Mombasa we reached an extremely industrial area with no where to skate. What was left of a road was dominated by monster trucks and we wanted nothing to do with it. We got picked up by the team and immediately entered DENSE traffic – like nothing I’d ever experienced before.

Rob passed out in the car and we took turns making jokes and taking photos. I’m sure after ‘bum sickness’ he had the life sucked out of him for the day. We decided wisely to skip out on ‘Mombasa’ and head to the Diana Beach, a suberb beach community about 20 kilometers and a quick ferry ride from the center of town. What we got was one of the most beautiful white sandy ‘tropical’ beach paradise’s I’ve ever experienced in my life.

We found a nice, but cheap, ‘resort’ that came with breakfast, tea and dinner, had real bathrooms and a swimming pool and checked in for a few days of rest and recouperation at the beach.

We still cannont believe we survived!

Thanks to everyone who has been supporting and spreading the word. We might be done the skate, but we’re not done fundraising. We’ll be coming out with photos and videos of the trip over the comming weeks and really need your continued attention and support to get the centre for entrepreneurship up and running for this years students to get the support they need to finish building their plans.