Crazy day Thursday

Our excursion today was to go to Moshi town, Tanzania. We were expecting a visa fee of $50. But to our surprise the fee for Americans and Irish is $100. Why? Tit-for-tat as they say. Apparently the US charges tanzanians $100. We decided to go ahead and pay. We are glad we did. Tanzania is very different. It's more developed and cleaner. The main roads are paved, smooth, and wide. We had a nice lunch, a nice visit to The Coffee Shop, and a little walk around part of the downtown. After a few hours, it started to rain. It has rained hard late every afternoon. So we headed back to Kenya. Back to Kenya in the rain means back to dirt roads, floods, and washouts. We had one incident where the road was flooded. Vicky, our proprietor and driver, listened to some kids and went straight through the middle. The Nissan stalled. She offered the kids a bit of money to push us. They weren't getting it done so Mark jumped in the water to help. I asked Vicky to keep it in first and walk it out using the starter. With all these things, we got it out of the water and it started again. Then, on the more narrow road to the castle, we came up to a crowd of people, motorcycles and bikes. There was a place in the road where it is low and made of concrete. It is designed to have water flow over it with heavy rains. It was like a river flowing over the road. One person was helping to drive the motorcycles across. He was also helping bicycles across. We watched all this for a while and Vicky decided we should go for it. (this washout pictured.) First Mark decided to walk across, through the water, to the cheers of the locals. We made it across. Vicky slowed while ascending the other side. At that time Mark approached from behind. Charles told Vicky not to stop until she made it up the slight ascent. She accelerated. The tires spun in the mud. Mark was behind. He got splattered. (Pictured.) It was hilarious. We are again laughing about it as I write this. But we made it back safe and sound to the castle once again. We are now cleaned up and ready for another wonderful dinner.