I feel much better after a good dinner and a very good night’s sleep. I’m even feeling bright enough to enjoy breakfast and my arm doesn’t feel warm and isn’t any stiffer than it was yesterday evening. Once again, Peter has some words for us before we set out.

“Okay folks,” he begins. “Quite a long drive this morning. It’s actually less than 250km, but it will take some time. We’ll make a pit stop in Emali, about two hours or so down the road towards Mombasa. There’s a nice gift shop we can stop at before turning towards the park.”

“The road is pretty good, but the traffic is terrible and the driving is even worse than that. Try not to distract the drivers.”

“What happens for the rest of the day?” Mary asks. “I mean, once we make it to the lodge?”

“Well, hopefully, we will get there in time for a late lunch. If everything goes to schedule then we will go into the park for a game drive in the afternoon.”

The drivers have finished loading our baggage and the doors to the trucks are open by this time. We all quickly find our seats and make ourselves comfortable for the long drive. It may only be our second day, but we’re a pretty well-oiled machine already, at least in our vehicle.

“I feel as if someone in a cowboy hat should be shouting ‘Mount up’, I tell Brian once we are sitting comfortably.”

“Yes, I know what you mean. Let’s just hope the traffic is manageable.”

“I can do that tomorrow, if you like,” Tim tells us from his place in the front. “I’ve got a different hat that will do in a pinch and I’ve been told I do a fair John Wayne impression.”

In daylight, the drive back towards the airport and the Mombasa Road is totally different. There’s not really that much to see, with the fence around the park to the south and ramshackle housing estates to the north, with the central business district towering over it all in the distance.

The traffic truly is an abomination. Nobody seems to know what they are doing and there’s simply no lane discipline at all. There seem to be an inordinate number of police officers on duty, but frankly, they don’t really seem to actually be doing anything constructive.

Once past the airport interchange, things settle down, but this area, on both sides of the highway, seems to be becoming a major new suburban zone for many kilometres. Estate after estate of monopoly houses seem to be springing up everywhere you look and it’s all a little bit depressing.

Still, even though I didn’t know what to expect, the actual view is fascinating, even if it isn’t very exciting. The traffic, however, continues to be terrible. I don’t know how Joshua and the other drivers manage to keep us safe. Even with the arrival of the new railway from Mombasa, the sheer number of trucks on the road is bewildering.

Many of them are from faraway lands; Uganda, Rwanda and even the Congo. Mombasa is the major port for much of central Africa and this only serves to emphasize the fact that there’s really only one road into the interior.

“You’re very quiet,” Brian suggests after about an hour. We’ve passed out of the suburbs now and it’s just a succession of villages and towns straddling the main road.

“Just taking it all in,” I tell him. “I’ve only ever been to Europe before and none of those places are anything like this. Frankly, now we’re out of town, everything looks, well, poor?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. When first impressions are formed by a modern airport and a busy, bustling city, the rest of a country can be a bit of a shock.”

“That’s it exactly. The contrast is so severe that you’re thrown off by it. Some of these people look like they have nothing to their names, but everybody seems to be moving with some goal, some purpose to their actions.”

“Well, when you have nothing, I suppose that finding something useful to do that pays a few shillings is what most people spend their time doing,” Andrea suggests from one row forward of us. She points to the row of small stalls along the next section of the road. There are piles of tomatoes and mangoes on each individual stall and a colourfully-dressed lady behind almost every pile. “Grow a few tomatoes, pick them and then try and sell them to anyone passing by.”

“Oh my god, look at that,” Mary cries from the front row. “Look at the state of that bus.”

Sure enough, there is the wreck of a pretty large bus just off the side of the road as we pass. It is somehow on its wheels – well the remains of the wheels – but it has clearly run off the side of the road and into the deep ditch with catastrophic results. I’d noticed the ditches in most of the settlements as we drove along. The concrete bridges across at regular intervals looked quaint, if a little precarious, but now it is apparent that they are more than strong enough to stop a moving vehicle if it is unlucky enough to hit one.

“Ian,” I manage after we have passed the carnage, “are there accidents like this often?”

“I’m afraid so. There are no restrictions on working hours – pretty much no health and safety concerns at all really – sometimes a driver just goes on for too long and loses concentration. Other times it’s a dog, a person or a cow.”

“It seems so strange,” Andrea adds. “At home this would be major news. Actually if it happened almost anywhere, we’d have it on the news in the UK.”

“Sadly,” Ian continues, “here it hardly even makes the local news, it happens almost daily. Only the really terrible ones – petrol tankers and the like – make any impact on the media at all.”

There’re a few minutes of silent reflection from all of us at this point. We’ve moved away from feeling that life is cheap at home. Even allowing for the fact that I’m from a small island where every sneeze is newsworthy, it is a stark realization that here such accidents are so commonplace as to not even be reported on.

Sue and Nicki have both been pretty quiet so far, simply trying to absorb the feel of the place as we drive along.

“Ian, what are those big clay block-like structures?” Nicki asks as we come to the edge of another village.

I had actually been wondering the same thing myself. I’d noticed a couple of them along the way and their purpose wasn’t obvious to me either.

“Brick kilns,” Ian offers. “When someone wants to build a house, they clear the land and then dig out the footings or foundations. Then they use the clay and dirt to make a whole mountain of bricks by hand. These are stacked into a big pile and then they paste more clay over the sides and top of the whole pile.”

“That must take ages,” Nicki suggests.

“Yes, often weeks or even months,” Ian continues. “Once they are ready, they set a big fire in the middle and fire the whole lot at once. They aren’t the best quality or consistency, but they are basically free.”

“Oh, yes,” Sue calls, pointing ahead. “There’s one that has been opened up to get the bricks out.” Sure enough, one of the kilns is in the process of being broken down. Sooty red blocks are scattered out from the interior across the nearby ground.