If you have never been on a safari, it is incredible to drive among animals in their natural habitat. This goes way beyond what you might experience at the World-O-Wildlife in Grand Prairie, Texas.(This is our friends' car in front of us.)
It's not all fun and games. The roads are brutal. (I'm constantly amazed our lightweight Japanese passenger cars survived.) And the dry fine powdery dust from the roads is still in every nook and cranny of our car.
We had two flats. One tire was completely shredded, since I drove a few hundred feet too far before I realized we had a flat. The other was a tire facing so much stress that it popped off the rim. Thankfully I heard that flat quickly enough that there was minimal damage to the tire.
There is not a Discount Tire on every corner in eastern Africa. After the shredded tire, we drove to Naivasha. The guy who worked for a hole-in-the-wall tire shop found a used tire that was not the right size but close enough to work. He went down the street to another shop (or a back alley) to find that tire.
The used tire cost me about $50. The repair of the popped-off tire cost about $2. Labor costs less than parts here!
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