Four-Wheel Drive Trip

People pay big bucks for the 4-wheel driving trips we've been on in the last few days. We had our special tour guide, Mike Mann from ITDP, who by the way is a very impressive driver!

First of all, the trip to the Mahojo Village was a five-hour highway drive, a one-hour country road drive, a half-hour on a dirt road, and then an absolutely insane one-hour four-wheeling trip. This is what I would call "The Boonies". The villagers live in wood and thatch huts. They weave their own clothing. They live quite primitively.

On vacation, I have always avoided the Jeep trips on the mountain trails. I don't find being a nervous wreck very fun. However, these villages have only one entrance, so I didn't have a choice this time. The first uncomfortable part is that I sat behind the driver of the pick-up truck with my knees crammed in his back. Secondly, this was no ordinary dirt road. It was more like driving on solid rock that had foot-deep ruts and speed bumps all over it. So the driver had to stay out of the ruts and we bounced all over the backseat. Then occasionally we would get to a bend with a 300 foot drop off to one side where the trail wasn't wide enough for the truck. So some villagers had put some tree limbs across the outside edge of the trail so one set of your tires could ride on that part. As we went across, you could hear the limbs cracking underneath us...fun! Another area had completely washed out and a bridge of logs laying across the chasm acted as a bridge. On this one, you had to get one side of tires on each log and cross very cautiously. Needless to say, our driver had us get out of the car before we crossed that one, so he wouldn't have the burden of killing us if he didn't make it. Even walking across was a little harrowing.

At some point in our adventures, Linda looked at me and said "people pay big bucks for these kind of rides!" From then on, I enjoyed my trip so much better! Mike was an incredible driver which made me feel very safe and we laughed a whole lot.