No party is complete...

... without getting stuck in the mud on the way home!

This evening I went in convoy through the jungles of suburban Jb to the new compound of some friends of mine for a BBQ birthday celebration. It was really a crazy place to find, and there's one pretty dodgy section where you have to cross a bit of a river. On the way there, I was riding with the folks who live there, in their Toyota Hilux. We got to the river bank, Francis paused for a minute, took a deep breath, and then we plunged in and quite easily got out the other side.

I then enjoyed an amazing party - it's been a long time since I've been to such a big party, but it was a really nice mix of people that I know quite well, people that I sort of know, but have wanted to get to know better, and people that I've never met before. Plus, the food was great. I love BBQs - even when they have a slab of goat sitting on the grill! There was also some chicken and a few sausages. I think the sausages were brought in from Nairobi, along with a bit of ice cream, specially for tonight!

One of the highlights of the evening was the bagpipe rendition of "Happy Birthday"! The nieghbours must have really been wondering what was going on when the bag pipes started wailing! The birthday boy is Scottish, you see, and we happen to have a friend here who plays the bagpipes. So it was the perfect surprise for him, and for the rest of us! Who would have thought we'd get to hear bagpipes in the middle of Jb?!

Anyways, on the way home, I drove with my friend and nieghbor, Kathy, in her SUV. I think it's a Prado or something like that - I'm not exactly sure. But it's more the luxery kind of SUV, not really the "working" kind of SUV. So we tried to drive straight through the river again... and got stuck as soon as we hit the mud on the bank. Ooops. Kathy had never had to use the 4WD before on the car, and I didn't know how to stick it into 4WD, either. Thankfully, we were driving in convoy with two Rav4s, one of which was carrying a fellow Canadian who seems to know quite a bit about 4WDriving. So he popped into the car, got it into gear, and got us out of the mud in a flash... or, rather, in a splash :)

We then got out sticks and stuff and started trying to poke the other sections of the river, to see if there was a shallower way to go through, as the Rav4s are a bit smaller and have less clearance than the Prado. So there we were, a bunch of white folks in the middle of the suburban jungle in the middle of the night, trying to get three cars through a river.

But in the end we were all successful and we managed to find our way home! No party in Jb is complete without an adventure getting home!