From London, United Kingdom to Mombasa, Kenya - June, 2000

...We shipped the bike to Mombasa and this was really the most stressful part of the trip due to delays of two weeks overall. We employed HC Travel in the UK as our agent there who in turn employed a company called Quintrans to arrange the shipping and packing. I left the bike with Quintrans in early June and it was due to be shipped on the 16th of June. Quintrans packed the bike and employed a shipping line called Rohlig UK to transport it to Kenya. One of those two arranged for a Kenyan company, Kenfrieght to be the receiving agents in Mombasa.

The main reason for the delay was Rohlig sending the bike on a ship which left one week later than the one they told Quintrans they would send it on and was itself delayed by about 4 days. Rohlig didn't bother to tell anyone this so the first we knew about it was when we showed up at Kenfreights offices. We introduced ourselves and explained they were expected to receive our bike arriving on the week beginning 10th June. Not surprisingly they couldn't find any relevant documentation at first but a couple of hours later they had found out what had happened.

Apparently Rohlig didn't have enough freight going to Mombasa to fill a container so they placed the bike with another shipping firm resulting in the change of ship. I've thrown away all the paperwork as it took up too much room so I can't tell you their name but their agent in Mombasa required paying about US$120 which Kenfreight added to their bill. By that point I didn't care as long as I could get the bike.....

Grant's comment: This unbelievable story runs and runs, and the whole process takes 4 weeks for Stephan and 'Chenda to retrieve their bike. See the gory details on their webpage: http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/tstories/solon/