After breakfast we walked into the city to change our flights at South African Airlines to go home a week earlier than we had planned. We had allowed the extra week with the idea of possibly climbing Mt Kilimanjaro but after the Ruwenzori trip we decided against it as neither of us thought we would be able to do it. With a reasonable period of rest in between it would have been possible but we didn’t have the time available to do that. Pierre and Til were doing it so we hoped to hear from them about their experience in due course. So instead of going to Mt Kilimanjaro we decided to head up to Lake Naivasha for a few days. Lake Naivasha was a favourite Sunday picnic outing when we lived here so we thought it would be good to revisit some 'known territory'.
Down in the city we went to Accra Road to see about ways to get to the Lake. A matatu would have been possible but then we would be left with the difficulty of having to find some way back to the city after the visit. We found a Peugeot driver who offered to take us for Ks7000 But after we calculated it back into US$ (132) decided it was too expensive for a 100 km journey.
On the walk up to Westlands we stopped on the way to look at some handcrafts. Dominic bought some batiks and banana-leaf pictures and I bought Patricia a dress for Ks950. At Westlands we looked at more handcrafts and the prices were better there so we decided we would go back there for any remaining gift purchases. We bought a samosa each for Ks15 at the Oven Door for old times sake then bought some eatables at the Uchumi Supermarket and at a health food shop. We were shattered to find that we could have got all of our noodle-type dishes for the walk at the Health Food shop – ah c’est la vie!
Westlands was much changed and developed compared to 20 years previously. The market was still there but there were many more shops than there had been. When we lived here we bought all of our meat at the local butchery at Westlands for very reasonable prices - especially since we couldn't actually afford much in the way of meat in the UK. We also bought vegetables there from a greengrocer. The greengrocer kept a Cockatoo in a cage at the front of his shop and it was very fond of raw chillies.
After returning to the Fairview and lunching we arranged to hire a car to drive to Safariland Lodge at Naivasha and spend three nights there, returning to Nairobi on the following Monday.
Kenya, Nairobi to Naivasha – July 29th
Our hire car arrived promptly at 9:30am so we checked out of the hotel to start our journey to Naivasha – approximately 100 kilometres northwest of Nairobi (toward Uganda) in the Rift Valley. On our way out of Nairobi we detoured through Hurlingham and Kileleshwa to see the house we lived in from 1974 to 1976. The front gates, which were four-feet high steel pipe and cyclone mesh when we lived there had been replaced by high solid steel gates. The Kai-apple hedge was still there but from the little we could see through the hedge, what used to be the front garden was now full of maize.
We drove past the Lavington Shops and also the Valley shops, neither of which looked to have changed very much. Braeburn School, where Leonore went to school, had been massively developed. We made our way out past the back of St Mary’s School where Dominic and Garth were students and out onto the main road to Naivasha and Nakuru. We wanted to go down the old escarpment road so took the Narok turn off. The road down the escarpment had been recently sealed and was in good condition but the view from the top of the escarpment was quite different to twenty years previously. What used to be open plains on the valley floor with many freely roaming wild animals was now completely partitioned into farms large and small. The larger farms seemed to be growing mostly wheat – a cash crop, while the smaller farms were more mixed and growing mainly subsistence crops possibly with small surpluses for sale.
The valley road from the escarpment base to Lake Naivasha had not been in a great state twenty years previously with the edge always broken and a bit if a hazard. Now, however, it seemed that no maintenance whatsoever had been done on the road in those twenty years. It was a nightmare of continuous deep potholes reducing our speed to between 10 and 20 kph. We vowed to return to Nairobi via the main road - which was the road we had taken by bus on the way to Uganda so we knew it to be in good condition!
Arriving at the Safariland Lodge near midday we checked in and had lunch. After lunch we drove along the South Lake Road to the Crater Lake Sanctuary where we had a walk down into the crater to the contained lake. Black and white Colobus monkeys abounded in the trees and we also saw Thompson’s and Grant’s gazelle, Eland, and Guinea Fowl. On our drive back out of the sanctuary we also saw Baboons and Giraffe. The area around the southern end of Lake Naivasha is extensively farmed for cut flower production and for seed production - mainly for the European market.
On our way back to the lodge we stopped in at Elsamere which continues the Lion conservation work begun by Joy Adamson. The Elsamere Lodge contains a museum which is interesting and we watched a short film of Joy Adamson’s life. Tea and scones were included in the Ks200 entry fee. They continue to run conservation projects and at that time they had five active projects running.
Leaving Elsamere we drove to Hell’s Gate Park gate to see if it would be possible for us to walk in the park. It was possible and there was a safe place to park the car at the Ranger Station. This was in marked contrast to our experiences of around 19 years ago when we went to Hell’s Gate for a picnic with the Holdsworth family and some other friends of theirs (see sidebar below).
On arrival back at Safariland Lodge we found that a group of tourists, mostly northern Europeans, had arrived for an overnight stop. At dinner they attacked the buffet as if they hadn’t eaten in a month echoing remembered experiences of twenty years previously. Night time was quite cool near the lake and we had to wear slacks and warm jacket to go across to the main building for dinner.
Sidebar
After our picnic lunch most of us including the kids had gone off for a walk around the top of the gorge. Patricia stayed back with one of the women who had a small infant. While the woman with infant was just having a local stroll away from the cars, Patricia was attacked by a couple of Masai who wanted what was in the vehicles. She got bashed on the head with a Simi and the thugs broke into the vehicles taking what they could, and also some clothing which contained the keys for one the Holdsworth’s VW Combi people-mover. It was a very traumatic experience for Patricia as, apart from being bashed, she had feared for her life. One vehicle was intact and they eventually took as many as they could to the Safariland Lodge and also reported the incident to the police. Bill Holdsworth and I took a long time to defeat the steering lock on the VW van and hotwire it so that it could be driven. It was dark and cold when eventually we were able to start back to
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