Sunday, March 4

Naivasha

This weekend's destination is Naivasha, site of the signing of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended (we hope) the 20+ year war between the Sudan People's Liberation Movement and the Sudanese Government. Its lake is also a prime weekend destination for Nairobi wazungu (white folks).

I headed up on Saturday with several folks mostly on the Sudan circuit. James - an engineer shuttling between Nairobi and Juba - was kind enough to provide a lift in his Pajero. The ride was a step up from the matatus I'm used to, and was made more pleasant when the Tusker started flowing.

We stopped at the campsite to pitch our tent, and then headed to the Yacht Club, where we said we were members, to have some beers on the pier and paddle around the lake on sail-less windsurfing boards.

Here's the view from the campsite. Apparently hippos emerged from the clearing at 4 am, but I missed them...
Drinking Tuskers on the Yacht Club pier...L-R: myself, Imram (enjoying a well-earned vacation on his way back to Bangladesh from Juba), Adrian (building a rock-climbing gym in Nairobi), and Page from IRI, NDI's Republican-affiliated counterpart - though their work in some places can get into the sketchy messianic type of democracy promotion, they seem to do good work in Sudan.


The view from the pier...

Jake...


Sufficiently soggy and gross from the water, we headed back for a drink at the popular Fisherman's campsite next door to ours, then back to our camp for some more beers, some billiards, some dinner at the campsite bar (this can only loosely be called a camping trip), and hung around the campfire waiting in vain for the hippos to come.

While instant oatmeal is a fine breakfast food, I gladly shelled out the $3.50 for a full breakfast of juice, coffee, eggs, toast, fruit, tomato, bacon/sausage. We then headed for a short hike on Crescent Island, which as far as I can tell is not an island but a peninsula. While not as grand as the national parks, it's cheaper, and you get to walk around among the zebras and gazelles. And there was a baby giraffes. Unlike buffalo and water buck, and even zebras, the coolness of giraffes has not yet worn off.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

How does the bacon/sausage at a campsite in Kenya compare to the Morningstar farms version?