This was written beginning at about 11pm as we waited for
our slightly delayed flight to London, which was to depart at 12:15am, worked
on for a while as we approached London and at Heathrow.
I did wake up at midnight Friday night and was able to get
an aisle seat for myself, but when I tried for 45 minutes to check in for
Martha, Howard and Ralph, the Internet connection at Rosa Mystica got flaky and
the British Air web site was unresponsive. I tried again around 3am and also
came up empty. At 6am, I was able to
take care of the Faskes, but Ralph’s booking had problems and he had to wait
until we got to the airport to get a seat assignment. After a night like that, I got one last
shower at Rosa Mystica and finished packing.
We had breakfast with our driver Mambo and Barrack and said our goodbyes
to the kitchen crew. We loaded up the
last of the cases of water from our rooms and our luggage and were on the road
to Fourteen Falls by 8am. We stopped and
topped of the air in the tires and bought some gas to cover the rest of our
travels. The price was 108.90 Kenyan
shillings per liter, which translates to about $5.25 per gallon. We only saw
one gas station that was a slightly different price, less than a penny’s
difference, since the government controls the price.
We headed out, went through downtown Nairobi and then out on
one of the new super highways that the Chinese have helped to build. It was similar to an American interstate,
with a few exceptions. One was that because there has been massive development
of apartments, businesses and schools along the route of this expressway, there
is a need to cross it on foot occasionally, since many Kenyans don’t drive or
at least tend to walk much more than we do.
You could be driving along at highway speeds and then, out of nowhere,
if you weren’t paying attention, is a large speed bump and a crosswalk, where
pedestrians are navigating from one side to the other, perhaps to shop or to
take a matatu (van) into town or to their jobs.
I’m sure that vehicles are supposed to yield to pedestrians, but like
all traffic n Kenya, there appears to be unwritten, but generally understood,
rules that make it seem more like a high speed video game. I wonder how many rear end collisions and
pedestrians being hit that this setup causes. I also wonder if this is the way
such highways are designed in China or if this is unique to Africa. An elevated walkway like we use would seem
to be a better solution all around. As a
side note, Kenyans refer to one of these speed bumps, found on any and all
roads, as a “sleeping policeman”, since it is a passive form of traffic
control. There is always one right
before and right after a school, no matter where you are, whether in a city or
in a remote area. Sometimes the driver
of one of vans will remember the first bump, but speed up and smack into the
second one, often with us going airborne and/or bottoming out the van as well. It’s quite an experience! The other big difference from our highways is
that they are not nearly so limited access, with many more exits and areas to
pull off due to the need for matatus to pick up and drop off passengers
frequently.
It took us about an hour and a half to reach the Fourteen
Falls National Park. Once we got off the
main road, it was maybe 2 or 3 miles to the park entrance, where the red dirt
road was obviously muddy in some places.
One of the locals on a motorcycle had us follow him into the park after
we had paid our admission fees. There
was a fee for each non-resident (us), a resident fee that was next to nothing
for Barrack and mambo and a charge per camera.
They only saw one camera, so that worked out OK. The motorcyclist went around to the right
and lured us into a muddy area where we proceeded to get stuck. This is not the first time I had seen
this. There was about 10 minutes of
getting buried deeper and deeper and then, miracle of all miracles, some other
guys showed up to push us out. We paid
them for their kindness. If this had
been my first trip, I would have written about the harrowing experience, the
worry of maybe not being able to get unstuck, our relief and thankfulness at
being saved by friendly people. I’m not
going to write any of those things. This
was a well-orchestrated trap that always turns out this way. We aren't mad about this, it’s a fact of life
when you have people that are wealthy by world standards visiting areas where
people are just getting by. I look at it
as supporting the local economy and it didn’t cost more than $10 and a little
of our time. We were never in any
danger, and with a veteran team, none of us were ever concerned about the
eventual outcome. We made it the rest of
the way into the park and left the van on a high and dry spot. Two young men, John and Peter, came along and
were our guides. Taking us down one side
of the river, helping us as we climbed up and down the even rocky terrain and
getting us to some great vantage points to get pictures of the magnificent
falls. The area is called Fourteen
Falls, because when the water is at an average depth and flow in the river,
there are fourteen distinct falls and they counted them off for us to prove
it. During rainy times the water can be up
to 8 to 10 feet deeper and then the fourteen falls become one big falls.
I had my Nikon D5200 DSLR setup with a Sigma zoom lens that
would go from 18-250mm (the equivalent of 24-375mm on a 35mm camera) which is
from wide angle to zoomed in pretty far for things like birds in flight or
animals you don’t want to get very close to.
I had given Barrack my backup camera, a Canon SX-510 superzoom bridge
camera to also get some shots with. Both
are good cameras and I expect to be able to post some outstanding images within
the next week or so. Please stay tuned
for that, it will be well worth it, I promise.
We eventually made our way to where there were some old,
green wooden boats along the short near a rope that was stretched across the
rapidly flowing river. The boatman said
he would take us across for 500 Kenyan shillings each and back again for
another 500 Kenyan shillings, so I invited Barrack to go with me as my guest
while the others waited for us. I told
the boatman we would pay upon our return.
The terrain is very rocky and slippery near the falls. I play a lot of singles tennis and am in
pretty good shape for a 62 year old man, but the next 45 minutes was quite a
workout. First, we climbed into the boat
and then the guys poled it over to the rope.
They then pulled us about 100 yards across the river. We disembarked and then went up, up, up,
stopping at 3 or 4 plateaus for increasingly beautiful views of the falls and
the river below. It was rough going, jumping
from one rock to the next, steadying ourselves, sometimes needing one of
the boys to pull me to the next stop, since I was using one hand to protect my
camera. I have a new appreciation for
mountain goats! We finally made it to a
spot right below one of the bigger falls, about 100 feet above the river. There was a cliff diver at the top and I got
some great stop action shots of him raising his hands above his head and then
leaping down to the base of the falls below.
John said it is about 36 feet deep there, so striking the bottom was not
one of the risks the diver needed to worry about. We slowly made our way back down, which was
actually harder than the climb had been, with much more slipping and
sliding. After several stops along the
way to get some more pictures from various angles, we finally arrived back at
ground level, where we got some pictures of storks or pelicans (need to
identify what they were) and some other birds on the water and in flight. I made it back to within about 10 yards of
the boat and then stepping all the way over my ankle in mud with my right
foot. John quickly was able to wash it
off at the river side. I’m glad this was
the only minor disaster, a bad fall would have been much worse. All in all, it was quite worth it. We made our way back across the river, paid
the boatman and tipped John and Peter.
While were gone, one of the locals washed the van for 200 Kenyan
shillings (about $2.50). I think this
was the last part of the getting stuck scam, these guys are really good!
Please don’t think that everywhere you go in Kenya, people
are out to take advantage of you. Our
day probably cost us less than $100 for the six of us and we had a great
time. One of Kenya’s biggest economic
drivers is tourism, so most experiences are perfectly wonderful, the people are
very friendly and we always feel safe and welcome. In defense of trying to get a little extra
cash out of us, tourism is hurting a little bit the last few weeks due to
Americans and Europeans being overly concerned with ebola and not realizing
that this terrible, real problem is over 3,000 miles away from Kenya on the
other side of the African continent. I
can understand when every news story about Africa seem to have the word ebola
in it, how unreasonable worries would tend to prevail. My prayer is that reason and common sense would
come the fore and that people would resume coming to Kenya in droves. It is a wonderful country, full of friendly
people, natural wonders, incredible flowers and food. I consider it the closest thing to paradise
I’ve ever seen.
We drove back to Nairobi and had one final lunch at the
Junction before going back to the Little Daughters of St. Joseph convent to
meet the other teams prior to heading to the airport as a group. The teams flying KLM had to wait for us to
arrive on the first Friday night, now it was our turn to repay the favor. We headed to the airport a little after 5pm,
after saying our goodbyes to Catherine, our drivers and Barrack. The KLM flight was leaving around 10:30pm
and we were slated for 11:55pm, but were delayed until about 12:15 because our
plane had not arrived from London yet.
We had some food and conversation with other teams in a Java House in
the airport and groups began to leave one at a time until 3 teams were left to
fly with us back to London. The London
flight was great. Right after dinner, I
slept almost the whole night, straight through until we were only about an hour
and a half from London. I must have
needed it. I am finishing this post at
Heathrow, where we have about a 4 hour layover before our team flies alone back
to Austin. We are glad we missed the
cold snap while were gone and will be returning to seasonal weather. We are all looking forward to worshipping on
Wednesday night at Redeemer for Thanksgiving services and to give thanks for
God’s providence on this trip. To God be
the Glory!
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