The trip continues - Lion Hill

Ok so back to the tale, we left you with us leaving the safe house at Kisii and giving gifts to a few children on the way back to the hotel. Following a pleasant evening at the hotel and Brendon dreaming of a hot shower (water and electric had a habit of not being available at Hotel Nyoake) just for a change we had an early start for our journey to Lion Hill.

It was a long slow journey to Nakuru passing through the tea growing area of Kenya, tea

plants/bushes or whatever you call them, as far

as the eye could see.

I should take time out here to describe the roads in Kenya, they range from very good to very bad (that goes for the driving as well!). As a road passes through a village or town there are speed bumps and these are not the nice gentle type, at one of them when we had slowed down to go over we were passed by a 40ft lorry with a container on the back, as it went over the bump the container left the body of the lorry by about 3” or more.

In other parts the roads are so poor it is necessary to go onto the grass/dirt verge to avoid the 6” potholes and at other parts you need to go on the other side of the road and hope you have your timing right for the traffic coming the other way, we have seen some close shaves but luckily Gabrielle, our driver, seems to have it sorted.

On arriving at Nakuru we stopped at a hotel serving “clean food”, Gabrielle’s description not ours, and I must say it was a very good three course meal.

Following a quick tour round the town of

Nakuru we headed off to Lion Hill, Ali had wetted our pallet with a stunning description of Lion Hill from her guide book, what an excellent stop over it was to be. Turning off the main road the sense of anticipation was growing throughout the bus, w

ill the hotel match the stunning review Ali had given us?

As we left the tarmac road onto the dirt road there were a few worried looks around the bus, but no worries the guide book extolled the virtues of the hotel as being excellent, and then we approached the end of the “road”. In front of us were the gates into Nakuru National Park where, the following day, we were to start our safari, on the right was a shop selling wood carvings and on the left Lion Hill.

To say that there was a bus full of confused, confounded and basically gob smacked individuals would have been a

n understatement; this was not the Lion Hill that Ali had described. It was however the Lion Hill we were staying at. After a short stunned silence the bus erupted into laughter and various comments that may not be suitable for the blog entry. The cry went out “it’s only for one night” followed by a sigh of relieve.

How can I describe the place we were staying Butlins circa 1950 springs to mind, but I’m not sure if that would have been fair to Butlins. On the up side at least half the rooms had toilet seats which was better than we expected, most of the showers were hot (a relief for Brendon) but this

time most people were complaining it was too hot (you can’t please them!!).

The rooms were basic with a bed, small table, toilet and shower. Following the allocation of the rooms Tom was heard to cry “Result I can sit on the toilet and have a d***and a shower at the same time”, and he was right the shower heads were only a foot away from being over the toilet, how’s that for personal hygiene.

Following a short walk and visit to the wood carving shop we all prepared for dinner. At 7.30pm we all made our way to the lean to that was the venue for our meal, it was not necessarily the best meal of the trip, but since we had had a very good 3 course meal before it didn’t really matter.

Reverend Hegerty was on hand following the meal to calm our souls with a little reading entitled “The good things about our trip so far” , it was uplifting at a time of need and the final good thing of our trip so far? “It’s only for one night”

Most days when we have indicated that we needed an early start there were , as you would expect, a few comments about their only being one 6.00 in a day etc. however, when we asked everybody to be ready for breakfast by 5.30am it was met with a sigh of relief, even less time to be spent in the room.

So with varying degrees of enthusiasm people made their way to their rooms with the thought in their minds “it’s only for one night!”