Tuši's blog: 13275

Sunday, September 20, 2015

13275

Kenya: Day 3: Mount Kenya, Part 1

We woke up quite early and we did the final packing. One of our fish cans exploded in Nada's backpack, so she was a little pissed off. A little before sunrise we were already on a matatu to the city centre, where we did another withdrawal on the ATM, since the park fees are quite expensive in Kenya. Before 8 o'clock we were on another matatu to Naro Moru, where we had a nice 15 minute chat with Julius, a guy who hiked to Mount Kenya a couple of times.

In modern world, we have a drive in restaurants, here the restaurant comes to you. When a matatu stops, bananas, passion fruit, corn, candy's and other food comes to you. We successfully arrived to Naro Moru, where a guy was waiting for us, even tough we didn't ask for anyone. Obviously they call each other for potential walking money bags - white people, so don't be surprised if people follow you in Kenya. They made another move to sell us the support team, but they were not successful. We were convinced, that we will do it by ourselves. Since they run out of purifying tablets in local pharmacy we bought 6 litres of water and then the bargaining for a transport to the Mount Kenya Park Gate started. Luckily the locals started a word fight between each-other and then the price dropped significantly and for 1000 KSH we made a deal. A guy picked us up and drove us to the park gate, where we paid the entrance fee, 53.500 KSH (~450 €) and finally we were on our own, without the annoying crowd.

For this afternoon we had to ascend only 600 meters in 10 kilometres and we were doing them quite good, although our backpacks were very heavy. After 3 hours we reached our destination, Meteorological Station with a camp, where we placed our tent and started cooking dinner and boiling water. All the water has to be boiled here in order not to became sick. And for dinner, like always on trips like that, pasta.