This Saturday, a small group of us had a last minute plan to
check out a local park called Paradise Lost. It is about 20kilometers from
where we live – just close enough that we could take taxis there.
Now, after the torrential downpour experienced Friday night,
we weren’t sure if the weather would be conducive to our picnic plan. We woke up Saturday to find a day that was
supposed to be only partly-cloudy, with little to no rain. All that held true
until we are waiting by the gate for the taxis, when it begins to rain. By now
it was too late to cancel the taxis, and it we just hoped that this rain would
pass over quickly. We loaded the cabs to head to Paradise, and embarked on what
turned out to be quite the exciting journey. Everything was going incredibly
well, until we turned onto the last road before arriving at the park. It was a
dirt road. Now, it was pure mud. While we were fortunate enough to never be
stuck there were frequent spots where the mud was controlling our fate. When we
arrived, it was still raining a bit but nonetheless all of us were excited to
start exploring – so we did! We started the nature trails. Now, as we soon
discovered these “trails” involved loads of ducking, hoping, and the
unfortunate slide or two because everything was either muddy or slippery. After
sliding our way over we reached one of our key destinations: a beautiful
waterfall, and stone-age caves. The waterfall was absolutely gorgeous and was
quite fierce because of the rain. We couldn’t help but take loads of pictures
with the gorgeous waterfall. We decided to venture into the cave, which was
incredibly claustro—I mean amazing! It was quite claustrophobic but it was also
to be cave crawling in Nairobi Kenya. There was electricity running through the
cave, so we had plenty of light. When we reached the big opening, we were
surprised to find a few holes. As we glanced around, we realized one was filled
with bats. It was time for us to go! My heart dropped a bit, as I know bats are
carriers for some of the nastiest diseases. We hustled our way out of the cave,
and enjoyed the waterfall once more. We continued along the trail, stopping
every few feet to take pictures and just admire the beauty around us. After we
hiked and stopped for a brief picnic of fruits, some of the group chose to go
boating, while myself and three others decided to find the horseback riding.
We did find it and all got to ride horses! I felt like a
real cowboy, that I was named after hint: Wyatt Earp ;) we rejoined the others
at the lake, as we bird-watched and just took in the scenery around us. It was
absolutely beautiful.
As we waited for our taxis, we were all scraping mud off of
our shoes, when we look up and see about 5 horses running free through the
picnic area. They had not escaped from any pen – this entire area was their
pen. The last horse to go through was very blonde- and of course we had to
crack the joke that this was the Mzungu horse.
Overall, this satruday was incredibly fun and relaxing! We
found Paradise and had a little fun in the mud. On the way back we all decided
to enjoy dinner and dessert together and settled on sub sandwiches (make your
own) and an ice cream sundae bar for dessert. We did the best finding the
ingredients we all love, and enjoyed each others company on an evening that
proved to be yet another rainy one.
Photos from the adventure can be found here
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