Eldoret
We were up at about 6:30 am, not realizing this was going to be considered a lie-in on this trip. Typically, I don’t remember my dreams, but for some reason, when camping, they are vivid and stick with me. Perhaps all this implies is my home needs better ventilation.
We got up and clumsily packed, having not yet managed to obtain that level of comfortable expertise we’d be showing in only a couple of days. The routine was the same though. Wake up, shower if needed, load the truck with personal gear, load the mattresses, collapse and load the tents, eat breakfast (sausage and egg sandwich) wash up and leave. It becomes a somewhat military exercise.
From there we drove a few hours to a small town where we almost all picked up an extra blanket to ward off the chill from a local supermarket which, for some reason, also sold ALL the soap in Kenya it seemed.
Our accommodation was nothing if not cross-functional
When then went for a fifteen-minute walk to the recommended coffee shop with Wi-Fi, only to find there was no Wi-Fi, but there was good coffee.
We got back onto the road and it took the long bumpy route to the campsite where we were staying for the evening. It was the Sunrise Camp in Eldoret, made famous by the fact that Bill Gates always stayed there when he was in the neighbourhood doing charity work.
We arrived, set up the tents, and had some lunch and I did one of the less enjoyable things you do on a camping holiday, laundry.
Clothes washed, I headed to the bar for a chance to catch up on my journal, have a coldTusker beer, and afterwards lounge by the pool in the sun with the rest of the group. It was one of the rare occasions we had when we were finished for the day before 3 pm and so had time to relax and enjoy the weather.
At the end of the evening, we retired to the main bar, an amazing underground cave that you go walk a mineshaft to reach and is dominated by a huge roaring fire in the centre.
At the end of our tour, just a day of driving away from ending we passed through customs and re-entered Kenya.
The border was fairly easy; On the Uganda side, I managed to be first in line and so was done in minutes. When we moved to the Kenyan side, it was a short wait but once done I did get called back after having my passport stamped because the wrong stamp had been used. It meant I got to see the inside of a Kenyan passport office. Not as glamorous an event as it no doubt sounds.
From there, it was just a couple of hours of bumpy roads back to Eldoret town, where I picked up a birthday present of the finest Blue Mountain coffee for a friend of mine as well as a local Machete for my exotic weapons collection. Some people collect pins, some collect hats, I collect local weaponry.
Once we arrived back at the camp in Eldoret where we had stayed several weeks previously, and set up our tents for the final time, we retired to the same underground mine/bar we'd appreciated so much the previous time. We spent the evening chatting and drinking as it was our final time together.
Eldoret sunset camp