Ups and downs

UPS AND DOWNS

At Ngong Hills

WINDING SERIES

Of very windy hills

What started looking like a hike for three at Mt Kenya underwent a couple changes… First of all, Aitor decided he’d rather break his toe than hike along. I think it is all due to the fact that he has not yet recovered from the idea of not having his hiking sticks with him anymore and preferred to ﬁnd the perfect excuse. As a consequence, Henry decided that Mt Kenya needs to wait for Aitor to recover and looked for a hill nearby, that ended up being a series of hills. We are still counting hills as the discrepancies have not yet been resolved.

Flying the day before the hike while trying to get over a 26 km run might sound kind of tiring…specially when the locals set the alarm at 5.30 AM so that we will not be hot during the hike…It is going to be tough, I said…but Henry did not know that what I really meant was “it is going to be a hell of a suffer enjoyment day” and that we have even made up a word for that in Spanish!!!

Once you have the mountains running through your veins, there is no way back! So there was a bit of back and forth early in the morning, but the plan was there and nothing was going to stop us!

My style is minimalist, I said…and Henry just conﬁrmed he was not going to worry about what to wear! Next time, though, I am the one worrying about what Henry is going to wear!

The back and forth issue gave me plenty of time for breakfast and we left for our mission still early in the day. Henry wanted to give us a real ﬂavor of the outskirts of the city and we drove intrepidly, like dreaming of an off road ride! Even with the nice detour, we arrived earlier than the rangers did!

GONE WITH THE WIND

A great day to set the sails in the appropriate sense.

FOGGY MORNING, SUNNY DAYS

Or so they say

WORLD WIDE WEB

Where is our spider

ENCHANTED PLACE Magic in the air

EVERY HILL HAS ITS CHARM Just saying

AND IN THE FOG IT WAS NOT EASY TO REALIZE, BUT AS THE DAY BECAME CLEAR WE COULD SEE THAT ALL FLOWERS, TREES AND EVEN THE FORESTS WERE DIFFERENT AT EVERY HILL. AND SINCE HENRY CONSIDERED IT WAS WORTH DOING THE EXTRA MILE, HIS GLASSES FLEW AWAY AND WE PRACTICED SLIPPERY SLOPES AGAIN AND AGAIN

And ﬁrst it was one hiking stick, but then it became two hiking sticks and a lot of practice. Best will be the next time when hiking shoes are also part of the gear.

And up and down, up and down we went. And Francis revealed he is an athlete and that despite his heavy boots, he is fast as a gazelle and goes up without turning back. I had to learn the hard way that I cannot try to compete with a tall strong ranger, but it was fun any way.

And we completed the “one way” sharing our food and our drinks and realized the way back will have its ups and downs as well. That is what hills are all about

And my watch said 8 km and I think that 8 plus 8 will not make 12…So let us take it easy even if Francis could run back. And we took more pictures and chatted along and the fog was gone and now we could see and hear and as we came closer, Nairobi was at sight and goats, cows and dogs would say hi.

A bracelet for each one and the one for the discount.

The local meets global as “wind mills” come from Spain. Maybe it was Don Quixote who started the trend.

We say farewell to Francis and reach THE END!