As the election results still have yet to be released, and likely won’t be until Monday, my host mother and I agreed that it was safe for me to travel to Naivasha to hike Mt. Longonot. The mountain….. . Naivasha is about an hour and a half away from Nairobi, so including my hour transit from Rongai and then the 20 minute bus ride to City Centre to catch the matatu that goes between Nairobi and Naivasha, I had about 3 hours in transit today. In a car that may not seem like much, but on a matatu and a public bus in Kenya, it’s a lot.
At Junction, I met up with Line and Sine, the two Danish girls accompanying me on this excursion. We met at Orientation, and connected again on safari. They have been staying in Nairobi. All of us were thrilled to even be out of the house!
Getting to Naivasha was relatively simple, but once we got there, things got crazy. As soon as we got off of the matatu, people were grabbing us and offering to take us places. I brought my guide book, which listed 2 approved hotels. We decided to stay in the cheaper one. Some strange guy offered to lead us there, but he let us to a dark abandoned building. As it was getting dark, we asked a matatu driver to just take us to the other listed hotel – the fanciest one in Naivasha. The man was so helpful, and walked us there. It ended up being on a road with a lot of other hotels, but we were just glad to finally be settled. However, as it was so much more expensive than the one in which I had planned on us staying, I was really worried that I wouldn’t have enough money. Ready to tackle Mt. Longonot tomorrow!
