Firday and Saturday - Painting and Waterfalls
Well it was going to be Nige updating the blog today but today a combination of heavy digging, heat and tiredness meant he went home after lunch to rest as he felt a bit dizzy. So here I am again!
In case any of you noticed, I actually left some blanks in the last blog. I couldn't remember how to spell the words and was waiting for Catherine to fill them in. I then promptly forgot and published the blog before she arrived. So here they are:
Ugali - the maize mash I was talking about
Githeri - this is the maize and beans dish I was talking about
And Catherine has 13 Chickens, 12 Chicks and 2 Turkeys.
Anyway back to what we have been doing. Friday was pretty much the same as Wednesday and Thursday in terms of jobs. We gave the girls wash room its third coat and now it looks quite good. Its got to fully dry before an oil coat is put on it.
Saturday we took most of the morning to do washing. I don't know if I previously said but Catherine does not have a washing machine so everything is done by hand in bowls. So we spent the first 3 hours of the day doing that and even the Turkeys joined in by sipping the washing water and bathing their feet once we were done!
We then headed to Thomson Falls. Thomson Falls is the main tourist attraction of Nyharururu, and is an impressive sight. Its a 72m waterfall named after the Joseph Thomson who was the first white person to walk from Lake Victoria to Mombassia (impressive!). You can view the falls from above and also talk a walk down to the bottom. Its quite a steep walk down and by the time you get to the falls the mist envelopes you and it feels like its almost raining. And the rainbows that appear at the bottom are spectacular.
Some interesting things we saw when we walked down. The first was a Rock Dassie It looks quite like a beaver to me. However Catherine read from the Lonely Planet that it is actually related to Elephants. I find this hard to believe however! There were quite a few of them sitting on the rocks sunbathing and we were able to take some time out to photograph them. However the main attraction was the huge herd of baboons that we saw. Initially we saw them from the top of the falls on the other side, running around the fields and also across the stream at the top. However as we reached the bottom mnay of them had made their way down to the river and were crossing. They were all shapes and sizes including some really small baby ones. They amazing swung down rocks and trees, and we were only 30-40 metres away. However they are very fast so taking pictures was hard. But it was nice to see them.
We then made our way back to the top of the falls where we did our first lot of souvenier shopping and bartering. There are many stalls at the top all catering for tourists and everyone wanted you to visit them. They kept saying "I give you good price" but never told us how much they wanted. Rather they would set an outragous price and then ask us what we thought. Usually we just halved it, saw a shocked look on their face and then finally agreed something inbetween. All in all we came out quite well, learning some good tricks such as saying you can get it cheaper somewhere else, saying you'll visit another shop or come back another day, or just stick to your price. Nigel picked up two Maasai knives, I got some pictures on banana leaves and also some wooden carvings. Another big thing there was soap stone carvings. Catherine got free gifts for taking us to certain peoples stalls.
Anyway this is all I can write for now as the post office is closing. I'll hopefully come back soon and tell you how Sunday and today went but there isn't time. Take care everyone.
In case any of you noticed, I actually left some blanks in the last blog. I couldn't remember how to spell the words and was waiting for Catherine to fill them in. I then promptly forgot and published the blog before she arrived. So here they are:
Ugali - the maize mash I was talking about
Githeri - this is the maize and beans dish I was talking about
And Catherine has 13 Chickens, 12 Chicks and 2 Turkeys.
Anyway back to what we have been doing. Friday was pretty much the same as Wednesday and Thursday in terms of jobs. We gave the girls wash room its third coat and now it looks quite good. Its got to fully dry before an oil coat is put on it.
Saturday we took most of the morning to do washing. I don't know if I previously said but Catherine does not have a washing machine so everything is done by hand in bowls. So we spent the first 3 hours of the day doing that and even the Turkeys joined in by sipping the washing water and bathing their feet once we were done!
We then headed to Thomson Falls. Thomson Falls is the main tourist attraction of Nyharururu, and is an impressive sight. Its a 72m waterfall named after the Joseph Thomson who was the first white person to walk from Lake Victoria to Mombassia (impressive!). You can view the falls from above and also talk a walk down to the bottom. Its quite a steep walk down and by the time you get to the falls the mist envelopes you and it feels like its almost raining. And the rainbows that appear at the bottom are spectacular.
Some interesting things we saw when we walked down. The first was a Rock Dassie It looks quite like a beaver to me. However Catherine read from the Lonely Planet that it is actually related to Elephants. I find this hard to believe however! There were quite a few of them sitting on the rocks sunbathing and we were able to take some time out to photograph them. However the main attraction was the huge herd of baboons that we saw. Initially we saw them from the top of the falls on the other side, running around the fields and also across the stream at the top. However as we reached the bottom mnay of them had made their way down to the river and were crossing. They were all shapes and sizes including some really small baby ones. They amazing swung down rocks and trees, and we were only 30-40 metres away. However they are very fast so taking pictures was hard. But it was nice to see them.
We then made our way back to the top of the falls where we did our first lot of souvenier shopping and bartering. There are many stalls at the top all catering for tourists and everyone wanted you to visit them. They kept saying "I give you good price" but never told us how much they wanted. Rather they would set an outragous price and then ask us what we thought. Usually we just halved it, saw a shocked look on their face and then finally agreed something inbetween. All in all we came out quite well, learning some good tricks such as saying you can get it cheaper somewhere else, saying you'll visit another shop or come back another day, or just stick to your price. Nigel picked up two Maasai knives, I got some pictures on banana leaves and also some wooden carvings. Another big thing there was soap stone carvings. Catherine got free gifts for taking us to certain peoples stalls.
Anyway this is all I can write for now as the post office is closing. I'll hopefully come back soon and tell you how Sunday and today went but there isn't time. Take care everyone.
posted by Unknown | 2:42 pm
1 Comments:
Tell Nige to drink more water. :)
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