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Saturday night can be spent at Thompson Falls Lodge – nice big fireplaces for when it’s cold (this is the highest town in the country), good, if basic food, and a nice friendly bar. Oh, and the waterfall. Or you can skip the park, have lunch at Nyahururu, and head on straight through to Nyeri. You drive past the long hump of the Aberdare Mountains with Mount Kenya straight ahead of you most of the way. The Outspan is the poshest hotel, but I usually stay at The White Rhino – I really do have no idea why. It’s not really just because it’s cheap – I just like the way it is genteelly shabby, and the liveliness of the bar at weekends. This was the place, in 1957 (I think, my pal at KBL hasn’t got back to me yet), where the first African was allowed to buy and drink a bottle of beer made by Kenya Breweries. He had to have a letter from his employer, identifying him as a ‘native of good character'. Nyeri is pretty quiet, but has the grave of Baden-Powell who founded the Scouting movement (there’s a small museum in the Outspan Hotel, in the cottage where B-P spent his last days). Sunday allows a leisurely drive back to Nairobi, stopping for lunch at Blue Posts in Thika – go for the help-yourself buffet. They have two waterfalls there, and the inevitable craft village. A half-hour diversion can take you to Fourteen Falls, lovely when you get there, but signposting is all but non-existent. If you do this trip the other way around you can stop off for lunch on the Sunday at La Belle Inn at Naivasha. Go for the Fish Masala. Incidentally, Lake Naivasha makes a nice day out from Nairobi – it’s less than an hour away, and you can take the top road and climb high up the Escarpment, and get great views over the Rift Valley. Don’t stop at any of the View Points, as the people selling souvenirs will hassle you so much that it spoils the whole experience. Take your life into your hands and just park on the side of the road. There is another road that drops down off the escarpment at Kijabe (heading towards Narok and the Maasai Mara) – a nice fast road if you don’t get stuck behind one of the lumbering lorries that use it. As you get to the bottom of the hill, keep a look out on the right for the chapel built by Italian prisoners-of-war (presumably to keep their evenings busy when they weren’t building the road itself). The road around the lake is only tarred halfway, but there is a lovely little spot about ten-minutes past the end of the tarmac where you can get out and walk around a small dead volcano and watch large numbers of very pink flamingo on the very green lake inside the crater – it’s imaginatively called Green Crater Lake (hey, sometimes good ideas just aren’t there). There is a very exclusive camp site on the edge of the lake. If you continue around the very dusty road to complete the circuit of the lake, you can at least say that you have done it. Elsamere, the last home of Joy Adams, is just before the end of the tarmac section – arrive in time for afternoon tea, and take a due sense of awe and reverence with you. One very important thing to consider if you are thinking about visiting: do not believe everything the Foreign Office, or your local equivalent, says. Or the UN. Especially not the UN. They live in a rarified world where reality never intrudes. Yes, Kenya is a place where you have to exercise a caution in excess of what you might do at home – but ostentatiously displaying wealth in a country where, despite recent progress and development, many people still try to get by on about US$50 a month, is simply asking for trouble. In terms of a terrorist attack, the possible event that exercises so many thoughts these days, you are definitely more at risk in any European or US city. I think that these people sometimes overstate the problems to simply justify bonuses on their pay. What are you doing still sitting there? Oh, that? It means hurry-hurry has no blessing.. AUTHOR: Gareth Evans  TAGS: Travel world war Love government attack Food men africa BOOKMARK: Digg it | Add to Del.ICIO | Add to FARK ACTIONS: Comment Save Print Register free acount 
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