Day 185

Sleeping location: Wagon Wheel Hotel, Eldoret, Kenya
Distance (km today/total): 88 / 12929
Estimated climb (m today/total): 700 / 95100 
Feels like: home

Day in three words: Six legged cow

In the morning we enjoyed a decent hotel breakfast, although didn’t get the chance to try the two different menu items “bread toast” and “toast bread” as neither was available. Then we went back on our route a bit to visit Kitale Nature Conservancy, with an accidental detour down a dirt track followed by the Conservancy not actually being where it was supposed to be. Once located, KNC was a nice quiet bit of park/garden with some domesticated animals roaming free and other (more dangerous) animals in enclosures. We saw:

-Lions and hyenas talking to each other, possibly plotting an escape

-Tortoises with a 6ft fence in case they tried to escape

-Ostriches actually trying to escape by eating their fence, which was only as high as the tortoise fence and they could probably jump over it anyway if they wanted to. 

-Some absolutely insane cartoonish sculptures of all kinds of bits from the bible

The internet had trumpeted the collection of “deformed animals” but we hadn’t seen any, so we asked and were pointed to the domesticated animals roaming free. On closer inspection we discovered two cows with space hopper sized udders, one with a twisted skeleton, one with weird stumpy legs, and the piece de resistance, one cow with SIX LEGS. The back two were useless and someone had tied them to the back (or middle) pair where they just dangled like loose stockings. Someone on google had left a review of KNC stating simply “I saw a cow with two mouths” but we did not find such a beast, and left.

To avoid going back via Kitale again we took a dirt shortcut, which was quiet and green and watery with some fun bumpy bits (alongside merely bumpy bumpy bits). Back on the main route the rolling hills, green grass and trees, hedges, narrow bumpy and dangerous driving was all very redolent of home, and at one point I even saw a rugby pitch. This all made me feel a bit homesick. The riding was quite nice once the road quietened down and we made good progress. A couple of random observations: every spare bit of fence or wall is festooned with huge painted adverts, mostly for Crown Paints (in a nice bit of circularity) or Safaricom; and there are loads of dairies selling milk, yoghurt and mursik (the horrible fermented milk thing) but NEVER ANY CHEESE which is a disaster as I really miss cheese. We decided to stop for lunch just as it started to rain, and immediately found a sheltered wooden structure with benches, so sat under that whilst the rain continued for exactly the length of our lunch. Couldn’t have gone better. 

After lunch it became a bit of a grind with mostly gradual uphill and a sometime headwind. The approach to Eldoret was too busy and not fun, especially after we merged with another road. Thankfully there was a shoulder/footpath thing to make it safer. The city centre was bustling and very traffic choked, something we hadn’t seen for a while. We wanted to stay centrally as we needed to visit the immigration centre, but our airbnb failed to reply so we had to stump up for a quite expensive, but also quite nice and historic, “wagon wheel hotel”*. We stumped up for further luxury at an Irish pub, where we had pork ribs and craft beer for the first time in ages. It was all pretty nice although there appeared to be a problem with the gas and all the beers came out flat like ales. The bill was big but it was probably worth it to get some pretty hard to find stuff. The rain whilst we were there, and on our walk back, was torrential once more. When will it end?

*So called because it was founded by Afrikaaners who had travelled by wagon to Eldoret to set up farms there.