Lake Baringo and corrupt customs

So this last weekend we cycled to Lake Baringo... which is a really big, fresh water lake in the Great Rift Valley about 280kms north west of Nairobi. Ok ok... we didn’t cycle ALL the way there, we started 120kms away and traversed the Tugan hills (which felt like an alpine mountain range) to get to the lake. It meant we were on our bikes for 8 hours!! What a long day.
But what a great weekend. We were in a group of about 25 (about half of us did the whole 120km) and we had support cars for the ride. We stayed at a camp that night where there were bandas and tents and cottages. It was a very well organised and social weekend. We had plans to ride on Sunday but the temptation to sleep in was too much. I really took a knock from Saturdays ride, I couldn’t keep my eyes open in the evening and I’m still feel tired today, 3 days later!
Can’t believe I did that for 8 days at epic. Guess I used to be quite fit?!!
Benedikt also feels his fitness has deteriorated... so we are in Get-Fit-and-Strong-Again mode now. Enough lie ins and pansy rides!

Benedikt had the worst day ever on Friday at customs. They have this stoopid system here where your WHOLE container has to be unpacked and inspected before being delivered. It took the customs people 7 hours to do this and poor Benedikt had to hang around the entire day at the dismal dock style tar area that stores all the containers. He was parched and sunburnt and VERY grumpy by the time he got home around 9pm. And get this, they still won’t release our container. They want to SAMPLE wine from some of the bottles we are bringing in?? WTF?!!!
The container is all packed up again (albeit very badly this time) and locked – Benedikt took a BIG padlock with him ;-) - and the wine is goodness knows where in there. And why the hell do they want to taste our wine?!! The bottles are sealed. Benedikt has got the European move company involved again as this must be customs being their corrupt selves. It sounds very fishy. He was after all, asked about 5 times on Friday for bribes?!!
Corruption in this country is so blatant. We have been stopped at road blocks where the policemen don’t even try to disguise the fact that they are asking for a bribe. So far we have only paid one - 200Ksh which is R20.... so we’ve been lucky!
So we may get our container delivered this week, maybe next week...
Karibu Kenya where everything is SLOW. (Benedikt’s worst nightmare!!)
One benefit of having no TV is that we go to bed early. After we’ve had supper there isn’t much to do. So I read a bit (loving that John Irving you got me Vicks!) while Benedikt surfs the net a bit and we are in bed by like 9pm. And we only get up at 7am. Except for mornings when we get up at 5:30 to go for rides. I LOVE getting all this sleep!


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