Skip to main content

Day 15: The Waterfall, Water Rafting

The day began with an elaborately laid breakfast at 9am. The camp opposite our own got visited by a famous orangutan, called Jackie and her young. So we went to check them out.

Add caption
We played in the water for some time, then we crossed the river a couple of times to the waterfall. The waterfall was beautiful, cool, refreshing. At the waterfall, I was crowned the Lord, King Raja himself by one of the guides. He made kingly garb from leaves and vines. We played some more in the water, and then went back to our campsite.

We had a fruit snack, lunch and then broke camp. We rafted down the river to our hotel. It was loadsa fun. We competed with the other teams to get to the hotel. Having started last, our raft boat was able to make up for the lost time, and was leading at some time. In the end, we came second after a closely-fought battle with the leading team.

We got back to our rooms, and I changed and I am here writing this post. We are supposed to prepare for our return to Manado then to lake Toba. 

At 9.30pm, we left in our Parisawata bus headed for Manado. On the way, we dropped off Annisah who was to visit her uncle during our lake Toba trip. I tried to sleep in the bus, but it was very difficult due to the bumpy nature of the trip. We got to the outskirts of lake Toba at 5.30am, but we had to wait until 6am to get on the ferry to our hotel.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Opportunities and challenges presented by the AfCFTA

President Kenyatta joined other African heads of state on March 21 in signing the #AfCFTA. What does this mean for Kenya? It means that Kenya's goods and services could have a broader market to sell to. It also means that locally made goods and services will face increased competition from similar products in the African market, especially if other countries have a comparative advantage. What is the projected net effect of these two sides of trade? Well, it's difficult to predict. It depends on which goods are on the schedule of reduction of tariffs both for other countries and Kenya. Pres. Kenyatta signs the AfCFTA Image courtesy of PSCU   Looking at other similar regional pacts such as North America's #NAFTA or the EU, we can see that trade between countries increases many fold. But as in the case of Mexico which saw the bankrupting of peasant farmers due to cheap corn and other agricultural produce from subsidized American farms, the aggregate effect might be po...

How well-meaning parents ruined us

Growing up, it was common for our parents to encourage us and tell us how we could be anything we wanted in life. "You can do anything you set your mind to do!" They would cheer us on. "Even the president?" We'd ask unconvinced. "Yes, you could even become the richest man in the world!" All this fascinated us. We vowed to ourselves that we'd in fact become people of substance who would be recognized in the entire world for our achievements. We'd ride in super-yachts like Abramovich and the rest of the mega-rich. We would produce life changing inventions, innovating our way to stardom. We'd become the next prodigy in music and sports. All this is well and good, meant to lift our spirits. Assessing our lives however, no matter how much effort we have put in to realize our dreams and visions, they have eluded us. We have become adept at doing other things though: commenting on FB posts, retweets, identifying the hottest political issue...

Day 2: To Bali, New Year's Eve

We spent most of new year's eve in transit. We left Ibis Styles Hotel at 10.30am, got to Jakarta international airport, got our tickets to Denpasar (in Bali) and left for Bali about 2.30pm (about 30mins late due to air traffic density at the airport) In transit at Jakarta Airport domestic departures; after check-in on the way to Denpasar Photobombed by Tom Hilde and Tom Jones We arrived in Denpasar around 7pm, where we met with Sunday who had arranged our transportation to Ubud. It took us the next hour and a half weaving through ever narrowing roadways towards Ubud, which is our home for the next six days. The driving in Bali immediately reminded me of Nairobi. Traffic wasn’t too bad, but driving a car involved checking both sides of the mirror because scooters, mopeds and motorbikes weave in and out of lanes at breakneck speed, with little warning or caution. Further, while passing huge vehicles like buses and lorries, our drive honked twice to let the other car know...