Monday, July 7, 2014

More AT

Some abseil training underway at the camp 
A great few days with some Adventure Training lots going on throughout RVA at the moment. We are in the dead of winter at the moment with our position on the equator although it feels remarkably similar to summer to me. A team from Brunie has just returned from a good trip on the mountain getting all but one on the summit of Lenana with the help of our regular guide Bernard via the Timau route. This was a Duke of Edinburgh trip where the group cooked and looked after themselves in the mountains. We also have a group from Taiwan who are down in Arusha, Tanzania. They are on a more service orientated trip and will be down there for a while. Arusha is often the staging post for Kilimanjaro and is a nice place, the main thing I remember from some years ago now was a ‘duka’ where you could buy a brown paper bag from a wooden shack full of meat which after a trip up Killi was the tastiest bag of meat I had ever had and spent from there to Lake Manyara chewing the gristle, much to the disgust of the vegetarian teacher accompanying the group.

Into the blue pools 
The adventure training which has just passed was a great course where we where able to build on delivering the learning and transferable skills required. We did this at the canyon and climbing site and also on the variety of things we have at the Ol Pejeta camp. A fit bunch who would run into the canyon and made me concerned that should we be attacked by Elephants I might be the one straggling off the back of the herd that always gets it in nature programmes but I managed to keep pace and stay at the front, although there where periodic waits to collect the armed ranger who comes with us and was finding the abrupt change of pace from the norm a little hard to cope with. The guys would take this as a quick fag break while he regained himself and then set off again at warp speed!