There is much to see in the Thika area, and time spent in the Thika area is well worth the trouble. There is the beautiful Ol Donyo Sabuk National Park, described previously, and while I ran out of time and didn’t get to Lord Macmillan’s home or the home of Jomo Kenyatta, I had a lovely visit to two other attractions in the area.
One was the famous Fourteen Falls, a favorite attraction for many local people, and it was lovely to be there on a Saturday afternoon and see so many people enjoying themselves. The waterfalls are an amazing sight, and while the local boys are anxious to pick up a few extra shillings by taking you out in the water for a ride in their boats (none of which looked particularly secure to me), I declined. I also declined the offer from one fellow to go to the top of the falls and dive in (“It won’t cost you much,” he said, but I wasn’t so sure – if he were knocked dead from the fall, where would the blame land, I wonder? Would I suddenly become an “accomplice” in a local’s death in a foreign country? Not a chance I wanted to take!).
Also well worth the visit (but not really an attraction in the safari-travelling sense of the word) is the lovely Blue Post Hotel just on the edge of Thika, with its own splendid waterfalls. Actually, the waterfalls – both of which seem to be artificial to me (one has a highway going across it) – are lovely to look at, but I think the hotel simply happens to be there. Nevertheless, it’s a very special place to go for an early dinner before the long drive back to Nairobi, and there’s no question about it: falling water does provide a certain ambiance that can’t be found in any other experience. (View my photos here.)