Weekend Trips Part I – Longonot

Even when busy over the last two months with MCI work, I have still had some great weekend trips away, in Kenya. This is truly an amazing and beautiful country, with so much diverse landscape – coasts, desert, mountains, valleys, lakes, volcanoes.

One such weekend a few weeks ago, several friends and I drove an hour and half outside Nairobi, into the Rift Valley, to Longonot National Park. Mt Longonot is a dormant volcano rising 1000 meters above the Rift Valley floor. We hiked about an hour before we reached the rim of the volcano, then spent another four hours hiking around the entire rim, which included a steep (steeper than we expected!) climb to the very peak where we stopped to have a picnic lunch. Along the way, we saw very few other hikers. The views from atop Mt Longonot are stunning, you can see for miles and miles across the Rift Valley and toward Lake Naivasha – and it is quiet and peaceful, makes you feel like you are the only person on the planet! A nice respite from Nairobi and a little too much work!

(Picture: At base of Longonot with friends Salla (Finland), Christophe (France) and Sophie (Finland); Looking into the crater and then beyond, to the Rift Valley)