to Iten: a little cheating up the hill and a fancy resort for us

August 6, 2015

"Are you two married?" We have stopped at the side of the road and men gather and one asks us questions. "How old are you?" he asks Patrick. Then he looks at Rachel. "Ahh, he is younger than you?"

We consider today to be half of a rest day. As we are older, we have discovered we can still cycle tough climbs, but the recovery takes longer. From yesterday's climb and looking ahead to what we will do to Eldoret and Kitale, we decide to take a ride up to Iten. And this ended up being a very good decision.

The start of the day was a 15kms downhill. "How quickly you can lose 800 meters, how slowly it takes to gain." Patrick says. We cycle across the Kerio Valley and cross the Kerio River to Biretwo where the climb up to Iten begins. We are at an intersection and Patrick sees an empty matatu and negotiates a fare. Quickly bikes and gear are loaded and we are off. "We have our own matatu!" Patrick says.

We are dropped off in the middle of the busy market town. A muzungu approaches, John Paul is a Belgian and the owner of the Kerio View Hotel. His hotel is out of our price range, we ask him for recommendation of other guesthouses. As we are checking them out, he finds us and offers us a staff room at his hotel for a good price.

The hotel is a couple kms out of town with beautiful landscaped grounds and fantastic view. Lunch is also fantastic, a huge portion of beef fillet with mushroom sauce, rosemary potatoes, vegetables, carrot-orange-raisin salad and strawberry milkshake!

Patrick has been able to catch-up with uploading pictures. Tonight for dinner lasagne, a fire crackling in the fireplace and listening to great music.

Kabarnet early in the morning. Still a dusty busy town.

We lose about 800 meters of our hard-won elevation down to the bottom of the Kerio Valley. Across the valley we can see the cliffs on top of which lays Iten, the town we are aiming for today.

After 15 km downhill and about the same slightly back up the real climb starts. We quickly hussle into a matatu, which was actually going the other way, for a lift up to Iten.

Steak for lunch at the Kerio View resort, a place normally way out of our budget. We ran into the Belgian owner who offered us a staff-room at a great price.

Today's ride: 34 km (21 miles)
Total: 5,252 km (3,261 miles)

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