Morning Tea in Tigoni

We finally did it!

About a year ago, I set out to learn to haul a trailer. A riding buddy offered to let us use his trailer as needed, so I had a hitch and an electrical connection put on my Toyota Prado, and I took a few trips up and down the road, then a bit further afield to taste traffic, and we were good to go.

The main motivation was so that Jane and I could take our horses to Tigoni to ride. It didn't take me long to learn how to drive with a trailer behind (just don't watch me back up). Since then, I've gotten sucked into the whole horse show racket, so it's been a useful skill. But that dream of ours -- riding our own beloved horses in our most favorite corner of Kenya -- was elusive.

But, as I keep telling myself, this is my year to do it all -- cram in as much Kenya and as much horse as I can. So on Friday, our scyce Peter and I took the horses next door for a refresher course in loading. That went about as well as could be expected, though no actual injuries resulted, and at 8:30 Saturday morning we set off.

Tigoni is only about 20 minutes by car from our end of Nairobi. To get there, you go through Little Banana and Banana proper, past the Kentmere Club and up to the top of a ridge. You come down the ridge and turn a corner and...breathtakingly....you are presented with a green landscape of acacias, huge fig trees, and tea. It screams AFRICA.

We had permission to park the trailer at a beautiful farm next door to where Jane and her family rented a house for years. We unloaded, Peter tacked the horses up, and then Jane and I set off for two-plus hours of riding on red soil paths through tea, trees, and maize.

We stopped first for a photo op in front of some over-the-top flame trees in exuberant bloom. Joya thought they might be good to eat so she backed me right into the branches.

Still feeling like that 29-year-old endurance rider is breathing down our necks, we did a lot of trot work. The girls bravely confronted such terrors as cattle eating rustly corn stalks in a frighteningly noisy fashion, donkeys giving them that scary "we are more alike than you want to admit" look, and children kicking around a soccer ball made of brightly colored plastic bags wound up tight and tied with twine.

Back in the trailer, Joya (who is not entirely sure about trailers) looked for some reassurance from Beauty, who is definitely the big sister in the relationship, and Jane and I spent the whole drive back asking ourselves why we had waited so long, and planning to come back every chance we get.