A weekend away
Sarah and I wanted to take a short trip to see some of the surrounding sites before she left and voted on going to a nearby lakeside town with a hotel built by a famous runner here – The Haile Resort. We weren’t really expecting much – a city, a lake, hopefully a decent hotel….this is Africa. Well, we pull up to this place and instantly realize that it is much nicer than we were expecting! That does not happen often here! The lake was absolutely gorgeous and the hotel….well, really, the resort, was situated right on the lake. Even by American standards, the hotel was really nice and new and modern. The hotel had an infinity pool (the kind that look like they don’t end, but keep on going) and outdoor cafe area, a spa, a couple of different restaraunts inside, lake access, a gym, and the real treat – wi-fi internet! In the rooms, we had flat screen TVs (its been a few months since I have seen one of those – or any TV for that matter), mini fridges, balconies viewing the lake, and a really nice bed and shower. We had been away from all of these American standards for so long that it was a little bit like country come to town. If people walked into an American hotel and got excited about internet and a TV, everyone would think they were crazy, but we were more than thrilled! The best part of it all was that it was considerably cheaper than anywhere half this nice that we could have stayed in America.
Rumor had it that there were hippos in the water of the lake we were at, so we of course had to take a little boat out to see them! We got into these “boats” a little fearfully and headed across the water to where the hippos lived. We got to see about 10 different hippos and a couple of them even put on a little show for us, sticking their heads up out of the water, carrying the babies around on their backs, and making lots of strange noises. They were massive! Our guide said that the largest one was 1 ton! I had never seen hippos before and I was quite thrilled to be as close as we were.
The highlight of the trip came the morning we were leaving. I was in the midst of googling one of Haile’s races when my supervisor called and said that Haile was right outside of our window. We had heard that he visited often, but I hadn’t let myself get my hopes up that he might actually be there while we were there. Even though I wanted a picture, I was too embarassed to ask for one, but my supervisor was not. Sarah and I each got our picture taken with him. He is a very very small man – I am 5’2” and you can see in the picture that he isn’t much taller than me. Sarah was actually taller than him! As we watched, he walked around the hotel, picking things up, asking his employees questions, checking the pool water, and greeting guests. To be the world’s fastest long distance runner, he is such a normal, everyday person. This will now be the second time in 4 months that I have seen him and had my picture taken with him. I never got the copy of that first picture though, so now I am proud to have my very own. It was pretty hard to wipe the smile off my face as we were leaving! #gallery-380-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-380-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-380-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-380-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */