Juliet's Kenya Days blog

Letter from Juliet to Nanny & Grandad 2 Feb 1976 –

We have just been away for a camping holiday in the wild with other families by some caves. We all went into one of the caves which was fun. We went in a ‘crawl’ which is a small tunnel about 2 ft high. It was lined with sponge though. We also went down a ‘chimney’, a downward tunnel, and saw some cairns which had not been made by the people who discovered the cave. We went into a cavern called the Chocolate Cavern which had small stalactites the colour of chocolate. In another place the roots of a fig tree had come through. Helen and I also went in another cave where there were hundreds of bats and as we walked along they kept knocking into our heads so we crawled on dry but smelly bat guano (guano is the bats waste products). In these caves most of the bat guano has been mined out for fertiliser which was sold in Nairobi. Altogether we had a lovely weekend.

Letter from Judy to Nanny & Grandad 7 Feb 1976 –

Last weekend we went down to the Chyulus about 120 miles towards Mombasa and camped out in the wild in some lovely scenery. Graham did some real caving with the Kenya Caving group and the children and I pottered through part of the lava cave which has been opened to the public – it was really most interesting and far more spacious than I had imagined a lava cave would be and the walls and ceiling mostly appeared to be coated in liquid dripping chocolate ! One of the cavers has mining rights to the area and makes his living by mining the bat guano and selling it as a fertiliser. This means that there is a passable track to the cave and we were able to take the minibus right there. It’s a pity there is no water in the area as it is really lovely. There is a Maasai manyatta just down the hill but it is only used in years of exceptionally high rainfall so we were able to have a good look around. The children were fascinated by the huts which are only about 5 ft high and made of sticks and dung and completely windowless. The reason for this we discovered when we went inside – they are amazingly cool – obviously dung is a good insulator because it was probably a good 100 °F in the sun outside. Inside were two tiny rooms largely filled with 2 beds made of springy branches. How the Maasai, who are one of the tallest tribes in E.Africa, fit themselves in I don’t know.

Letter from Helen to Grandma and Grandad 16 Feb 1976 –

The entrance (of the cave) we went in was the main one which tourists go in and it had steps down to it. It was a large hole and inside had lots of sacks. The sacks were full of bats guano (bats dung in other words) and the path was lined with stones. Further on we came to a place where bats guano had collected for centuries. Bats guano feels like sand. After we had been in that cave we went to some caves over the hill. They were called Skull Caves. When we got to the entrance there was a horrible smell. It was the bat guano and there were hundreds of bats.

Letter from Judy to Tony & Barbara 24 Mar 1976 –

We went to Ndeya at the weekend and Graham did some climbing with Brian and Alan while the girls and I scrambled around various rocks and enjoyed the peaceful surroundings. All the cavers including Graham are getting fit for their 10 day assault on Leviathan starting on 10th April. The van has just about recovered from the last trip to the Chyulus – 50 miles of bad corrugations on the pipeline road and miles of long grass which completely blocked up the radiator and engine.

Letter from Graham to Grandma & Grandad 3 Apr 1976 –

Next Saturday I am going to visit a long cave that is about 150 miles from here. It is a tunnel formed long ago by flowing lava and is over 5 miles long. I will be helping to survey the cave. In Kenya the only caving group is based in Nairobi and I recently joined this. Unlike British caves this one I am visiting is warm and dry and slopes quite gently downwards so we will not have a difficult time getting our survey done. This surveying will help us to find the length of the cave accurately as well as enabling us to make a reasonable map. It never gets far below the surface and there are a number of places where we can climb out and enjoy some daylight for a change.

Letter from Judy to Grandma & Grandad 15 April 1976 –

Graham is away at the moment on his 10 day trip to the Chyulus with the caving group. They spent a busy week last week collecting all their free gifts from all the firms that were sponsoring them. They are hopeful that the cave will prove to be of world record length (being a lava cave this is something in the region of 6kms so it’s no great length really) and this justifies all the sponsorship and publicity. I saw some slides of the area they are going to and it certainly is very beautiful and quite remote from any signs of humanity. The Chyulus are a very recent volcanic range and the area is dotted with cones, calderas and craters, often quite small. A lot of the lava is covered with forest and grassland but certain types don’t weather very quickly and stay bare black or grey rock. Jim Simons, the expedition leader, drove out to Kibwesi across country in his Landrover to phone up Francoise (his wife) in the middle of the week to let her know all was going well, so Francoise came up to see me on Friday. I was relieved to hear Graham hadn’t caught the flu from me though he never does get that kind of thing. Alison, Francoise & Jim’s 2 year old, speaks the most amazing mixture of French, English and Swahili and is a great favourite with our children.

Letter from Judy to Sue & Gravel 27 Apr 1976 –

Graham has just been on a 10 day expedition to survey a lava cave with the caving group. Everyone was pleased when it turned out to be of world record length (nothing like as long as limestone caves of course). Graham said there was a lot of interesting climbing, boulder ruckles and tight places but the worst hazards were the big game in the forest in which it was situated. The girls and I couldn’t go because the minibus was needed to carry in the groups gear, water etc which was a good thing because I managed to get flu and bronchitis from which I am only just recovering now.

Letter from Judy to Nanny & Grandad 7 May 1976 –

Graham says if by any lucky chance you still have the newspaper article about the Chyulus he would very much like to see it. As Secretary of the Caving Group he should have a copy but unfortunately didn’t hear that anything was printed in The Times until too late to get a copy out here and no-one we know has a copy out here regularly (not surprising as it costs about 60p a time). The Reuter people were responsible for distributing the news item to the various papers, so we knew nothing about if, when and where it would be printed. The Kenyan main newspaper is publishing a Supplement on the expedition next weekend, which Jim and Graham have still to write ! We have spent several evenings looking at hundreds of slides and photos taken – the ones I like best are of our van being pushed up the various hills ! There were 7 cavers and 4 porters – the porters’ job being to look after the vehicles at base camp and carry the water needed each day by the cavers from the camp to the cave, a distance of 4 or 5 kilometers partly through dense and big game infested forest. The cavers managed to finish all the surveying they wanted to do but only by working a 13 hour day, so it wasn’t exactly a holiday.

Letter from Graham to David 12 May 1976 –

I had an amazingly busy Easter holiday. To start with I went on a 10 day expedition to explore and survey a lava tube cave situated on the slopes of some hills half way to the coast from here. I was with six other cavers and we all worked hard and had a good time. It was a fascinating place with solidified lava on the floor and roof sections which had melted and looked as if they were about to flow and drip. In one place we found orange-furred bats living and in another there were big fruit-eating bats.

Letter from Graham to Grandma & Grandad 24 May 1976 –

You may have received a newspaper we sent by 2nd class airmail telling of the cave exploration I was doing in the Easter holiday. We sent the whole paper because you might like to read it all. There is a picture of me making tea in one of the adverts.

Letter from Judy to Nanny & Grandad 26 May 1976 –

The caving trip has achieved considerable fame in Kenya mainly thanks to the paper’s coverage and it looks like the costs will be easily covered by selling the story to various newspapers and commission from adverts. I hope you noticed Graham in the marg advert ! We earned some dollars by an interview with a fellow from the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday ! Sometimes I think the world must be very short of newsworthy items ! Anyway it is all quite amusing.

A full report of cave exploration in Kenya at this period, including this trip can be found on: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bf7f/6482a4ffd4c44f47e6d206c3d652aca9bde5.pdf

And also in: http://www.vulcanospeleology.org/1998.pdf

Letter from Graham to Nanny & Grandad 22 June 1976 –

We have had a 4 day holiday from school which we spent camping. This time we took Mr Black the cat with us. He hated the noisy travelling but eventually succeeded in getting to sleep. On arrival he was quite funny, exploring everything and jumping about. His holiday turned out well after all ! There were hardly any big animals about but I suppose there were little ones for a cat to trace. He is also interested in catching insects but I don’t know how he got on with the different kinds he met there. We saw beautiful locusts – bright green and red or occasionally white and magenta. Kenya doesn’t have plagues of locusts as far as I know. We saw many beautiful butterflies and some liked to rest on our cushion or on us as we lay reading. Our campsite was beside a relatively small volcano crater in the Chyulu Hills and when the mornings were clear we were treated to a beautiful view of Kilimanjaro, itself an extinct volcano. It was interesting to note the changes of snow cover which occurred from day to day on Kilimanjaro.

Judy and the girls clambered around the rim of ‘our’ volcano, pushing through the bushes in some places and in others climbing steeply on the rock. I was resting at camp, not being quite well, and was able to wave at them at their highest (and furthermost) point of the journey. They looked like tiny match-stick men silhouetted against the bright sky.

Letter from Judy to Nanny & Grandad 2 July 1976 –

I think Graham told you about our successful holiday in the Chyulus – we found it a beautiful and peaceful place and much enjoyed ourselves, although Graham was hampered by catching a tummy bug of some kind. We did quite a bit of walking, exploring the volcanic craters and Juliet had some exciting encounters with snakes as she was usually in the lead. As we wore trousers and boots there was little danger but Juliet’s shrieks certainly shattered the peace ! As the snakes were at least as horrified as Juliet I never had the opportunity to see one. We found a lovely little cave on ‘our’ crater inhabited by three bats, and as it was very small we were able to watch them closely – they didn’t seem alarmed by our presence except when one flew into my hair – their radar system is obviously very precise as they would fly extremely close to us but just not touch – I imagine hair doesn’t come out well on radar. Graham spent much of the time in camp resting and enjoying the view of Kilimanjaro directly opposite and about 30 miles away – he said watching the snow cover change as the cloud moved over at different times during the day was fascinating.