Lake Naivasha Flying Visit
The cache is hidden, with the kind permission of the manager, in the extensive grounds of an old colonial hotel on the edge of the lake, which was famous between 1932-1946 as a staging post for the Imperial Airways flying boat service from London to Durban.
See here for a fascinating history of this company, its operations and fleet of 26 aircraft. Imperial Airways was merged into the British Overseas Airways Corporation in 1939.
See also here for a more personal history & some more photos of flying boats used on the East Africa – South Africa route.
The planes used for the East & South Africa service was the 4-engined Short Empire, ‘C’ class or Imperial Flying Boat. They were all christened with names beginning with C, the first being G-ADHL Canopus – see gallery photo and here for further details of the types and specifications of the aircraft used.
In 1939 Imperial Airways pioneered in-flight refuelling experiments which took place over the English south coast from Ford airfield in Sussex. The gallery photo shows one of these flights with Empire boat Cambria (G-ADUV) being refuelled by an Armstrong-Whitworth AW.23 bomber.
See the gallery photos also for an image from the April 1938 Imperial Airways timetable – which has an interesting note at the foot of the page which mentions Naivasha (amongst others) as a possible southbound stopping place - in the right circumstances!
See here for background information on Naivasha as an air stop-over or long-haul destination!
Some interesting facts about this short era in Kenya aviation history:
- The hotel, originally called Sparks Hotel when it opened in 1937, had boarding facilities for arriving passengers and became was one of the best known in the region
- Naivasha was Kenya’s first international airport!
- The flying boats service ended when advances in aviation technology allowed large planes to land on land
- 1958 was the turning point for Naivasha, when Boeing unveiled their 707, and Mau Mau prisoners finished construction of Embakasi Airport, the predecessor to today’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport
- Naivasha was a good choice as it had one of the best railway stations and the lake was of no interest to fishermen after a series of ecological blunders in 1926 saw the introduction of a voracious predator, Micropterus salmoides (large-mouthed bass) that diminished the indigenous fish species
- When the first route via Naivasha was inaugurated in January 1932 it was supposed to be a mail-only route to Cape Town. But three months later, the lake was opened to passengers and it took a week for a flying boat from Britain to reach Naivasha and ten days to Cape Town!
- With an average estimated depth of 6m in the 1930s the runway was easy to mark -even today some of the runway wooden posts may still be visible when lake levels are low
- Passengers would sometimes land in Uganda’s Lake Albert for lunch and dinner before flying to Naivasha the next day
- The airport closed down in 1949 and Sparks Hotel lost its place on the international map. It became simply Lake Hotel before becoming the Lake Naivasha Country Club
- The hotel was a secondary school for a while during the 1940s after students at the then Prince of Wales (now Nairobi School) were relocated and their school turned into a military hospital
- The foundations of the Terminal and Customs shed can still be seen today on Crescent Island. It was also pictured on Kenya postage stamps from 1949 to 1952.
To find the cache:
Take the Moi South Lake Road for about 2km SW from the junction with the Naivasha-Longonot-Mai Mahiu road to S00 45.815 E36 26.041, and turn right down the approach driveway to Lake Naivasha Country Club.
At the entrance gate/boom, you will need to pay a small day membership fee (KES 200/adult, 100/child)
Pass through the reception area to the large lawns at the rear which lead down through acacia woodland and along a raised walkway to a lake-side jetty. There are numerous bird species to be seen, especially around the jetty and in the woodland so make sure you have your binoculars handy – also useful as a stealth tool of course!
Keep your eyes peeled for rather larger creatures too, especially towards evening, when the local hippos leave the lake for land-based nocturnal grazing activities.
The cache, a small screw-topped cylindrical tablet pot, is hidden at about head height inside the obvious place under some bark pieces. When retrieving and replacing the cache, please take care to ensure you are not observed – making appropriate use of binoculars and/or camera as your stealth props . . . thanks!