Christmas Day

So how did you spend Christmas day?  Did you wake bleary eyed, sleepily drawing back the curtains on a white washed landscape?  Did you huddle round the tree in your snug new Christmas pyjamas swapping presents and the stories attached to them?  Did you wrap up warm for the annual Christmas day walk as the turkey roasted in the oven?  All these traditions sound a million miles away from our Christmas day!

We started the day by sleepily stumbling down the gardens of Home St Jean, our little oasis at the beautiful Lake Kiev.  The sun was already high in the sky, glistening off the still waters as we quietly equipped ourselves for a morning swim.  Still drowsy with sleep we splashed into the cool waters, then bam!  Excitement, Christmas began.  We giggled and splashed, ducked and dived, celebrating our alternative Christmas morning.

Now wide awake we raced up the hill ready to open gifts and exchange stockings, all under the safety of a mosquito net!  We ate a la fresco, feasting on fresh fruit salad and crepes before setting off around the bay to a sandstone beach, the perfect place to spend our day.

Perched under the cooling canopy of parasols we pulled crackers, sang cheesy Christmas songs and thought contentedly about the ways our families would be spending their day, something tells me there’s be no long, luxurious afternoon outdoor swim on the Atherton’s or Jessop’s agenda…

Once the heat of the day subsided a little we ambled back to Home St Jean, red nosed and jolly, although probably not quite in the way you were (sun kissed skin and Rwanda’s stock trade lager Primus).  So we may have missed the snow, we may not have tuned into the Queen’s speech at 3.  The sitcoms and triple billing of Coronation St may have passed us by and John may have been wistfully imagining Turkey with all the trimmings but our Christmas in Rwanda was a delightful day full of merriment and joy.

Oh before I sign off let me just try to tell you about Lake Kiev.  It’s a stomach churning, vomit inducing bus journey to paradise.  The lake is bigger the all the locks in Scotland stuck together with cellotape.  Mountains climb up around it like geometric triangles of emerald green cultivated fields and burnt orange clay of the ground.  Wooden boats like once abandoned gondolas glide across the water, casting their nets out in search of sardines.  It’s like a little bit of Eden on earth, the vegetation is lush and fertile, the water stretches beyond the boundaries of your eye line.  And best of all?  It’s the perfect swimming temperature, the biggest pool in the world, and all to yourself!