October - December 2017 •
The Lion King
• 61
Photo Credit: www.ytourafrica.com
Photo Credit: www.ytourafrica.com
Photo Credit: www.ytourafrica.com
TRAVEL
of Owu-isin and the villagers assigned
two boys to lead us to the falls which
was over 3kms from the village. We
drove to a point and agreed it wasn’t
safe to continue pushing the bus fur-
ther down the road. We hiked the rest
of the journey to the most magnificent
waterfall, the roar of the falls could be
heard several metres from the falls.
We had to smartly manoeuvre our
way along the tiny ridges leading to
the waterfalls with deep valleys to the
side, it was an arduous task holding
on to branches in order to keep from
falling off, lol.
The water cascades down from a
height of about 330feet over outcrops
of rocks forming a huge stream at
the base. The water which comes
down sparkling white quickly turns
dirty brown as it joins the big stream.
We danced and allowed ourselves
of Esie. The legends have it that the
images were actual humans turned to
the stone by an angry god because
they were rebellious. The villagers were
worshipping the images till few years
ago when the practice was stopped
with the rise of the two religions of
Islam and Christianity. Archaeologists
differ and were of the belief that the
images were transported to the loca-
tion where they were found, details
of this was however sketchy since the
images were heavy and there was no
easy means of transportation over 200
years ago.
The images depicted people in dif-
ferent local costumes and interesting
postures, some of the images are bro-
ken with parts chipped off. Most of the
images have tribal marks with beads
around the necks of those believed to
be nobles and royals. Cameras are,
unfortunately, not allowed within the
premises, even the open area imme-
diately outside the museum building.
We were unable to have pictures
taken in the museum. We finally left
Esie for brunch in Ilorin and started the
4-hour fun ride back to the hustle and
bustle of Lagos.
*SOLA JEGEDE
is a Tour organiser for
YtourAfrica, a group of like-minded adventure
seekers interested in seeing the largely unexplored
natures in Nigeria and rest of Africa.
beaten thoroughly by the force of the
downpour, it was surprisingly calming
and almost therapeutic. We even-
tually started our hike back to the
bus after about an hour. The return
hike was against the gravity and it
was tougher than earlier, some had
to make several stops to catch their
breaths. We stopped by the village
again to pay homage to the chief
who requested that we assist to draw
government’s attention to the need
for infrastructural development in the
community to encourage more peo-
ple to explore the natural attraction.
DAY 3:
The next stop was the first national
museum in Nigeria, Esie museum. The
museum is located in the Esie, a town
located about 48kms from Ilorin. It was
established in 1945 and believed to
have the largest collections of soap-
stone images/carvings in the world.
The images were found under palm
tree at a groove outside the current
location of the museum and some
were excavated from the areas sur-
rounding the museum years later.
Hunter, Baragbon, was on a hunting
expedition when he discovered the
images and alerted the king, Elesie
