My Kiswahili teacher, Francis lives in Naivasha, on the banks of Lake Naivasha, the easternmost of the Great Rift Valley's "Great Lakes." Near Naivasha is Hell's Gate National Park, and pretty much every year he organizes a trip for the K students, but not through the program, to visit Hell's Gate.
On Friday afternoon we convened at campus to wait for our hired out matatu to arrive, over an hour late, and piled in for the hour-ish drive to Naivasha. At this point, whenever I get into a matatu, I've become conditioned to first check around the top of the vehicle for tweeters, implying the rest of a sound system. In this case there were four, a positive sign. When we plied the driver and conductor (in this case, essentially his friend who came along just to ride shotgun, normally the conductor (or tot) handles the money) to turn on the music, we were immediately greeted by bumps from the subwoofer, but a moment later we collectively realized that that was actually all that was playing. Upon further inspection, only one of the tweeters was actually connected to anything, and there was only one midrange speaker present in the car at all. Occasionally, the tweeter decided it would furnish us with the very top end of the music as well, and later, the midrange decided to make a little sound as well, but when it did randomly decide to work, the sub ceased to function. Honestly, reggae with only sub and occasional tweeter didn't bother me too much at all, it was mostly just funny that the system was so unusually constituted, although I think I was in the minority in feeling this.
We arrived in Naivasha around sundown, and met Francis at the supermarket, did some brief shopping for the weekend, aquired foods to cook Saturday for dinner, and a little bit of red wine. Then Francis accompanied us to our resort, which was an unusual, but not altogether surprising combination of campsite, hostel, and high class hotel. We were staying in basically a hostel room, a short walk from our outdoor bathroom and showers. Interestingly, not only did the bathrooms have toilets, but the showers also had hot water; although the entire bathing complex was made of corrugated steel and plastic. For dinner, we split a few delicious brick oven pizzas, which had nothing on Flatbread's but were far superior to the Kenyan approximation of pizza available at Pizza Inn.
The next morning, not particularly early really, we readied ourselves for the trip's adventure... Hell's Gate. After a similarly delicious breakfast, we met a local who supplied us with thoroughly "experienced" mountain bikes of a rather basic sort, and explained to us that although we were students, we would not be able to actually get the student rate at the park, and instead would have to pay the standard mzungu rate, $25 american, instead of 400ksh ($4 american). At this, (the female) half of the group decided that they were no longer even going to go into the park, leaving only the boys to adventure.
After biking a few more than a few kilometers to the gate, and arguing thoroughly with the attendants to furnish us with either the student, or resident rate (both of which we would technically qualify for) we handed over 2700ksh each (200 for the bike) and rode onward to the gates of Hell.
As you enter the park, you first feel that you are just on a plain, this alone is pretty cool, because the Great Rift Valley is amazing, and the scale of the thing is completely impossible to convey properly. Just a little beyond the entrance, you crest a small hill and realize that the entire plain that you are standing in is in the bottom of a gorge, with cliffs several hundred meters tall on either side of you. Not only that, but the cliffs seem to go forever forwards, and as you continue, they meander back and forth, overlapping and intersecting with other gorges. About a kilometer from the gate is Fischer's Tower, a craggy spire standing on it's own in the middle of the plain. The entire park is a rock climber's dream, and the three of us came somewhat prepared. Some of our friends at the Mountain Climbing Club of Kenya actually happened to be in the park this weekend, and they were not the only group on the walls. Being only somewhat prepared, we just bouldered for a little while, never getting more than a few feet off the ground, but having some fun.
So, a little more on the Great Rift Valley. The valley is so large that not only can you see a storm coming in the clouds, you can actually see the rain, sometimes seemingly just over there, but still hours away. I bring this up, because at this point we spotted a storm, just over there, ending our plans of possibly meeting up with our MCK friends, as being on a wall in the rain sounded significantly less than fun. Climbing now removed from our agenda, we began pedaling again, meandering deeper into the gorge, skirted on either side by incomprehensibly large cliffs, only countered but the incredible width of the plain therein.
Eventually, the rain came, and in force, suggesting to us that we might have to trundle the not trivial distance back to the gate, and then to our camp in the rain. After pouring for long enough to make some pretty significant puddles, the rain petered out and cleared up again, and by the time the sun came back, the puddles had pretty much disappeared into the permanently parched ground. An eventuality not foreseen in our gloomy prognostications of hours of pushing our bikes back through mud puddles and pouring rain.
Our maxima for distance into the park was The Hell's Gate Gorge viewing area. The gorge is absolutely immense and incredibly beautiful as well. Picture a gorge about the size of the Delaware Water Gap, and then put it at the bottom of a valley that makes it seem tiny by comparison. Opposite the viewing area is another massive stone obelisk, several times the size of Fischer's Tower, perched above the intersection of two veins of the gorge.
The trip back to camp was long, but not too bad really, my hands are still sore from the lack of shocks on my bike, but overall the biking wasn't too bad, and was far preferable to being in a car. On the way back to camp we saw several herds of Gazelle, just hanging out in the plain, zebras, and even a giraffe. We also passed a Masai herdsman tending his goats and sheep (the parks are still open to traditional use a pasture for locals).
At the entrance to the park we picked up firewood, crudely attached it to my backpack and returned home to begin fixing dinner. Somewhere along the line we decided to make dinner for ourselves on Saturday, but literally our only tools for doing so were our fire, a single pretty dull knife and not nearly enough tinfoil. Before long this turned into an interesting game of don't burn your fingers on the foil as you try to adjust or retrieve your food. The dearth of tinfoil resulted in cooking the potatoes directly in the coals. In the end though, we made some pretty tasty food, roasted assorted veggies, roasted meatballs, baked (roasted) eggplant, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, and some stick roasted sausages (perhaps the first I've ever actually eaten).
Today we returned in the same, stereo-questionable matatu, this time with only tweeter. So, this weekend I literally rode through Hell's Gate(s), and with this visit under our belt, we're pretty sure we will be planning further adventures, probably with a good deal more adventure and a little less resort.
