I didn't start the day off feeling well. The weather outside was overcast and there was rain lightly sputtering on the ground. There wasn't much food in the house. And someone did not hydrate enough at the party on Friday night. (Kerry's commentary:) All of these conditions made going hiking in a place called Hell's Gate all all the more appropriate.
Earlier in the week we had heard about this place called Hell's Gate National Park in the Rift Valley that had great hiking. It sounded like our kind of place, so we had Peter's brother Jimmy take us there on Saturday because we still don't have our car.
For a little background, the Rift Valley--sometimes called the Great Rift Valley--is located in Western Kenya and is part of a larger fault line that runs from Syria to Mozambique and contains some of the land that historically has belonged to Kenya's famous nomadic tribe, the Masai. I was always under the impression from looking at a map that the RV was further outside of Nairobi. But after only 30 mins of driving, we entered into it:
Once we arrived at the park, we really didn't know what to expect or where to go, as evidenced by the next series of events. We start driving through the park and immediately see warthogs, zebras, a couple giraffes, and numerous springbok and antelope. I wasn't even aware there were going to be animals in the park.
We also encountered numerous people on mountain bikes riding around, another thing we didn't know would be there. Once we established that the park allowed the peaceful mingling of animals and mountain bikes, we both agreed that touring the park on a bike was a must for our next visit. Bumping along the gravel road we came upon a big rock spire set up with rock climbing gear and two Kenyans smoking cigarettes on a picnic bench.
It's important to point at that neither Kerry nor I have ever done any type of rock climbing before, ever; the closest has been at the top of Old Rag Mountain in the Shenandoah, but as most of you reading this know, that doesn't really count. So why we decided that our first time scale some rocks would be in the middle of nowhere Kenya is beyond me, but before we knew it, we were suiting up and heading for the top.
Heart rate still elevated from the climb, we got back into the car and pressed on to the trail head….
Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion to The One Where We Travel to Hell's Gate in the next post.
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