Jan 8th Hell's Gate National Park

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We had the weekend free to travel. Sara, Mehdy (resident fron LVHN) and 3 med students from Indiana Univ and well as 4 PharmD students from Purdue piled into 2 cars. We drove about 4 hours to Naivasha which is about 60 min from Nairobi. The road was filled with trucks, potholes and crazy drivers.
First stop was Hell's Gate: Hell's Gate National Park lies south of Lake Naivasha in Kenya, north west of Nairobi. Hell's Gate National Park is named after a narrow break in the cliffs, once a tributary of a prehistoric lake that fed early humans in the Rift Valley (as per Wikipedia).
It was after lunch when we got started and went on an 8 mile bike ride. Sara, as some of you may know, hasn't been on a bike since my beard became grey, so you can imagine her trepidation when she picked out a mountain bike and started to ride on the rocky gravel trail. At some points one could see Sara kicking her bike and screaming, but for the most part she made it through a rocky terrain in good shape. I am not, however, ready to buy her a bike for PA. We did see zebras and other animals on the bike ride but not an abundance of wildlife.
By time we finished the ride it was about 2 pm and over 80 and bright sun.

After fueling up with some water, etc we started a 2 hr hike through the Hell's Gate Gorge. There were hot and cold springs and alot of up and down climbing through the George. Scenery was very nice and we all got a little muddy and wet. There was a group of Kenyan students on a class trip behind us; the guys were dressed in white shirts, ties and sweaters in addition to black dress shoes..go figure.


After all this we were pretty hot and tired. We went back to our camp site. Sara and I shared a small cottage. The showers were hot for at least 10 minutes (oh,and Sara went first). We were served dinner and the tilapia and veggies were very good.

We were all pretty tired and headed off to bed..Sara did not take kindly to the malaria net!