Hell's Gate National Park

Asante sana squash banana wewe nunu mimi hapana!

Hell's Gate National Park

Guess who watched The Lion King last weekend and then did a biking safari through Hell's Gate National Park, the place where a lot of the movie was based off of? These girls!

We don't look sore at all!

After ibuprofen-ing up post-Longonot (and watching The Lion King), we headed out early Sunday morning to Hell's Gate, an amazing national park and animal sanctuary about 1/3 of the way around Lake Naivasha from us. We rented bikes and a guide, and (after many seat adjustments) biked into the park! Here are the highlights:

1) It is totally like Pride Rock, with all sorts of animals grazing and frolicking all mixed together! Except no lions. Which is why there are so many animals (seriously, I think there were THOUSANDS of warthogs alone! So many pumbas! And baby pumbas!! Piglets as far as the eye could see!)

These guys clearly remember how to pose for a picture from all those musical numbers

Mama Pumba warning us away
from her piglets

2) Pride Rock doesn't really look like Pride Rock...but it's still huge and awesome! It's inhabited by rock hyraxes (which I think look like weird muppets) and not lions, which is good news for rock climbers who regularly scale this big ole rock.

I swear this is alive. And apparently not a muppet.

D'you think we can catch a muppet and hold it up like simba??

3) Giraffes! Zebras! Living in Naivasha is awesome!! The week at the hospital may be tough, but it's so great to live in an area where a 20 minute drive gets me to all sorts of fun adventures with my housemates. I've also realized that "Naivasha" and "Nashville" sound really similar...I hope there are this many giraffes in Nashville!

Whoooa zebra this is our road!

Daily question we ask:
Is that a shadow? A tree? No, a giraffe!!

4) After biking 8-10km (however far that is) you find yourself at the gorge (possibly where Mufasa died????And apparently where several movies have been filmed, like Tomb Raider 2?). The gorge is awesome, and trecherous--we did not get trampled by wildebeest but Michelle did sprain her ankle pretty impressively, which made the rest of the day quiet an adventure!

Climbing down, down, down with the dripping water

The gorge is big! Watch out for wildebeests!

 The ground was a mix of smooth rocks carved by millenia of trickling water (flash floods are more common than wildebeest stampedes, apparently), and volcanic ash, pumice, and obsidian (super cool!) that blasted its way down from Longonot long ago.

Michelle is still smiling, because I had ibuprofen!

5) The gorge has all sorts of devilish names--Devil's Shower (lots of geothermic activity in the area, including these HOT springs!) Devil's Bedroom (where baboons sleep at night on rock 'beds' that are heated from the steam of the hot springs), Devil's other things I've forgotten. No wildebeest were seen, though there were a few cows grazing on the steep incline as we climbed out (crazy cows!)

Wandering into some devilish place
--the rocks were so cool!

Devil's bedroom--beware baboons!
And lots of baboon poop!

Devil's shower! Very hot! Very sulfur-y!

It was a pretty fun day---I may do it again with the next group of residents if they go before I leave...as the rains keep falling the landscape is greening up and coming to life, with more and more animals  (and baby animals!) appearing each weekend. Doing non-car safaris is pretty fun, as long as you can steer clear of the buffaloes!

Our journey--minus the devil, thankfully