Trip to Naivasha
(Longonot Volcano and Hell’s Gate)
Four of us decided that a trip to Naivasha was a good idea,
especially for me as I have been in Kenya over a year and had never
visited.
We hired a car and drove via Narok, this journey took us
through the lush green areas by Kerricho, the savannah planes near Narok and
eventually arriving in the dark at Naivasha.
We stayed at the Crayfish Camp as all our other options were fully
booked. Kie had booked on the Wednesday
for 2 rooms for 2 nights, but as usual things didn’t get written down in their
books that way and we only had one night confirmed.
We were told that we were going to be shown
to our rooms, so followed a man to the rooms.
He was walking quite fast, but none of us thought anything of it. Then he opened the door and we followed him
in. I asked, “Are you sure this is our
room, as there is a bag already in it?”
One of the other girls asked the question, “But where is the other bed?” It turned out we had just followed a fellow
guest into his room and he was not working at the hotel at all!!! Opps. (Wonder
what he was thinking!!?)
We went to Carnelly’s for dinner just down the road and
gorged ourselves on an amazing selection of food; Pizza, Nachos, Crayfish,
Samosas (one flavour was camembert and bacon…. Absolutely to DIE FOR).
The next day we ate breakfast and asked about the room for
that night, they said that most likely we could stay but were not all that
convincing! So we left for Longonot
Volcano.
Thankfully the day was a little
cloudy so it wasn’t unbearably hot. The
first part of the hike was to the volcano rim, this meant walking up 2 very
steep hills. The ground was a mixture of
slippy sand and volcanic rubble which made walking a little hard and at times
needing to use our hands to climb certain parts was necessary. This was not a simple stroll.
Once at the rim, we took a short rest before setting off to
walk around the whole rim. (Total hike
that day was 21km…although I’m sure it was further!) Most people who had climbed up were not
walking the whole rim so this section was much quieter. There was one large peak
that was almost as high as the walk to the rim, at one point we were actually
rock climbing, with the rim only being a few feet wide. The views from the top were unbelievable, you
could see 360 degrees, lake Naivasha and back towards Massai Mara, it was
beautiful.
Walking back down was the interesting bit, as many parts I
found myself sliding on my ass. Crazy
Kenyan’s were actually running and jumping these parts, but that seemed like a stupid
idea to me.
We got back to Crayfish and rather than ask them if we had a
room I just approached the desk and asked for room keys 28 &29, they gave
the keys, no questions asked! :)
We decided the food at Carnelly’s was so great that we wanted to eat there
again. I was trying to explain my
friends about the Kenyan Cowboys (KC’s), who are basically the rich white playboys
of Kenya, born and bred but are notorious for being drunk, rude and
annoying. There were some in the bar and
when we wanted to leave one KC rushed over to buy us drinks and make us
stay. Needless to say that one drink
turned into several and before we knew it, it was 5.30am!!!
Two hours of sleep later we woke up to eat breakfast, see Hell’s
Gate and drive all the way back to Kisumu!!!!!
(It was going to be a long tired day.)
However once getting to Hell’s Gate and starting to walk, I felt much
better. Hell’s Gate is the place that
the Lion King is based on and also Tomb Raider was partly filmed there, you can
see why it is such an awesome place to use for filming. We walked through these tight gorges and saw
thermal springs; in fact there is a huge thermal system that is being used as a
source of power for Kenya.
Finally we had to make the 6/7 hour journey back to Kisumu,
thankfully there were 2 of us driving so we could take it in turns. That kept me awake and the fact I had 3 cans
of Redbull! The journey was pretty uneventful
until we had an incident where the car half fell off the tarmac road, where
there was a good foot drop and as the car tried to get back on the road, one
tire was stuck and we started to swerve into the middle of the road as a truck
was coming in the opposite direction. I
definitely think the word “FUCK” came out of my mouth from the back seat. We survived but 5 minutes later, of course
one of the tires was completely busted.
Stuck in the middle of nowhere, raining hard and becoming
quickly dark. We tried to figure out the
jack, but it was just rubbish. The spare
wheel had a ton of rips in it and also bulged horrifyingly in places, but we
had no choice. We managed to flag
someone over, who literally saved us from sleeping in the car. He came with his jack, in fact in the end we
had to use both jacks!! But the tire got
replaced and we steadily carried on home, in the dark.
Thank you to Gideon for saving our asses and
being a helpful Kenyan when the Wazungu’s were too stupid.
