Hell's Gate

After a night of wine and wise guys at the Mercury Lounge, a motley crew of 10 of us headed out to Hell’s Gate National Park, just south of Lake Naivasha on Sunday. With Rinck in the lead, driving his SUV like an Indy car, we arrived out in the Rift Valley in about an hour. After some haggling with the bike rental guy, and then some more haggling with the Park Ranger, we were in. Although you can spend about two days traversing down the canyon, our destination was just several kilometers away at a place called Fischer’s Tower, The park was empty, except for a lone Kenya Wildlife Service employee with ropes, caribiners, and lots of rock climbing moxy. For the next 4 hours or so, we tried our individual hands on the rock, testing our muscles and our mettle. Some ascended, some dangled, and some just sat on their asses, but all seemed to have fun.

The day was clear with big billowy puffs breaking up the sun and funky sounding birds singing their songs. And, if that weren’t good enough, we were treated to a horde of baboons and a lone zebra as we headed back towards the gate. We then headed over to the colonial Naivasha Country Club for a some gin and tonics and a gluttonous buffet. But, before we could stuff ourselves silly, we headed down to the Lake to watch the sunset. And what we got was quite strange. We saw our first kill in the wild. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a lion or cheetah taking down a gazelle on the open plains, but a large dog humping a deer to death by drowning.

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