The waiting game sucks, let’s play hungry hungry hippos

Everything went smooth with my return from Rwanda to Nairobi yesterday, and that meant Kat and I could have our adventure day today.

We booked a trip to Hell’s Gate National Park – I wanted to find somewhere that let us see the rift valley geology up close. It also offered a chance to do a little biking and a little birding – what’s not to love?

Our tour guide David picked us up around 7 for the two and a half hour drive out to Hell’s Gate. Traffic wasn’t too bad, but the road was very bumpy – it carries a lot of cross-border trade with Uganda, so gets pummeled by big trucks. At the entrance to the park, we picked up our second guide, Frederick. As in many places, only licensed guides are allowed to give tours inside the park, so David handed us off. We also picked out some bikes from among the large assortment.

The tour involved about 5 miles of biking to a gorge, then a little hiking, then a return bike ride. Along the way, we got great views of the cliffs, volcanic plugs, and other cool geologic features that Kat would describe in detail if she wasn’t asleep already. We also got to see all of the big animals that reside in the park – zebras, giraffes, buffalos, hartebeests, and various gazelles and antelopes.

The gorge that cuts through the park has waterfalls warmed by geothermal activity – some near boiling hot. Kat was in love with all the cool rocks and the complex system of sedimentary deposits, igneous rocks, and lots of stuff being smashed into other stuff.

After biking back out, we got some lunch, then went to the “boat safari” on Lake Naivasha, a huge freshwater lake teaming with birds. It’s also got a bunch of hippos, and an island that was stocked with animals like giraffes and ostriches for the filming of the movie “Out of Africa” in 1984 (they’re still there). Our captain was super knowledgeable about the bird species on the lake, so Kat was in heaven. He brought a couple fish to feed the pelicans and an eagle. We got as close as we dared to a population of hippos – initially just one hippo, and then slowly more surfaced until there were four.

As our boat ride wrapped up, a rain storm moved in. The storm more or less stayed with us for the drive back to the city, which meant traffic went from bad to worse. We got stuck in a long tailback caused by a bus overturning in the rain, which in turn caused more accidents. Poor David figured it’d take him another two hours to get to his house after dropping us off due to the intensity of the rain.

One thing that really surprised me about the day was that at each stop, the overwhelming majority of the tourists were Chinese. My favorite was one group that had gone all in on 19th century European Explorer cosplay – think Captain Spaulding, but somehow slightly hip. Apparently there’s been a huge increase in small group or solo travel from China to Kenya over the last two years.

We ended the day with some food at the hotel restaurant and work calls. Tomorrow, we’ll kill some time in Nairobi before heading to the airport to head for Italy.