Visit to Hell, Nanopod is annoying and gingerly avoiding buffalo (Naivasha)

After a good night’s sleep followed by a breakfast buffet featuring liver, we drove to the advance-billed “non-touristy” town of Naivasha. I assure you this description is accurate and well deserved. Luckily our time there was limited to sleeping at the Silver Hotel and eating at the Jolly Cafe, whose motto was “Jolly Cafe – I love You” and whose servers wore name tags such as “Team Player # 1″. I am not making this up.

During the day, in the heat of the day in fact, we agreed to rent bikes and ride to Hell’s Gate, one of the few National Parks you can ride or walk in unaccompanied by a ranger. I thought it was named Hell’s Gate because of the ride there, but it’s really called Hell’s Gate because of the ride back.

Fitting ten people with African bikes was no quick feat. For example, the back brakes didn’t work on the first bike I tried, and when Jean-Luc tried to fix it the brake handle broke off in his hand. With an improved second bike, off we went with 2 pm sun beating on our heads. The first part of the ride was fine, along a road lined with little children delightedly singing “how-ah-yoo? how-ah-yoo?” as we rode past. But then we turned right. We had to make our way one kilometre up a gradual incline on a road that was almost completely covered with settled dust. Have you ever tried to ride in sand? We were desperately grateful to reach the gate of Hell, and after paying our $15 entrance fee, rode into the park.

Bike ride to hell

All that hard work was worth it.  This was Africa of the animals. Look — there are zebras! What’s that leaping, a Thomson gazelle? Is that a mama warthog with her brood? Is that wildebeest in the distance? After riding a considerable distance (with Nanopod Girl plugged into her music the entire time), we came upon our next Outward Bound challenge: descending into the gorge. The gorge was beautiful, full of hot springs, and harrowing to navigate. As we delicately lowered ourselves over tricky rock formations trying not to tumble into the water below, nature’s treachery was exacerbated by Nanopod’s frequent shrieking of “Soaker!!! We’re gonna have a Soa-kah!!!!”  I was not amused, and was relieved that neither I nor anyone else became the “Soaker.”

It was alarmingly close to sundown by the time we got back on our bikes. But if beating the sun seemed daunting, we also had to contend with buffalo.  The animals in Hell’s Gate are generally people-friendly; however, buffalo can be crusty old codgers who aren’t afraid to throw their weight around.  And there were a lot of buffalo, materializing seemingly out of the dust.  We stuck together protectively each time we passed a group (the largest of which was 28 – I counted), buffaloes and humans eying each other warily.

We survived the park ungored and unscathed, and made it back to the bike rental place within minutes of complete darkness. It really was a wonderful day! So I was joking about it being hellish. Hell’s Gate is so called because of the sudden volcano eruption thousands of years ago that buried animals and humans alive in the area in which the park sits. We definitely got off easy.