we met at 7:00 friday morning, and took a matatu downtown. it was my first matatu ride, and i successfully made it out alive and with nothing stolen. when we got dropped off, we had to walk to a different matatu station, where the matatus heading to naivasha and nakuru leave. we had a hand-written map, but we still didn't know where to go. a matatu driver offered us to show us how to get there. as a mzungu in nairobi, you're always kind of suspicious of these sorts of offers-- it's very hard to tell if someone is genuinely being nice, or if they have alterior motives. luckily, this guy was just being nice and he got us to the station, which is good, since we probably wouldn't have been able to find it ourselves. we bought our ticket and boarded the matatu. we had to wait for it to fill, but we left the city by 10:00.
when we got to naivasha, we asked the matatu driver how to get to fisherman's camp, where we were going to stay for the night. immediately, swarms of guys come up to us, telling us that they will take us there. it was really crazy, but we just told them "no" and walked away. we decided that we would take pikipikis to the camp. we didn't think it was too far away, but it ended up being almost a 25 minute ride. we checked into our banda, where we stayed for the night. the camp had a restaurant on-site, so we ate lunch there. i ordered penne pasta with what tasted like spaghetti sauce. it was probably the best food i've had since i've been here. then we rented bikes and made our way to hell's gate, about a 3 mile ride.
when we got there, i realized i didn't have my pupil's pass, which is a slip of paper that says i am a resident of kenya for this semester. resident prices at the national parks are much cheaper if you're a resident, so i ended up paying 2500 Ksh ($25) instead of 600 Ksh ($6), which was a real bummer. but then we rode our bikes into the park, and it was absolutely beautiful.
we then wanted to go see the gorge, which was the other site that's really popular at hell's gate. danielle wasn't feeling well, and doug's bike broke, so chris and i went on by ourselves. when we got there, we had to park our bikes and walk down to it. we didn't really know where to go, so we thought we'd just follow a school group. but they were going extremely slow (think high school girls not wanting to get their clothes or shoes dirty...) so we walked off by ourselves. we were obviously going the wrong direction when a man approached us, telling us that he'd show us the way. so he ended up being our guide. we were able to walk through the gorge, which is sometimes filled with quite a bit of water. then we climbed to the top of the ridge, and the view was spectacular.
we had to pay him for guiding us, which we really didn't want to do, but felt obligated. then we biked back, saw random giraffes, and waited for a buffalo crossing. when we got back to camp, we ate supper and had a campfire. we had to pay 250 Ksh for the camp guard to start a fire for us, but it went out about 20 minutes later. we all tried restarting it for over an hour, but with no luck. then two guys came and helped us out and got it started, but it went out again about 10 minutes later. none of us wanted to try to start the fire again, so we just stared at the hot coals. i think we were all embarassed and ashamed that we couldn't start a fire. then the guard walked by and started it up for us again, and it kept burning for another 45 minutes until we decided to go to bed.
the next morning, we ate fruit for breakfast and the pikipikis came to pick us up at 10:00. when we got back into the town of naivasha, we were again swarmed by people, trying to get us on their matatu. it was crazy, there was some pushing and shoving involved by some people, but we made it on a matatu. we had to wait for the bus to fill again, and then we headed back to nairobi.
the trip was really great... the park was definitely one of the most beautiful places i have ever been to. it was nice to travel in a much smaller group, but even the four of us attracted as much attention as it is. and now the rest of my weekend will be filled with researching information for my public health term paper-- disease eradication. i guess i am on a STUDY abroad trip...
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