Karibuni Kenya

The next day we went to Hells Gate national park, just 10 kms from Fishermans camp.  Driving through, the walls of the gorge rose up on either side of us and vultures nested in the cliff sides.  They are the largest group of nesting vultures in Kneya I’m told, and each day they fly doiwn to the Maasai Mara to search for food before flying back to their nests in the cliffs.  After passing them we went to Fischers tower, a lone standing rock some ten or twenty metres high.  Here we watched rock hyraxes lazing out on the rocks sunbathing.  Close to fischers rock, if you shout something, or sing something as they used to when they put operas on once a year in  Hells Gate, it echoes several times off all the different rock faces – on a clear day you can hear at least five echoes and possibly more.

After Fischers tower we drove on to the obsidian caves, where we searched for hyenea cubs in the small caves and saw the decaying carcass of a hyenea just thirty yards from the caves, as well as some white throated beeaters, which had until after the recent rains been feared that they had left naivasha for good.  The caves themselves are only small, but if in a car make an interesting 10 or 20 minute stop, and are really good if you are lucky enough to see hyena.

From there, we drove around hells gate admiring the wildlife, both mammals and birds.  We didn’t see any predators, but we saw loads of zebra, hartebeest, girraffe, bufallo, gazelles and even a veluex eagle.  Then we went up to the viewpoint to look out over the lake and the plains of hells gate national park, which is quite a stunning view, and form where one can see the house that one of Hemminways wives lived in.

After our  the viewpoint, we went up to an area where the ground was really hot and steam came out of small holes, toasting your feet as you walked.  From here we also managed to see some rhino in an adjoining private sancturay, as well as vultures descending to feast on a recently killed zebra carcass.  Cloe to this, be3cause of all the geothermal activity and its taping to prioduce electricity, we found some hot springs and relaxed, bottle of tusker lager in hand, for about half and hour in the water.  Although not very picteuresque becuase of all the metal piping around, the water is lovely and really good for your skin, so well worth doing, and a very pleasant way to finsih our day.

There is also a gorge that one can walk through in Hells gate, although which we didn’t do on that day.  Again this is something well worth doing, and takes just a few hours.  In the gorge there are natural hot springs, with both boiling and only tepid water, as well as, for the slightly fitter and more adventurous, tougher walks and climbs up and down more rocky parts of the gorge and through parts that have become overgrown through lack of vists.  To get all of this done in a day requires a car and an early alarm call, but is well worth it.  If you can’t get a car, you can go by bicycle, where you don’t get as much exploring, but which is nevertheless very enjoyable and in many ways nicer than the car becuase you are so much closer to everything you see.