Hell's gate

Renting mountain bikes was interesting, there were six guys each trying to get us to rent their bike. I tried three; "no, that one's seat is insanely uncomfortable", "this one has a flat tire", I decided on one that had a not-too-painful seat and front suspension. We rode about a mile uphill with trucks and buses roaring by enveloping us in black smoke (apparently everyone here modifies their vehicle in hopes of making it have more power, I don't know if it works but they sure do make a lot of smoke) trying not to run over pedestrians, and dodging the places the road was missing. Then we rode a mile or so uphill on a extremely rough road to the gate of Hell's Gate. They wanted money for a map so we figured we could do without.

The first interesting thing was Ficher's Tower, it is just sticking up 80' out of a mostly flat field.

I really wanted to reach the top and tried three different routes, but with already fifty feet of exposure, no ropes and a handhold literally a only foot out of reach I decided that it would be wise not to try. I know I could have made it up, I was not so certain about back down... The basalt cliffs were really cool, this one about one hundred feet high.

We considered the ten mile round trip to the Obsidian Caves but decided to go to the Gorges first and go to the caves later, if our water held out. At the entrance to the Gorge they tried to sell us a guide and Aram convinced them that we did not need one, and we went on our way. But they weren't done, a guy ran after us and started to "guide" us on the path while Aram was trying, in Swahili, to politely convince him that his services were unnecessary and undesirable. Eventually we paid him fifty shillings and he left. The gorges were amazing, the rock is a soapstone type and very soft so erosion does really cool stuff to it, but try as I might I could not get any good pictures of them. Here are a few of the best pictures I was able to get.

A waterfall. Obviously.

A small piece of the gorge.

Another.

The central tower.

We heard a really loud hissing and followed it to this. It seemed to be a capped steam vent. The pressure release was what was letting off hot, sulfurous gas at high pressure.

Our water was running low and our hindparts were rather sore from the biking over the "roads" so we didn't go to Obsidian Caves. I wonder what they are....

We stopped a little store (little as in, the three of us barely fit inside) and ate fries and discussed politics with the owner, who happened to be a pastor that Aram knew. When we got back to our camp site we found that monkeys had knocked over and collapsed our tent. We chased them away and were relieved to find that there seemed to be no damage.

Lake Naivasha is so polluted that swimming isn't smart but there was a pool and, although it looked pretty nasty, it felt good after biking 15-20 miles under equatorial sun. I also took this picture of Tobias diving in.