Hiking through Hell (‘s Gate)
on A Serendipitous Journey (Kenya), 06/May/2009 16:58, 34 days ago
Before going to Hell’s Gate National Park, I suppose I was aware that there was a gorge that you could hike through, but was so excited about cycling through the game park that it was completely secondary. It was proven to me, yet again, that often thethings that you are not expecting turn out to be the most amazing. This was by far the best hike I’ve ever done!Not liking to be tied down, we opted not to take a guide from Kenya Wildlife Service and just brave the hike on our own. What we didn’t know was that we’d be hiking most of the way through a stream warmed by volcanic activity and jumping through waterfalls within a gorge so deep that at some points you are surrounded on both sides by rocks which must be a couple of hundred feet high.At one point during the hike, we came across young Maasai boys hoping to be hired as guides by people like us who realized that it might have been advantageous to have someone who knows their way around. They pointed to our options: the“short way” (jumping down a 5 foot rock onto a small ledge, then jumping again down into the warm stream) or the “long way” which looked much easier. After seeing the size of the drop, we opted for the “long way”, but quickly learned that this was simply a miscommunication – there wasthe “short way” and the “wrong way” (dead end)!The short way ended up being spectacular and our young Maasai guide Rafael jumped down the cliffs and scaled the rocks in flip flops that must have been at least 4 sizes too big for him, as though it was nothing. He pointed out crevices where the water was so hot from the volcanic activity that it was too hot to touch and he guided us as we jumped through warm waterfalls. After about an hour, Rafael guided us out of the gorge (we never ever would have found our way out on our own!) and up paths to the top. Arriving before us, he patiently leaned up against a tree which angled over the cliffs, with seemingly no fear whatsoever of falling a couple of hundred feet below… see the pics below with the view straight down from where he was standing!