Bike Ride in Hell

Our 4-day safari ended with a morning drive in Amboseli, then a long haul from Amboseli to Karen, a town on the outskirts of Nairobi named after Karen Blixen of Out of Africa fame. While in Karen, we took a trip to Carnivore, a renowned restaurant that’s either awesome or disgusting, or most likely a little of both.

Carnivore, as the name suggests, sells just about any kind of meat that’s legal to sell. (There’s a note at each table that the Kenyan government outlawed the sale of game meat in 2004 (zebras, giraffes, who knows what else?), but that they’re lobbying strongly to bring it back.)

The servers make their rounds with spits of meat of all kinds. We were pretty adventurous, trying camel, crocodile, and ostrich (although we did draw the line at ox whoosie-whatsits).

It distinctly did not all “just taste like chicken.”

From Karen we hired a car to take us to Lake Naivasha, where we’re staying now. On the way we stopped at a giraffe sanctuary that is working to revitalize the population of the endangered Rothschild giraffe, but focuses mainly on providing the cutest photo-ops in the world.

We’re at a comfy campsite at the edge of the lake where hippos apparently graze in the evening, but we haven’t been lucky enough to see them yet. There is an electric fence to keep them away from guests. Lake Naivasha is next to Hell’s Gate national park, another entry in Kenya’s absolutely fabulous national park system. Hell’s Gate is very cool because you don’t have to be in a vehicle to visit it—you can walk or, in our case, ride your bike through the park.

Common sense and the animal’s natural trepidation when they see people are the only limits to how close you can get to the wildlife.
Which means sometimes you can get awfully close. There are hyenas, leopards, cheetahs, and even a couple of lions in the park, but apparently you’re not supposed to be worried. I spent a good chunk of time thinking about how to use the bike in self-defense. (Which is about all it was good for, especially when the pedal fell off. Sadly this event didn’t end up documented with a photo because at least one of us was really annoyed when this happened.)

Hell’s gate features a hike through a gorge to hot springs and vents powered by the magma not far below the surface. The hike was long and hot, but very worthwhile. Despite our long absence from real exercise, the guide was impressed at our pace, so we felt pretty good, until the long, grinding ride out of the park (turns out the ride in was all downhill), which was made even more fun with a wobbly semi-repaired pedal.

So now we’re biding out time at the bar/restaurant at the campsite trying to stay awake until it’s late enough to go to bed (getting close now!). We stayed in a banda last night, but we figured we’d go all out and do the tent thing tonight.

Hey why not?

PS – I updated the map at chapnet.ca/africa with more information about where we are/have been/will be, and I added a marker for our current location. Enjoy!