4 Feb 2025

Lake Nakuru

There was something surreal about looking out from breakfast at the Africa that looks like this.  Our quarters used to be the domicile of a British Lord who built the main house in the 1920s.  Given how breathtaking is the view, no wonder!  Here, there is a raw beauty in which dwells prey, predators, and the most clever creatures all who have found ways to feed and nest.  Life and death cycle is evident and unashamed of itself.  When I stared at this lake and hill I became suddenly aware of the timelessness of this place where the same and similar species of vegetations, animals, birds and insects have been cycling themselves without cessation  for thousands of years.  The picture here could have been taken 5,000 years ago.  

The 2 hour morning drive around the Lake in this national park was event filled.  We saw the usual herds and flocks, but then we spotted the morning prize, the white horned rhinoceros (pictured).  We saw several including a small herd of these beasts, the second only to the elephant in size. 

We left Lake Nakuru about 0930 behind to return to Lake Navaisha.

After lunch and a break in our new Lake Naivasha accommodations. Andrew took us to Hell's Gate National Park to meet monkey, baboon, giraffe, hyrax, zebra, buffalo, impala, and eland.  Hyrax looks like a marmot (rat like) and is very small.  The ones we met were not at all shy.  One hopped up into our van, probably in search of food.   Its closest relative is the elephant and the manatee.  

The eland is pictured.  Andrew was most pleased to see a eland herd as they are rare sights.

Someone with a sense of balance opened up a spiritual retreat center called Heaven's Gate across the street from the sign pointing to Hell's Gate.  Hell's Gate was named by the British who saw the doorway to hell in the rugged dramatic shapes and colours of the volcanic rock.  There are two volcanic rock towers which spring up out of nowhere.  The track which winds through these formations takes one though a gorge-like space which seems to get hotter and duster by the minute.  The steep rock faces are forbidding, with very sharp edges rich brown colours and mysterious looking crevices, cracks, and caves.  Easy to imagine one is descending into Nietzsche's abyss as one passes by these unforgiving cliffs and rocks.  When the sun comes out as it did for us, it is brutally hot, little wind, and then surprisingly the unmistakable whiff of Sulphur.  I could not take my eyes off the rock faces and their harsh sharp featured pinnacles. Rodin's sculpture of himself contemplating his own version of the gates of hell thrust itself into by mind, a memory created by that sculpture-cast which is found in Paris at the Rodin Museum.  Sorry Rodin you have been outclassed in my mind by the ancient sculptor of mother earth.

Adjacent to the park, and indeed part of Hell's Gate are the well heads (pictured) for the geothermal steam pipelines that powers a significant amount of Kenyan's electricity.  Of course, as one approaches the geothermal well heads there is the unmistaken scent of Sulphur in the air.  While that was not likely part of the naming of the park as the park long predates the steam wellheads, it did provoke my imagination which conjured up images of Dante's inferno. 

Returning at sunset, Jesse went to swim, me a nap, then supper and we are done in.  I advised Jesse not to get used to buffet hotel food, as tomorrow we will be enjoying a more simple fare cooked magnificently by Rose at Mully Children's Family.  An early start, a long drive, ending at least for me in one of the thinnest places on earth: a place where the skin between earth and heaven is so thin heaven oozes gently up to embrace you with a peace and love beyond understanding.