Mount Longonot hiking and Naivasha Lake
I planned the next blog to be about food, but got so impressed by this weekend’s experiences that decided to write about those first. There will always be food and even more food to write about :)
Tomorrow I start a very exciting 2-weeks’ business trip around our branches, most of which are in rural Kenya. But the first stop is in Nairobi. To combine the pleasant with the useful, me and my colleagues flew to Nairobi on Friday to do some hiking on Saturday and then stay on the lake Naivasha for Sunday.
Saturday morning started at 7 am with 10 of us packing into 2 vans and commencing our 2-hour drive towards mount Longonot, which we were planning to hike.
It is actually a dormant volcano crater, and our goal was to go up to the crater and then hike around it. The drive there is quite picturesque and lies through the Rift Valley. Rift Valley is an actual huge tectonic ridge that goes from Ethiopia to Tanzania and someday that part of Africa can dissemble itself from the continent and float away. But till it’s still there, we can enjoy those amazing views.
After 2 hours of this beautiful ride, we got to our destination, paid the entrance fees (3.5 dollars for residents, 18 dollars for tourists) and started our hike.
I need to admit that we were pretty stupid and carried very little water with us which made the whole experience much tougher (almost unbearable at times). Well, lesson learnt.
The hike was DIFFICULT!!! It was almost as tough as the Himalayas one, but thankfully not as long. It took us 5 hours to go up, around and down, with about 0.5 litres of water each (yeah, i know…)
Humans are weird creatures I must say. I remember when trekking to the Everest base camp, I was sending messages to my friends about how much I hate every step of it and if I ever decide to do something similar again, they need to show me that message to remind me how miserable I felt. I’m pretty sure I can still find that message… But here I am again, doing this thing I hate so much, then getting to the top and shouting out loud about how much it’s worth it. Do you think I won’t ever hike again? Ha-ha, we are already planning mount Kenya and Kili…
The road was dusty, sometimes quite challenging with deep rifts along the way. But the views around were amazing. We got to the top quite fast (took us around 1 hour) and actually I thought there was about 40 minutes more to go when I suddenly found myself at the top. That was a pleasant surprise.
The not so pleasant surprise was that I initially thought that getting up to the crater was the most challenging part and hiking around it would be just an enjoyable walk.
But the crater is not of the even height, there’s a decent change in altitude, and one part of it got much more difficult than the initial ascend was.
But once that was done and we were thinking that now it’ll be easy, another challenge awaited: we ran out of water. And though the hike itself from there on wasn’t too tough, being thirsty made the whole experience much harder to tolerate.
So many times we thought that behind this hill we will finally see the starting point (meaning we finished the full circle around) but so many times it wasn’t the case. When we finally got there, I was almost crying (but it wasn’t an option, as tears are liquid, and loosing liquid is dangerous!). I wanted to run down the hill from there (some did!), but was too tired to do so, so I just took my time to descend slowly.
And finally, that was it! Those first sips of cold water were probably the most delicious in my life! And it felt soooo good to lie on the ground, take of the hiking boots and relax.
This Fitbit stats sums up the day quite nicely:
We finished the day with having some dinner and most of our party going back to Nairobi, while me and 2 of my colleagues headed to Naivasha Sopa Lodge to enjoy the nature and take the boat ride the next day.
The Lodge is gorgeous, with huge territory and spacious cottages. But the main attraction there is that the wild animals are freely roaming around. I’ve read that one can meet deer or water-bucks there, but imagine our surprise when a dazzle of zebras (yes, that’s how a group of them is called, I Googled) passed by! I’ve never seen anything like that in my life and I was simply amused.
We arrived to the lodge quite late, and the reception told us that if we need to go somewhere when it’s dark, we need to call a security so they could walk us, as at night the hippos might be coming close to the lodge! Can you imagine it: the hippos might come too close! And they are known to be pretty nasty and aggressive. Plus though they are huge, they can run quite fast.
But we were so tired after the hike that we just took a quick walk around and went to bed. All were asleep before 9 pm!
I woke up early in the morning, opened my balcony door, breathed in the chilly dusk air and saw zebras and water-bucks just couple of meters in front of me! That was unbelievable!
I couldn’t stop looking at them even though I got cold quite quickly.
Eventually I went outside, spent some more time watching zebras and water-bucks and wandered towards the lake. I assumed in the morning sunlight it would look gorgeous and it did!
The light, the lake, the reflection of the trees — everything was so beautiful and the atmosphere around was so peaceful.
And there were also even more zebras! I don’t have enough words to describe my delight, so I’ll just let the pictures (and videos) talk for themselves.
I planned to write about our boat trip on Naivasha lake in this post too, but it’s already getting too long and it’s been too much cuteness. Plus, the boat ride deserves a post of its own, so I’ll leave it till next time :)
