Hell's Gate

Is a national park, incase you were wondering, no I didn't literally go to Hell's Gates.  How huge would the irony be?!

Anyway, yesterday we (me, Becca and the Andersens) went to Hell's Gate.  I'm not going to give you a blow-by-blow, but there were a few bits that stood out.  The first one being the time we saw a baby giraffe, when I say baby I mean it literally still had its umbilical cord still attached, very very young.  It stopped in the middle of the track ahead of us and stood there just looking at us for a good minute or so before it ran off.

At another point we came across a whole big herd of antelope, don't ask me which type, I really can't remember.  The car spooked them and the whole herd ran across the road ahead and off behind some bushes.  That was really cool, the herd had everything from one big "daddy" antelope down to some tiny baby ones.

The coolest thing about the whole day, or rather, the thing that made the day quite as awesome as it was, was the fact that in an attempt - that worked - to get a better view of what was going on and a better angle to take pictures from, me, Becca and the Andersen's oldest son Uriah, rode on the roof rack.  It sounds crazy, I suppose it was, but it wasn't half fun.  Everytime we went over a bump or turned a sharp corner all 3 of us would bounce around and have to grab the roof rack bars to steady ourselves.  I realise that you can't really tell that we're sitting on a car in this picture, you'll just have to take my word for it.

NB - Yes I'm wearing an RVA shirt, only the coolest people do. :D

The quality of pictures we managed to take and the fun we had doing it came at a price though.  All the bouncing around left us distinctly bruised and sore by the end, and the lack of a roof mixed with the fact it was actually a nice day - one of the first since we came to Kijabe - means that both me and Becca have burnt, admittedly she has burnt more than me, but still.  Did you know it was possible to burn the backs of your hands?  No, me neither.  But I've managed it, 'cos I'm clever like that.

Hell's Gate gets its name from the natural steam jets that shoot up out of the ground at various intervals around it.  They are caused by boiling magma underground, or something like that.  But regardless of how they're caused they look really cool from a distance, not so much close up when you can see all the machinery that's been set up around them to harness their power to turn into electricity.  Although the fact they're even being used for that purpose is quite cool in itself.

You see what I mean?  From a distance - little poofs of white smoke that stream constantly from the ground.  Close up - a factory-like setup of towers and pumps.