About a half hour drive from our house is a national park called
Hell’s Gate. It’s supposed to be a great
place to go for a scenic bike ride, so after work two of my roommates and I
decided to go. There are a number of
movies that have been filmed there like Tomb Raider, one of the Indiana Jones,
and also it’s the home of the real pride rock from the Lion King. It’s a gorgeous place full of giant rock
formations, a huge gorge, tons of exotic animals walking right along side of
you……and come on, who doesn’t want to see Pride Rock!?! When we got in the park, we went to pick our
bikes, which was interesting in and of itself.
These are hands down the jankiest bikes I’ve ever seen in my life, but
when in Kenya you roll with it, right?
So, we found a couple that sort of seemed to function and headed out. At first, it seemed promising besides the
chain falling off a couple times. Then,
about 45-60 minutes out the entire right pedal and gear piece fell off of my
bike all together. There was no fixing
this situation. So, Darrius got off of
his bike (Christie had stopped to walk a while before) and we walked on hoping
to run into either pride rock or the gorge before we ran out of time, but no
luck. So, we turned around, ran in to
Christie, and made the long 90 minute walk back to the entrance to the
park. SUPER bummed that we didn’t get to
bike for long and see all the amazing scenery, but there’s nothing that could
be done. We needed to catch a matatu
home, so off we went. I think this whole
fiasco helped me start to feel ready to go home though.
We got back, I took a cold shower (for the LAST TIME!!), packed up some of my things, played cards with the kiddos until dinner time, and chatted with Marcus and Darrius for a bit. I almost forgot to take pictures with the kids, but I nabbed a couple right before they went to sleep....I think I'm getting burnt out of this photo thing so I'm not doing that well any more. So, here's at least a couple so you can see the little sweethearts. They're a lot of fun, I wish I'd had more time with them. I sat and looked at pictures with Gad again for a while on my laptop, and then I headed to bed.
Israel and Chico - My card playing crew.
Christie, Chico and Gad - You may note the impressive photography work done by Mr. Israel. I think he's better with my camera than I am!
I can’t believe I’ve just got one night left in Kenya. This month has flown by so quickly. I haven’t felt like I was ready to go at all,
then I talked to my parents last night about getting back, got an email about
getting together with everyone on Saturday, started to think about washing my
dust filled clothes, having clean feet again, eating raw vegetables without
fear of bad things following. So, all of
a sudden I think at least part of me is ready to head back to the states. Tomorrow I go to KCC for one more day, then I’m
heading to Nairobi to spend the night with Mama Kimbo before my 22 hours of
flying on Wednesday. I’ll be back in the
states on Thursday at noon and my favorite welcome crew will be there to greet
me. Beth says Eli has been talking about
picking me up since I left, and I can’t wait to see the three of them. J For now, off to enjoy my last couple of days
in Africa……
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