My Life in Kenya: Hells Gate Campout

This past weekend, I went on a fabulous camping trip. The entire school split up by classes, and on Friday we all piled into Tonkas and headed out for a weekend in nature. The juniors and seniors drove off to the Mara, while I joined the freshmen and sophomore classes going to Hells Gate national park.

Since Hell's Gate is only a mere two hours from campus, we were able to take several side trips on our way over. After a brief pause overlooking the rift valley to take pictures, our first stop was for a hike in a forest up near the high road to Nakuru. Throughout the guided nature walk, I was struck with how incredibly different, yet similar, the forest was to everything I'm familiar with. There were times when I felt like I was back in the smokey mountains looking at wildflowers, but then I would find myself stepping around elephant excrement instead of deer droppings. From the waterfalls of North America, to tea fields in Asia, I definitely felt like I had seen a little part of several continents.

The funniest thing happened while we were down at the waterfall. Tanzi and Jacqui had decided to go walking in the water, and when I looked over, their faces were priceless! Jacqui had fallen in, Tanzi had laughed, and the rest could be plainly seen plastered all over their faces. It was great!

The rest of the weekend was full of volcanoes, game drives, hammocking, a little bit of rain, rock climbing fishers tower (the inspiration for pride rock), and hiking the gorge (The gorge hike was by far my favorite part of the whole trip!).

It was the first camping trip for a lot of these kids, and some of them took the showering situation kinda hard. One sophomore even said, "But Miss, I've never gone a day in my life without at least two showers!" They were so desperate, that some even took water bottles and went out into the trees to shower! Hilarious! It was definitely a bonding experience for everyone.