Lake Naivasha

This weekend was our first trip out of Nairobi and it was amazing. Lisa Avery is my supervisor on this elective and she is in town this week and graciously took us out to Lake Naivasha about an hour outside of Nairobi with her friends Marnie and Ronnie and a University of Washington PhD student Kristin. We packed up the big six-seater Jeep and Ronnie heroically drove us out of Nairobi traffic into the beautiful Great Rift Valley. After almost a 3-hour tour (mostly due to Nairobi traffic) we arrived at Twiga House (Twiga is Swahili for giraffe) which is this stunning 3 bedroom oasis right on the sister lake to Naivasha. It's this old blue-grey stone and inside felt like a mix between Africa and the owner's obvious Scandanavian heritage. Nothing was missing from the big dining room table to the gorgeous fireplace - a beautiful weekend retreat. We had spaghetti that night and sat and drank wine and got to know one another before heading off to bed.
The next morning we awoke and I looked out the window (finally able to see our surroundings as we had arrived in the dark) and the beach of the lake was pink with flamingos. Cian and I went downstairs and sat on the back porch where we were greeted by extremely extroverted monkeys, colourful birds and a very friendly sheep named Blanket. Lisa, Cian and I sat out on the back deck and chatted with Charles and Marie the caretakers of the house. We had a delicious breakfast (which only had one minor hiccup when one of those tropical birds flew into the house and panickedly tried to find its way out pooping on Cian's head in the interim- he's ok) and then we headed off to Hell's Gate National Park.
We arrived at the park our guide Simon greeted us in the car and said "Welcome to Hell". He showed us the geothermal energy plants as we headed off into the Gorge site for our hike. (Keith kept saying how everything was GORGE-ous - groan). We arrived at the Gorge and I figured that Cian and I could handle a small hike as he is a pretty easy-going kid and I have a reasonable amount of hiking experience. *It's possible that for their own protection the grandparents might want to gloss over this part.* About 2 minutes into the hike there was a significant drop-off point where Simon asked if we wanted to take the "gentler" way. Lisa thought that would be a good idea because we had the baby. It was "gentler" for about 5 minutes when more "obstatcles" kept appearing on what proved to be a hike that would require wet suits, helmets and belaying equipment in Canada. All the pictures in the slideshow of small waterfalls are areas that we climbed through - sometimes I would keep Cian on my back and sometimes we thought it safer and easier to pass him down person-to-person in what seemed to be a giant team-building exercise. He thought this was great fun. I kept asking Simon if this was okay with a baby and he assured me it was "no problem" and since he is Kenyan and I am not I believed him and we were no worse for wear. In fact a fantastic time was had by all. The pictures prove that it was an incredible time and Simon is convinced that Cian will be an avid hiker when he grows up. After the hike we went on a short game drive seeing water buffalo, zebra, kudu, gazelles and sprinbok. It's called Hell's Gate because of the natural hot springs and the old volcanoes that split the rift valley and left these crazy rock faces that look like gates as you traverse alone the bottom of the valley. The landscape alone was worth the drive.
After our big adventurous day we came back to Twiga House for cocktails and snacks. The monkeys came to watch us eat and at one point I looked around because Charles had mentioned that sometimes you could see giraffes in the evening and there they were in the distance of our backyard. So we threw on some shoes and headed off to go take a closer look and saw giraffes, zebra, hippos (in the distance in the water) and the flamingos closer up. The giraffes and zebra were part of a private park so we couldn't get too close but that actually proved not to be too big of a problem because about 30 minutes later they came to us and were right behind our back gate. It was surreal. However, there was a little Kenyan boy on the shoreline that didn't like the giraffes coming that close to where he was playing so he started THROWING ROCKS AT THEM. There we are watching this boy who was maybe 5 or 6 and who was barely knee-high to these gentle giants throw rocks and shoo them down the banks of the lake and they were running away in front of him. Craziness. That night we had another lovely dinner (chicken roasted on beer cans) to top off an eventful and memorable day.
That night Cian woke up twice because he is getting his top front teeth (he has 4 now!) and so none of us got a fully restful sleep and were up at 7am with a baby that had decided his day would now start. Him and I went out to the back porch again having had such a nice time the day before. This time however there were more monkeys than humans and I soon felt like I would rather be inside. I took Cian, his bottle and my coffee mug inside and closed the door behind us. As I went to open the door to get his toys and my book the papa monkey jumped out from his hiding place to stand in front of the door which I quickly shut in his face. So there we are staring at each other through the glass door - him on one side me on the other - he had a monkey sidekick and I had Cian (who in a monkey showdown is truly not the best sidekick as he mostly laughs and waves at the monkeys). I put Cian down on the couch and tried to go around to the other door to shoo them away because at this point the monkeys are heading towards Cian's toys and paging through my novel. Then Cian so enthralled with all the action leans too far forward on the couch, falls off and starts screaming. So I head back to the couch now with 2 unlocked (but closed) doors and a screaming baby and more monkeys have come to see what all the commotion is about and I start feeling like we are the ones at the zoo. Charles and Marie then came to the rescue and all was well - we had a lovely pancake breakfast (inside), watched the monkeys put on their show and then headed back to Nairobi on a lazy Sunday afternoon drive through the Rift Valley. It was a wonderful weekend and a big thank you to Lisa for her generous hospitality - if there was an award for coolest attending-resident weekend we would have totally won.