Hells Gate | Aroundtheworldnaflash

Hells Gate Day 14

January 28, 2020

Anyone who has watched Lion King is familiar with the sad scene of Mufasa's death. The canon where he was trampled by the wildebeests was inspired by Hell's Gate. The animators of Disney traveled to Kenya to get a feel of Africa for the movie. Sweeping cliffs that were carved by a prehistoric lake gives the park its name, and the real pride rock gave inspiration for the movie! Though in this park you will not see any Simba, which is actually Swahili for lion. (The animators used lots of Swahili names in Lion King to pay tribute to their journey.) Hell's Gate is one of the only parks without any lions or many predictors, so you get more of an opportunity to get close to the prey animals. This is also one of the few parks in Africa where you can walk the whole park on foot, or even by bike! We didn't get the opportunity to do this and stayed in our tour bus mostly because we didn't get a lot of time to be in this park, not to mention less than an hour into our tour it started down pouring yet again.

English and Swahili

The hotel we stayed in that night was not the original one we were told we would be at. This could be due to us staying an extra night in Amboseli, but the one we stayed at was very run down! The Fish Eagle hotel is at the side of lake Naivasha (where the hippos are) though we didn't go around the park we stayed the night here. The hotel wasn't what we had gotten used to it had mold in the shower and the water would not get warm at night or during the morning. The hotel itself was not bad other than that, the grounds looked good and the cafeteria was clean too. It was one of the only resorts we stayed at where we got to order what we wanted not just a buffet. The next morning our guide told us he didn't get very much sleep that night from the hippos grunting all night...we very disappointedly told him we would have traded him in a heartbeat!

Kenya steam factory

Named for the intense geothermal activity Hell's gate is a stunning volcanic park. Scenery stretches for miles that takes over a quarter of the Great Rift Valley with towering cliffs, gorges, and plums that release geothermal steam. There are volcanoes that are sitting extinct such as OlKaria and Hobles. But there is still quite a bit of activity underground. There are three geothermal stations that harness the steam from the plumes that the park is known for into electricity.

Here pipes carry boiling hot water and steam from wells that are deep in the volcanic terrain. Generating 70 megawatts each two steam-powered turbines transform that voltage into electricity. The fluid that is left is then re-injected back into the earth after being prepared in cooling towers. Apparently, some of this liquid is also used to fill mineral-rich pools at the Olkaria Geothermal Spa we did not know about this when we were there sadly.

By the time we saw the factory, it was down pouring, and we closed the top of the pop-up van and headed to our next hotel. We missed seeing really any of the cannons, earlier that month with all the out-of-season downpours that were happening all around Kenya there was a flash flood that came on suddenly. This came on way too quickly for some tourists that were hiking down there and didn't make it out of there. If we ever go back to Kenya this park will be one I will really want to spend a day or two in to see more of it and during the dry seasons.

Helpful webistes

https://www.wildlifekenyasafari.com/facts-about-hells-gate-national-park-2022/