Adventure in the Aberdares: Part I

So I am on leave, and been telling my friends that I’d like to have an adventure, something that will take me out of my house. After planning a couple of trips unsuccessfully, last week one of my friends asked me if I wanted to take a day trip to Naivasha. Yay! Of course yes, I replied. However, when he turned up on Saturday morning to pick me up, he suggested that we go to the Aberdares instead? That would be more adventurous, he said. And I agreed. So we packed what we’d need for the trip, thankfully, including hiking boots and set off on our adventure :). Going through Limuru and its environs was slow because there was heavy mist, and visibility was barely beyond the hood of the car. We decided to make a stop to have lunch, which we would be extremely thankful for later in the day LOL! Going off the main Nairobi-Naivasha highway, we realised visibility got worse! And of course this made our progress slow. This, notwithstanding, we enjoyed the road trip leading up to the Aberdares.

We finally reached the gate, paid our gate fees and proceeded on. Our plan was to see the Karuru Waterfalls, which, Adventure Buddy (AB) said was absolutely beautiful! Using GPS coordinates from his previous visit, we made our way to the Waterfall entry. Since his visit, the path had been outgrown with bamboo and loads of thicket, that the path was hardly visible. But, trusting the GPS coordinates, we got off the main road towards the Waterfalls. Thankfully, our car was up to the challenge, and ‘no path’ was no problem for her. Also, it was comforting to see occasional tyre tracks along ‘no path’ :). Coming to an opening in front of a river bed, we parked and got off the car. AB advised me to layer my clothing, as he did. In addition to my blouse and sweater, I added on a jacket. I thought it was an overkill, but hey-he knew better having been there before-right?, so I suited up. I put on my cap, left all valuables in the car and we set off. We needed to cross the river, which had no visible crossing point. So we made acrobatic and hop-skip-and-jump manoeuvres to get us to the other side. O yeah, before starting our crossing, we spotted fresh elephant footprint on the water edge … a little scary, but I consoled myself that it had probably just crossed, and therefore was not returning in our direction.

This is how the jungle looked. No path to get us to our destination except the GPS we held on to dearly. AB led the way, continuously checking on the GPS to ensure we stayed on course. Aberdares, being one of Kenya’s waterbodies meant the jungle was filled with water [and dirt] on the leaves/ branches/ bamboo /ground etc. Needless to say, we collected water and dirt on our clothing as we traveled upwards. We were pushing through the jungle-literally-pulling apart twigs, branches, bamboo, tubers on the ground etc. In some places we jumped over what could not be pulled apart while in others we ducked under. Adventure galore :)! A little more scary was that we passed animal dung along the way, clearly showing presence of wildlife. At one point we heard an animal take off just above us, we must have scared it off, phew! And we continued our quest to get to the top of the Waterfall. It was all exciting, I must say. I wanted adventure, and adventure, I got ;).

Then we heard the Waterfall, but AB pointed out that it sounded like the bottom of the Waterfall, and yet we needed to go to the top. We were on track, just a few meters below where we needed to be. So we changed course and went upwards, towards the top [as we thought]. After passing the halfway mark [according to our GPS] somewhere along the way our GPS battery died!!! And we realised at this point that we had no spare batteries, and we both had left our phones in the car!!! We didn’t even have water, all we had was the now dead GPS and our car keys!!!

… Part II …