03JUN2007 "Mt. Longonot"

On Sunday, we woke up early to drive to Mt. Longonot, a volcano crater about an hour north of Nairobi. We stuffed our backpack full of bread and cheese lifted from the breakfast buffet, bought a few extra bottles of water, and grabbed a taxi to head north.

On the way to the mountain, we asked our cab driver about the second night of free concerts at another venue in Nairobi. We had so much fun the night before that we were looking forward to catching the second concert featuring none other than Burning Spear. Despite the fact that the cab driver was a young hip-hop kid, he echoed Naeem’s sentiments from the night before – we shouldn’t go to the concert. “Bad things are associated with reggae people. If you go in there, you will come out with nothing.” This was pretty shocking considering the reggae culture in the US has a reputation for being very open, laid back, and…well, stoned. We decided not to hurry back for the show.

The hike to the crater rim was about an hour and quite steep. We started at 7,500 feet and we could feel the altitude as we started to ascend. I was huffing and puffing and reminding myself that we live at sea level. When we reached the top, we were rewarded with a view deep into the heart of the crater and a panorama of the whole Rift Valley, the cradle of humanity. We were on a ledge that was only about two feet wide and dropped away steeply on either side. The bottom of the crater was a thick forest but all around the outside of the crater, there was barely a tree standing. Deforestation or natural microclimate variation?

We hiked the narrow ridge all the way around the rim of the ancient volcano. As we started counterclockwise, we could see Lake Niavasha and Hell’s Gate National Park. The caldera was jagged with many small ascents and descents. The highest point was about 9,500 feet. The trail was badly eroded in many spots where flowing water had turned the trail into a narrow gully and you could barely squeeze your foot. In other places, the fine lava pebbles made it slippery and we scrambled on all fours. Altogether, it took us three hours to make our way around the rim. It was really fun to hike again. We were so exhausted at the end of the day that we ordered sushi from room service and sat on the floor of our hotel room sipping wine and eating great sushi. We had to keep reminding ourselves that we were still in Kenya!