This year our family was all together for Christmas. We have not been together on Christmas for two years. So to make it special we visited and did somethings we hadn't done yet in Kenya. The following is some of my thoughts and impressions along with some pictures of the trip.
We left home around 6:00am in order to get to Mt. Longonot before it got too hot. On the way it started raining.We got to Mt Longonot around 9am and we got to the top of the mountain around 11am. By the time I made it to the top I never wanted to see a mountain again. But by the time I made it to the bottom (around 12:45pm) I felt like I had accomplished something. Mt Longonot is 8000 feet high and we walked about 3.5 kilometers up hill.
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| Mt. Longonot |
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| Sara on the hike |
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| Beautiful view! |
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| The hike starts out at a gradual climb. |
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| The view makes it so worth it! |
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| Here you can see it is getting steeper. |
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| Here we started going up stairs. |
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| Another view |
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| We made it up!!!!! |
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| Sara skipping down. |
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| Coming down the mountain |
Monday evening we went for a boat ride. It was really neat to see birds and hippos. I got a little scared when we got close to the hippos and when the boat's motor stopped working in the middle of the lake; but other than that it was a nice boat ride.
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| Us in the boat |
On Tuesday we woke up and prayed for God's safety as we entered Hell's Gate. Wesley, Johanna, and Sara biked through the cannon to the gorge. All of us hiked through the gorge. The gorge was really neat but a difficult hike. Thankfully we had a guide who helped us do a lot of things we didn't think we could do. Once we got out of the gorge we still had to bike back out. It was settled that Mom, Wesley, and I were going to bike back to the entrance, but unfortunately I strained something while going through the gorge and was not able to go very far. So we put the bike on top of the car and slowly followed Wesley and Mom out. Hell's Gate is kind of a joke with our family, ever since after a visit, Wesley thanked God for "letting us have a fun time at Hell's Gate".
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| Photographers taking pictures of each other! |
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| Sara all ready to go |
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| Sara, Wesley, and Johanna |
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| "Do Not Feed OR Harass Wildlife" |
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| Going through the gorge. We were so thankful for our guide(Sammy) without him we couldn't have done the things we did! |
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| Climbing up a rock with the help of a rope. |
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| Holding our breath as someone comes down. |
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| This cute monkey was riding Mom's bike. |
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| All set for the return bike ride. |
For lunch we went to Crater Lake. It is a nice place that you have to walk around 200 steps down to get to where the restaurant is. Crater Lake is known for it's flamingos, unfortunately we only saw 2. We were all exhausted from our trip to Hell's Gate ( as you can imagine) that we took the steps quite slowly. Some said that their favorite part about the trip was the drive home. It reminded us so much of the past and all the traveling we used to do as a family. This Christmas I am so thankful for my family being all together.
By: Emily Swain
