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These are a few of the
places we visited this summer in Kenya. Hell's
Gate National Park - Obsidian Caves This park is a great
place to visit as it is one of the few that allow walking and cycling in
it. If you don’t have a vehicle it is easy to get to on the south lake
road and bikes can be hired at nearby campsites or if you are dropped off
by “taxi” there seem to be bikes for hire at the road junction 2km
from the gate. There are two extinct volcanoes in the park and large quantities of obsidian were formed. The caves are on the Buffalo Circuit track which is well signed in the park - buffalo are the only things to be careful of in the park as cats are rare sightings. There is a huge line of obsidian running along the side of the valley and the cave is where most seems to have been excavated with large boulders all around.
There is a 2nd obsidian cave further along the gorge in the south. Hells Gate Gorge is lined with red cliffs that contain two volcanic plugs: Fischer's Tower and Central Tower. There is also a smaller gorge which extends to the south where a narrow route descends to hot springs.
This walk is extremely scenic but quite hard going in the heat so by the time we reached the point where you can climb up out of the gorge we didn’t have the energy to go on another 3km to the other caves - you need a guide to find your way there as well. Hyrax
Hill Prehistoric Site This sites makes an interesting visit for a couple of hours and the first challenge is to actually find it. From Nakuru take the Nairobi/Naivasha road that goes under a bridge after the roundabout. Ignore the sign at the first left to Hyrax Hill as it doesn’t go there and carry on for about 3km and look for a wooden sign on the left pointing up a track which after 1km brings you to the site. Admission is 500ks and there is a small museum but the supplies of guide books were “exhausted” unfortunately. The little museum is quite informative about the three main areas of the site and there is the added attraction of a model of a spitting cobra that you can “infuriate” by pressing a button so that it squirts water at you.
The museum A guide will try and
make himself available but you don’t really need one as the path is
clear which you follow uphill passing the more recent Sirikwa pit
excavation. This is a pit dwelling of recent nomadic people dating back
about 400 years who lived around here and finds include pottery fragments
and obsidian tools. Climb to the top of the hill to reach the remains of an Iron Age hill fort/lookout point which is clearly seen in a small flat cleared area. Further up the lava boulders gives a good view of Lake Nakuru beyond. It is believed that this was an island or peninsula when the lake was much higher.
Iron Age
hill fort From the top you can see the hut circles below near the track to the museum. There is a side path branching off the path that leads to the top back the way you came up which is safer to use rather than scrambling down the hillside unless you want to intimidate real spitting cobras in the scrub.
The Iron
Age hut circles The two hut circles have been cleared and just to the north is an overgrown Neolithic burial site where 19 skeletons were found. Beside it is a mound of stones which may be where the excavations were piled up.
Neolithic burial site The site was excavated by Mary Leakey in 1937 when a further 19 Iron Age skeletons were found above the Neolithic remains. |
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This site is signed on
the Nairobi/Nakuru road about 35km from Nakuru and is 1.5km up a side road
near the Diatomite mine. This is a small but
interesting site with two excavations with the finds left in place. There
is also a little museum which explains a little of the area’s history
and has a small skull collection. 120,000 years ago Lake
Elementeita reached up to here and it seems to have been an axe factory on
the shore. Now the lake is 180 metres lower and can be seen in the
distance. It is an Acheulian site named after a place in France where axes of this type were first found. These axes are crude and there is no evidence of more complex tools that would have fitted into bone or wooden shafts. There is also no evidence that the toolmakers made use of fire.
A guide will escort you around the site as the axes are very portable as they have been left as found when excavated by Louis Leakey in 1928-31. You start at the upper site where the excavations have exposed a fault line in the strata and a large number of obsidian tools are scattered along the trench, some are still embedded in the rock. Leakey discovered this site during an expedition to the area when he noticed stone tools projecting from a cliff while walking in the small gorge below. It was also further excavated in 1947.
The
upper site The path goes down some
steps into the gorge that leads to the lower site, the local diatomite is
exposed here in the walls of the gorge. At the lower site there is another huge quantity of tools left in place including some made from trachyte lava as well as obsidian.
Tools left in position in the lower site There is a good view of
the diatomite mine from here and you can see the caves at the bottom where
the white chalky rock is mined. It was formed under the lake from
fossilized diatoms and is used for filters and in paint and also given to
children as a source of calcium.
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