Well we were meant to set off early in the morning, but as usual it was a little bit of a late start at 10am, but the sun was shining and if we did not leave we would procrastinate about next time.
Bhavni and I drove to the Naro Moru park gate (2600m) with Bhavni in the driving seat just before we got to the entrance, where Bhavni sorted the passes for us and the car to enter. The plan was to drive to Met Station (3300m) and walk a little from there to a big rock which would give a nice view.
As we were entering, one of the rangers asked if the car was 4 wheel drive, well the car (the Honda) was a soft 4 wheel drive, so we said yes and Bhavni drove up the trail. Initially all was good, though a bit daunting as the trail was a mud trail and there were some areas of quagmire where the car could not grip well and also some really decent gradients. Well about half way up we got to a muddy bend, where a bunch of monkeys just disappeared from (Bhavni swears they were baboons, but i thought they were smaller things), which was uphill. Well the car stopped going forward in the mud, but because of the slope we could reverse. Bhavni tried another 2 times with the same result, so in the end we turned the car around and went back to the gate feeling defeated. We were not tempted to go further on foot by ourselves because of the monkeys.
Back at the gate, we got talking to one of the guides and he said he said he was happy to come with us for some money and we could leave the car on the trail if it was on the side. He had normal leather shoes on and just had a sweater, so I asked if he needed to get anything to go up, but he said he was good to go. So we proceeded up to before the muddy area and parked. All this time the clouds had thickened up and it slowly began to drizzle.
We walked up, Bhavni and I struggling a little with the Guide looking like he was having a lazy afternoon stroll. The drizzle carried on for most of the way, but it was actually nice and cooling. It was nice to reach Met Station as this route is a really steep route up the mountain.
We enjoyed the cold (must have been under 5 degrees) and the quiet views. However we kept on hearing the rumbling of thunder and could see lots of cloud building up (Im sure we were only a few hundred foot below the cloud layer), so we decided to go back to the car. It decided to pour, so we got drenched. When we got to the car It was nice to put on a dry top. While Bhavni looked like we had been wrung out after playing in the mud, the guide looked like he had just come from inside. I drove as the rain had made Bhavni’s hands numb. The rain really made the track interesting, with the abs firing and the car trying to go sideways. Making our way to the gate we stopped and had a look at old pictures of the mountain which really showed how much the snow had receded.
After leaving the park we went to Naro Moro River Lodge where we had a tea and freshened up before going back to Nyeri.
Back at home we did not do much, just sorted out the email for dad on the I Pad.
[Not a valid template]
