At The Equator

Hello everyone,

I am trying to carefully choose pictures that will be interesting and unique to Kenya. Today we packed up our things from the Wildebeest Eco Camp and had a long ride in a safari vehicle to our next destination, the Mpala research center which is a ranch on 50 thousand acres.

On the way there I was sitting right behind the driver, who was on the right side. The driving system here is like Britain, and all the signs are in English here since Kenya was a British colony for over a hundred years until 1963. Professor Nengo was in our vehicle and I asked him questions about the people, the economy, education, elderly care, employment, and other subjects.

Driving along the highway was most fascinating to me, there were people walking on the side of the road almost the whole way to our destination. We passed several stalls where goods were sold, the stalls were rather makeshift, I tried to take pictures of them. Because the highway was only two lanes, drivers were constantly going into the lane of oncoming traffic to pass slow vehicles. Our driver had to do this several times, one time it seemed pretty close to a head on collision with another car.

We made a brief stop at the equator, which is shown in one of the pictures. We were given a very entertaining demonstration on the direction of the water going down a funnel on either side of the equator.

On our way into the Mpala Ranch Research center we saw zebra, elephants, giraffe-necked deer, impalas, and giraffes. While we were getting settled into our rooms I came out and a giraffe was standing out in the field very close to the buildings. Amazing! It was a reticulated giraffe, the pattern is very clean and precise. We will be here two nights.

Merrianne