After a couple of pleasant nights at the Samburu Serena Lodge, we took that wretched road back to central Kenya, hooking west in Nanyuki. This Chapter shows some of the sights along the way.

Rick took his 200th picture of an acacia tree and caught this typical residence in the image.

On the horizon, you can see the Aberdare Mountains.

This is how people, mostly women, carry stuff around. Most families don't have cars and can't afford taxis - so people walk. From an early age, they learn to balance loads on their heads. This is a very common sight along the side of the road. Not sure if you can make it out in the picture, but the woman is barefoot.

Not sure if you can make it out, but the sign above both stores says Cereal Store. It appears that there are 2, side by each, and that the one on the left is closed. Not sure if they keep later hours, are on vacation, out of business, or have been taken over by the enterprise next door.

This town of Equator (we later passed about 15 other towns called Equator) straddles, you guessed it, the equator. We stopped here for a demonstration, and indeed 20 paces north of the sign, water drains clockwise and 20 paces south it rotates the other way! On the equator, it doesn't rotate at all - quite intriguing!!

At virtually all tourist stops so far (including stop signs and traffic lights), we got approached by people trying to sell various wares and they wouldn't leave us alone until we left. Now in the case of stops in traffic, they would persist with their sales pitch until the vehicle that we were in reached speeds that exceeded those that they could run! In lunch and toilet stops, we needed to pass through a curio (souvenir) shop to get to the toilet, and once clear of the toilet, we were followed with similar sales pitches until we left the shop.

At the equator, we experienced quite an amazing marketing phenomenon. There were about 30 shops here, so we expected about 30 people to invite us into their shops and follow us repeating these invitiations until we were finished with the water rotation demonstration. That didn't happen!! Cecilia from shop # 17 approached and asked us to visit her shop when we were done with the equator demo - then she left and waited patiently. We were stunned! We enjoyed the demo and indeed visited Cecilia. We were treated to a much less hard sell and actually ended up buying a few souveniers.

Sales prices quoted are really outragious. We figure that every now and again, someone bites, and that brings in enough profit for probably weeks. What would happen if prices were reasonable? Would volume sales outperform the biggie!?!

This happened at the most convenient spot - in a town and a few yards away from a service station. We all got out, opened the engine cowl and were joined by a mechanic. While all this was happening, we noticed a chorus of young voices in the distance chanting 'Wazungu.' In Swahili, Wazungu means white people.

There was a school next door to the service station and recess was in progress. This was a small town and not a regular tourist stop (no curio shop with toilets in the back). The only Wazungu that these children probably see are in the safari buses that speed by. There was a school bus driver nearby and he advised us that the children would appreciate a visit. As we approached the schoolyard, they all retreated, giggling. We entered and greeted in Swahili - 'Jambo!' - with extended hands. Well they all came running to greet the Wazungu - I think that we shook everyone's hand, some more than once. It was a special moment. We took the school address and will forward some of the pictures that we took.

This was kind of like the our Equator stop, except with the hard sell.

For those who have made the short hike to Branywine Falls on the way from Vancouver, Canada to Whistler - this looked like a twin. We snapped a couple of shots and retreated to the bus to avoid the touts.

Some folks have bicycles. These are imported from China and are becoming quite common. People use them to transport all sorts of things, from people to firewood. Pictured here is a load of firewood in transit.

Not far from our hotel in Nairobi is a bicycle repair shop. It consists of a man at the side of the road with a box of parts and tools, and a bucket of solvent. He's always working on a rig and has clients waiting their turn. An inspiration!