The Flame Trees of Thika

Saturday we drove northeast from Nairobi to Thika. You might be familar with the book with that town in its name. The traffic was bad getting out of and into the city, but the drive was nice. The countryside is really beautiful. We had a little trouble finding the place we were looking for in Thika. It was a hotel that has been there since 1908 - used by the white settlers as a way station. It's situated on a piece of land between two waterfalls. Lexi liked to look at them - the rest of us did, too.

Then we drove another 20 kilometers to 14 Falls which is a santuary type place. There is a horseshoe shaped falls broken up into 14 sections hence the name. There were several school groups there and the thing to do seemed to be to wade across the water a ways from the top of the falls to the other side. We decided just to look from the shore. People had brought their picnic lunches as well.

Overall, a very nice outing.

Welcome to Africa column: Casting light on the situation

My parents are visiting us in Nairobi from the suburbs of Seattle for several weeks. The other day, we stopped at a cafe near our house. My mother used the bathroom and noticed a small sign above the light switch that read: This is the light switch.

Huh?

Tanzania

We got up early this morning and piled in the car to head to Tanzania. We are spending 4 days in Arusha which is about a 5 hour drive from Nairobi. You have to cross the border (of course) - and that takes a good hour! You have to register your car in two places on either side plus stop twice for immigration - once on the Kenyan side and the other on the Tanzanian. It's quite a struggle. You don't know quite where to go if it is your first time, but plenty of helpful people point you on your way. I am not sure if they were employees or just people hanging around.

Driving south the scenery is much different than driving north. Tanzania seems to be quite fertile and there are some interesting rock formations along the way...


Time for dinner now. More later.