Chyulu Part IV: Sunday Services and Home to Nairobi

Sunday morning we arose early to watch the animals gathered at the water hole.  Then it was off to Makutano for Church and then home to Nairobi.  We love the new flat we live in.  Now that we're on the second floor, we don't have people doing their laundry 6 inches in front of our window!!  Nice to have more privacy and beautiful views and good neighbors (not that we've ever had bad neighbors).

Lovely view of Mt. Kilimanjaro from our balcony at Kilaguni on this Sabbath morning.

Close-up of Mt. Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro is known as the "rooftop of Africa"

  

Are these elands or oryx?  I need to research it but not tonight.

The elephants here at Tsavo are red due to the red soil that they live in.

Impala in the early morning light

Elephants have been for a drink at the water hole.  Such interesting, social animals.

I get nervous when I see a lone elephant because we know that lone elephants leave the herd when they are old and about to die.  They die when their last teeth are worn out and they can't eat anymore.

Interesting that the elephants at Masai Mara are grey and the elephants here are red.

This zebra must have been killed by lions in the early morning because it wasn't here beside the road yesterday.  Hyenas are known to chase away lions from lion kill.  Hyenas can clean up a carcass in about an hour.

Poor little zebra.  But that is the circle of life.  These two hyenas will be full for a while.

I guess one hyena has eaten his full and is off.

 

Cute black-backed jackal.

Two cute black-backed jackals

Grant's gazelles running across the road in front of us.

And now we are seeing my beloved baobab trees.

It's a nice, sunny morning and we are on our way to Makutano.

Note that other trees still have their leaves, but not the baobab.

Three baobab sentinels.

They look kind of monster-ish, don't you think?

Now we've arrived at the church and children are playing outside, awaiting the start of Sacrament meeting.

Eating suckers and posing for a picture.  The boy on the left was particularly wanting his photo taken.  The chapel is huge with high ceilings.  But there were only four rows of chairs so the congregation was quite small.

Cute little member girls

After church, we're on our way again and taking more pictures of baobabs out the truck window.

Can't get enough of the trees

Carts loaded with fire wood

And pulled by cattle (oxen?)

Mud brick homes and buildings

The people are well dressed and look very clean in spite of walking on dusty roads.

This picture is to remind me that in this area, they make bricks.  I missed taking a picture of bricks drying in the sun.

The baobab tree across from this one (which unfortunately I don't have a picture of) was 40 feet in circumference according to LeRon's footsteps.  Huge!

More baobabs dot the landscape.

Baobabs are everywhere starting about 2 hours drive west of Tsavo.

Bikes are a popular form of transportation although many people have motor bikes.

Can't get enough pictures of the baobabs.  Kind of like my thousands of pictures of zebras!

As we got closer to Nairobi, there were five huge dust devils kicking up red dust.

So interesting to see a red dust devil.

The high speed train between Mombasa and Nairobi is now open for business.  You can travel between the two cities in about 4 1/2 hours.  The normal train takes 12 hours and to drive, it takes 10-12 or more hours.