It takes six plus hours to drive from Kisumu to Nairobi through the most glorious landscape imaginable. The first part of the trip was flat as a pancake and we wondered how people dealt with all the rain that Kenya gets. Jackie says that some people just vacate their houses for the downpours.

After a while it all becomes hilly and then mountainous. The trees keep changing with the different altitudes and I fell in love with one variety called something like Bongo Bongo. It’s darker than all the others and lifts numerous arms skyward as though talking to the heavens.

Best of all we saw zebras, giraffe, antelope and camels in the wild. I declared the day a success right then and there and we hadn’t even gotten to Nairobi for our real business.

Our hero of a driver Yasin was thrilled to see fancy cars on the road and would enthusiastically exclaim, “Look at that Chevrolet! That’s a nice ride”. His favorite was a sky blue Jaguar that we just went ahead and added to our list of animals, much to his amusement and perhaps dismay as well.

We got to Nairobi later than we had hoped. Jackie couldn’t figure out where we were and her phone calls to her sister didn’t help much. We finally worked it out, ran into as many fabric shops as possible and got a few things taken care of. Tomorrow morning we’ll visit a place that we’ve been told has fleece after which we’ll leave to drive back to Uganda.

We ate dinner at our hotel and laughed as our meals were completely mixed up. I got Jackie’s Matoki and Yasin got my Ugali. Phoebe got garlic tea instead of ginger and Jackie got roast chicken as well as another friend’s fried chicken. It was crazy but we sorted it out and added it to another wonderful day to remember and giggle about.