Safari - Day 5 - Treetops
The lack of a game drive this morning meant that we had a chance to sleep in - although we were both wide awake by 6am. We left at 8 and made our way south to the equator. We had the obligatory demonstration of how water runs out in the opposite direction between north of the equator (where it runs clockwise), south of the equator (where it runs anti-clockwise) and on the equator where it runs straight out without turning at all. The further you are from the equator, the more pronounced the effect, but even 20 yards one way or the other was enough to see the difference. There were plenty of people waiting to take our photo on the equator, and we were lucky enough to be there just as a group of Kenyan school children arrived. We persuaded them to stand with us for our photo - which I am hoping will make for a more interesting shot. It was then on to Outspan Country Club for lunch. This was also the place where Lord Baden Powell (of scouting fame) came to spend his last days and die, and so we went into the room which was part of his house in Kenya, which is now a small museum.
Then, on to Treetops, the place where Princess Elizabeth famously climbed the ladder to bed a princess, and came down as the Queen back in 1952. Not much remains of that time - there is a sign saying that this is the tree where her treehouse was, but as the tree there is only a few feet high, it seems unlikely that this was the actual tree! To make up for our lack of game drive this morning, we paid for an additional game drive this afternoon. It was well worth it. As well as seeing lots of monkeys, water buffalo and warthogs, we managed to see not one but two leopards. The first one crossed the track in front of us, and then stayed in the shrubs on the side of huge road looking at us as we stopped alongside, until the driver's mobile phone went off and scared him away. The other walked away from us along the road and the disappeared into the bush. We also saw a number of spotted hyenas, very different from the striped hyena that we had seen in Samburu.
Just one of the big five - the rhino - to see before we complete the set - perhaps tonight. We would also like to see a fully grown male lion - but not here as there are no lions near Treetops.