Adventure Time!

We went on an adventure on Sunday! It was lots of fun.  

So we left after tea time, and drove over in three cars to Mukenya.  I posted a picture of it earlier this summer--it means "Little Mount Kenya," and it's basically a hill.  We parked at the bottom and hiked up.  

Parked at the bottom. 

The hike up only took roughly 12 minutes, but parts of it were pretty steep so it felt very intense.  The view from the top was awesome.  I also discovered while up there that while I am not necessarily afraid of heights, I certainly did not want to get too close to the edge.    

View from the top. 

There was also a cave sort of space if you walked part of the way down on the other side from where we went up.  The space there reminded me a lot of Scar's lair in The Lion King. 

The bottom of the rock we're all sitting on was the roof of the cave area. 

The hike up was certainly more intense, but the hike down was arguably harder.  Because there were some parts that were super steep, so you practically had to slide down them on the way down.  We left Mukenya and drove to an area called the Confluence.  It was a river with sandy banks, so it felt like we were at the beach.  When we arrived, there was a herd of cows there to greet us.    

Cows cows cows.

 We had lunch while sitting on the banks, and then just hung out for a while.  There were rocks out in the water that you could get to to sit/lie down on.  The only tricky part was getting there.  There were four different things about the river working against you if you tried to get anywhere.  One: the water was pretty opaque, so you couldn't see where you were stepping.  Two: the bottom was not even, there were a lot of rocks to step/trip on.  Three:  Not only were there rocks that made the bottom uneven, but you could be standing in one place and the water would be up to your ankles, and then two steps later it was up to your waist.  Four: although the current wasn't overly fast, it was moving.  But it was worth it when you got to the rocks.  They had been in the sun all day, so it felt like lying down on a heated bed--it was wonderful.      

The river. 

We left the Confluence in time to get to Lizard Rock for a sundowner.  Right when we got there, we got a text saying that another car had gotten stuck, so we went to go help.  This group had left early to get back to the center, and as they were driving a flash flood hit.  The roads became incredibly slippery/sticky/like quick sand, and they got stuck on the side.  As we were driving up to help them, we also almost got stuck.  The only thing that got us out was MBB's excellent driving.  Even walking on the roads was rough and your shoes would slip out from under you.  A little while after we got there, a car from the center arrived to help and they managed to pull the stuck car out, with a little help pushing from behind.

They were really stuck. 

 Sunday was an excellent adventure day, and then Monday was back out in the field.  We went up to North to collect the leaf/fruit samples we needed.

This is the fence that surrounds the LMH plots, the ones where all animals are excluded. 

 This morning we went out to central to collect leaves to do relative water content measurements, and then we went to the black cotton in the afternoon for more leaf collections.

One of the trees where we were working at central.
The birds build these incredible nests hanging from the trees.  It looks like the tree is wearing earrings to me. 

 On the way back to the center, we saw a puff adder in the middle of the road. That's a snake that can do some damage to you, but this guy wasn't doing well.  We couldn't figure out what had happened to him, but he was struggling to move.  Even when we got closer to him, he didn't really react.  It was really sad.  

The puff adder, with Tyler for size reference (Tyler's 6'6").

There was also more camera trapping today and now I'm about to get ready for bed.  I only have two more nights here after tonight, which feels incredibly strange.  There are a lot of things that I miss a lot from home, so I'm very excited to get back to the states, but I'm also not quite ready to leave.  Oh well.  The day is fast approaching no matter what I do.  There are a lot of things that will be different when I get home.  Alex summed many of them up nicely in one of her last posts.  I'm preparing to ask myself all of those questions as well.

Hope everything's going well for everyone at home, and I'll see you soon!