Crossing the Equator and Malai Saba

1/3/09 Today it was off to our new destination..our camp on Menegai Crater and a visit to Lake Nakuru. It was a very long and treacherous journey from Samburu to Lake Nakuru, crossing the equator.
we awoke at 630 for a 700 breakfast. we saw zebra, giraffe, ostrich, and dik dik on the way out, without even trying. we spent the next two hours bumping up and down and down and up and up and down on the unpaved road. we took a stop for bathroom and shopping, which was only an interlude to the next four hours of rocky, bumping, up and down, across unpaved pathways through kenya. the views were beautiful, the country magnificant and the roads, way way way unfinished. every 100 miles, the landscape changed totally from arid desert to green farmlands to plains to mountains.
we stopped for a picnic lunch at the equator, designed by the sign which said ýou are now at the equator'. a local kenyan explained the hemispheres and then performed, with rebecca and noah's help, the water experiment to show that water rotates in opposite directions across the equator. we video taped this for the girls'science classes. the local kenyan had a gps to prove that we were, in fact, at 0.00. combined with our frequent trips to our friends in greenwich, england, we feeling like a bunch of zeros these days.
we head out for another 2 hours of driving, this time on paved roads, and many kenyan kids waving at us as we drove.
we arrived at the menengai crater, our home for the next two days. the crater is the second largest volcanic crater in the world. since the larger one, in indonesia, has a lake on it, this one is the best to view. it is some 14 miles across, 6,000 feet deep, full of black volanic rock, and stunning. we stayed in a tent camp and our tent was perched, literally, on the edge of the crater with magnificant views. the tent camp, in fact, was created by a local foundation that purchased and built the camp so that it could employ the eldest children in orphan families. this way, the proceeds from the tent camp are funneled back into the local community, an eco-tourism victory.
our tent, called a banta in swahili, had its own bathroom, hot shower, separate area for the girls to sleep, and a beautiful deck overlooking the crater.
after checking in, we took a hike along the edge of the crater with our guide, peter.
we relaxed until dinner, then back to the banti to find hot water bottles in our beds as part of their turndown service.
off to sleep listening to the sounds of the birds, crickets, and frogs, we think..