Into the Rift Valley

It is 06:15 (too damn early), and I am up and getting ready to go to Lake Naivasha.I should have looked at a map, then I would have realized that we were headed into the Rift Valley today!
Joseph collected us at 07:00, with chapatis, from his wife, in hand. The morning is gray and the light drizzle dampens my spirit and my expectations for the day. Winding through traffic for a few minutes, we emerged on the A104 headed northwest out of Nairobi. The roads leads us through lush valleys of green, the garden plots easily definable and the houses a little further apart. We seem to going up more hills than down.

Suddenly, there were souvenir shops on the left and behind them stretched a wooden fence painted with black and white diagonal stripes. As Toni and I struggled to snap shots of the scene beyond the fence, Joseph pulled off the the road and parked near the fence. Resembling rehearsing clowns, we piled out of the car, leaving the doors open. At first, I was only vaguely aware of the hawkers' approach, like one is aware of the other crossers when the light changes. I stumbled out of the car, only to come up short at the fence. This lookout is at an altitude of 2461.5 meters or 8000 feet and on the eastern rim of The Great Rift Valley.

The scene presented to anyone taking a moment to stop and look is almost indescribable. I stand and stare, my head swinging left and right. I am trying and failing to take it all in. I snap some pictures, knowing they are but the palest image of this magical sight before me. Like the gods on Mount Olympus, I stand and overlook acres and acres. Below me stretches out left, right, and ahead to be lost in the horizon's mists, are rectangles of farmland, stands of trees, terraces containing hundreds or more houses, plots, and many thousand people. The people, unaware that the gods are looking down from on high and their houses are as match boxes from that height above one terrace, then another, then the valley floor far below. The floor of the rift valley, an expanse of grasslands, detail lost to distance except for Mount Logonot and Mount Margaret. Toni takes a sweeping video as I try to take shots that I can make into a panorama later. We spend many minutes transfixed by the vista, all the while hawkers failing to enter our attention any more than the giraffe notices the mosquito. After the taking of many pictures, the many guffaws, and the shooing of hawkers, we were off again. Further we climbed, then we started the decent into Naivasha.