Christmas Day at Mount Kenya Safari Club

On Christmas day we crossed the Equator twice!  **By Oleana: At our hotel we were apparently close enough to the equator that when me and Oona had a bath the whirlpool of water switched from right to left.**
We drove about one hour Northwest to the Mount Kenya Safari Club (owned by Fairmont Hotels.)
We had a very tasty lunch at the hotel and enjoyed wandering around the beautiful hotel grounds.

Crested Crane - the national bird of our neighbor, Uganda

Ostrich and lamas

Oona feeding her favorite animal - the bushbuck

Oleana feeding a baby Africa Cape Buffalo

Feeding a baby bongo

a tiny colobus monkey taking food from Oleana's hand

Our reason for going to the Safari Club was because we had read about an animal orphanage that operates on the property.  This was by far the highlight of our time there.  We were greeted by this menagerie of African animals, most of whom are extremely tame.  Many of them are quite young and are being prepared to be reintroduced into the wild.   Others are extremely old.  Speedy, the land tortoise is estimated to be 150 years old!

Oleana has a new nick-name: "Monkey Head!"  She is not so sure about this as a nick-name, but she did love having this Sykes Monkey sitting on her head at the animal orphanage.  This is the same kind of monkey that took our cookies at tea-time the day before.  They are also known as "The Gentle Monkey."  We were glad to have learned this before the monkey climbed up onto Oleana's head!