We shared some articles about elephants together in National Wildlife’s Ranger Rick magazine.
On our African photographic safari, we arrived in the town of Nan Yuki, Kenya, situated on the equator on the side of Mt. Kenya. The elevation is 6389 ft.
It’s also the site of the Silverback Hotel that was burned to the ground by the Mau Mau during the Mau Mau uprising in the early 1950s.
It was here that they demonstrated the rotation of water when poured down a funnel.
On the north side of the equator the water will swirl in one direction and on the south side of the equator it will swirl in the opposite direction all the while only a few feet apart. No one believed it until they saw it with their own eyes. You can’t go out and check it because you have to be on the equator somewhere. We were only approx. 6 ft. either side over the equator line on both sides of the equator where it was easy to check.
It is also the place of the Mt. Kenya Game Ranch owned by the late William Holden of Hollywood fame and Don Hunt.
I was instructed to take my Fansidar medication along about this time by the Pharmacist at Charlottesville, Va. That is what I did and as soon as I had taken it I got a splitting headache. I was sick for two days and started feeling better on the third day. I was unable to get out of bed. I was too sick to do much photography work while on Mt. Kenya. The rest of our group said that their instructions were to take the medication if they had symptoms of malaria. None did. We all felt that the Fansidar is what made me sick. That little fiasco cost us three days of photography.
The lodge on Mt Kenya was different than the others. There was a water hole that the wildlife came to visit close to the lodge and you photographed them through windows in the basement covered with iron bars.
There was one elephant that had obtained the ability to balance a limb across his tusk while walking along. Check here next month for another adventure in Africa…John.
