The Central highlands of Kenya are an amazing geography of contrasts. The deep green of cultivation farmlands gives way to the purple gray scrub grass of high ranches where cattle, sheep and plain game graze. Mountain ranges are covered in forests with hidden trout streams. These highlands streams flow to swift moving rivers that suddenly burst out and down into dramatic falls of water. Other mountains stand stark and dry, broken and weathered into moonscapes and mesas. Climbing a small rise can yield a panoramic vista of plains and plateaus rising to range after range of distant mountains. In the center, Mt Kenya dominates. (more…)