my gear is here!

Two weeks ago I spent hours on the web researching and buying my "stuff" for this trip. Monday and Tuesday it all came. First was the new Bible I bought with LARGE print -- what a wonder. My only concession to being 58. Turned out it weighs too much to take on the trip, so I will suffer along with the next best thing I can find...Next was the bird book I got for Kenya and Tanzania. It is amaaazinng...I had forgotten what tropical diversity is like. There are literally hundreds of species of birds in the area. I will be lucky if I see even a few of them -- well, my life list should grow at least a little. We will be in the Kenyan Highlands, and the weather has been wet, so I am hopeful to see many wonderful things. I already have some pretty funky bizarre birds on my life list from the time we were in Chile and Peru, including Andean Condors, several species of penguins, a solid green hummingbird the size of a small robin from Bolivia and the pato corta corriente, a duck which runs on the surface of rocky rushing streams, so this should be fun to see what else I can see - ostriches? that would be very cool. I also got a self inflating sleeping mat -- bad hips. I am an extremely cranky person if I don't sleep well. Ask my family. I have been in too many horrible motels with hard beds. This is just self protection. But the most beautiful thing I got is my new digital camera -- I haven't had a good camera since the Peace Corps Nikons and all the lenses etc we had were stolen from our house in the 1980's. It is simple, mostly just point and shoot, I got a big memory chip and rechargeable batteries and I am already playing with it -- the 5x zoom is the best part! I have been taking and erasing pictures for two days. The first set of batteries is nearly dead and I haven't even downloaded a picture yet!