Taita here we come!

Waiting to get checked in on our flight in Helsinki-Vantaa

Welcome to our Taita Field Course blog site! Here you can reminisce with us our exciting adventure in Taita Hills (and other places), Kenya.

Our trip to Kenya started from the coldĀ  Helsinki-Vantaa Airport on Sunday afternoon in the beginning of January. Before the trip even really started we got many praises on our perfect document piles – for this trip we needed more than many documents because of the ongoing pandemic.

Finally in Nairobi!

After a couple of sleepless flights we arrived to Kenya and warm Nairobi welcomed us with beautiful morning sun. A “little” wait at the airport and then we got to see some familiar faces; Aura, Jouko and Jussi were waiting for the rest of us with our professor Petri and drivers Ken and Robert. We sat down on our mighty vehicle for the next couple of week – a white stallion (bus) and the trip to “home” started.

Our first elephant

On our way to Taita Hills we already saw our first animals (of course one of the main things we expected from this course hehe). Animals seen: dromedary (camel with one hump, in Finnish also known as “ymeli”), elephant, giraffe, donkey and a lot of cows and goats.

Aside from animals we got to eat lunch at beautiful Sikh temple and see Kenyan gas station life when waiting for our bus to get fixed. I’m not sure what happened but our “turbo gear” was lost and fixed three times. This all was fine, since we got to ponder on why the moon here is in different angle (not sure if we have figured it out even after two weeks of pondering) and to buy some of our first fruits and spatulas. As the day turned into night, we arrived to the Taita Research Station and had our first dinner prepared by our amazing chef. The first day was full of events but this was only the start of our journey!

Some Monopoly Deal while waiting for our bus to get fixed
Changing vehichles at Voi since the turbo gear could not be fixed