The Aberdares is a mountain range which lies directly north of Nairobi, whose highest peak, Ol Doinyo La Satima, reaches 3,998m. Part of the range is protected as the Aberdares National Park and encompasses all land over 3,200m together with a salient stretching east, down to 2,133m near the town of Nyeri. The dense forests of the Salient, once an elephant migration route between the Aberdares and Mount Kenya, are rich in wildlife - elephant, warthog, giant forest hog and bush pig, waterbuck, duiker, suni, dikdik, reedbuck, eland, bushbuck and the extremely rare bongo. Black and white colobus monkey are frequently seen swinging in the treetops. Lion, leopard, genet and serval cats, the latter frequently seen in its melanistic (black) phase, are also seen here. Above the forests are misty moorlands with icy rivers plunging into spectacular waterfalls and strange six metre tall mutants of alpine plants - groundsel, erica, hypericum and seneccio whose brilliant yellow flowers bloom but once in twenty years.
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