LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Great Rift Valley
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Lying in the Great Rift Valley, with a semi arid climate, this place is a haven of peace in harsh and rugged but scenic surroundings. Hippos and crocodiles are plentiful. Crocodile is considered harmless by the local people who fish standing in the water whilst the crocodiles on the same mission swim by! This area has abundant bird life with over 400 spices having been reported. Bird watching can be done on foot or by boat. Other leisure activities are water sports, fishing, visiting the local people’s village.
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The Great Rift Valley is a vast geographical and geological feature, approximately kilometres ( mi) in length, which runs from northern Syria in Southwest Asia to central Mozambique in East Africa. Caused by the geological process of rifting, it is a complex feature where several plates of the earth's crust join. The rift valley varies in width from thirty to one hundred kilometers, and in depth from a few hundred to several thousand meters. It was named by the explorer John Walter Gregory.
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The Great Rift Valley cuts a swath down the eastern side of the African continent. Slicing across 4,500 miles from the Dead Sea in the north to Mozambique in the south, it forms the largest visible rift on earth. Shifting tectonic plates formed the Great Rift about 30 million years ago when the plates of Africa and Eurasia crashed together, then pulled apart and caused huge landslides to empty rock from the earth's surface deep inside its crust. Water has collected in the valley to form lakes. Millions of years of erosion have made the surrounding volcanic soil oddly fertile. The bones of several hominid ancestors of modern humans have been found there, including those of "Lucy", a nearly complete australopithecine skeleton.
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The Great Rift Valley encompasses eastern Africa from Ethiopia south to Mozambique and as far west as Rwanda and the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo. A native of England, Pavitt has lived in Kenya for 45 years and has traveled through as much of the region as wartime conditions permitted. The more than 200 stunning color photographs presented here feature the region's dramatic volcanoes and valleys as well as its people. While he describes some of the surviving indigenous wildlife, his text emphasizes the history of Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, and Rwanda, including the great explorers who charted the unknown interior in the 19th century and the customs and traditions of the Maasai, Pokot, Konso, Batwa, and other tribes. The Rift Valley is an ancient land, a probable cradle of humankind, in many inaccessible areas still untouched, but it is ... ever-changing owing to global warming, active volcanoes, war, and social disruptions. This is the only book in print on the valley for a general readership; an earlier book, Collin Willock's Africa's Rift Valley (o.p.), emphasized the region's natural history.
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The Great Rift Valley was formed around 35 Mill. years ago by the tectonic rifting of the African contintental plate from the Arabian plate. About the same time the African plate collided with the Eurasian plate and the Alps were formed. The Rift Valley stretches 6000 km from Syria through the Red Sea, down to the Mozambique. The width varies from 30 to 100 km. In Kenya the deepest point is north of Nairobi in the Naivasha / Nakuru region where the ground is punctuated with dormant volcanoes such as Longonot, Suswa and Menengai, and numerous smaller ones such as the Delameres Nose near Elementaita. A balloon flight in the area reveals the bizarre volcanic landscape which is believed still to be changing and finally splitting the African Continent into 2 by the expansion of the Red Sea into a new ocean.
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The Great Rift Valley was formed over twenty million years ago by the slow separation of East Africa's giant tectonic plates. As the plates pulled apart, lava was forced up into the space and caused the Earth's surface along the rift to bulge, forming a large snaking highland area punctuated with volcanoes including mount Kilimanjaro and Ngorongoro.
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