Lake Nakuru National Park

Lake Nakuru National Park was an added bonus in terms of game parks as far as most of us were concerned. We’d certainly seen more than our fair share of wildlife particularly after the Lake Manyara, Ngorogoro Craterand Serengeti trip.

At 6am, our group piled into three minivans with pop-top rooves. Peter, our guide, was extremely knowledgeable about Lake Nakuru and its wildlife and birdlife as he grew up there as a child before it became a national park.

Lake Nakuru is 188km² and doesn’t have any elephants as there isn’t enough room for them. You could mistake the uprooted trees as an elephant’s handiwork, however, the real cause is the heavy rain they’ve had for the last two months.

The Park is touted as a bird watcher’s paradise and we saw many familiar species but also many we’d never seen before. It is also known for its flamingos that nest on the lake’s shores, but there weren’t many there when we were there.

Amongst an array of other animals, we saw waterbuck,

a large troupe of baboons walking up the road,

a hippo out of the water eating and then proceeding to lose most of his mouthful of grass,

a Giant Eland with an unusual expression,

zebras standing around, eating and fighting,

tree climbing lions (which Lake Manyara was meant to be known for),

a pride of lions with 8 cubs, yawning, licking, grooming and playing with each other,

black and white colobus monkeys,

and black rhino. The rhino was close to the side of the road but we drove straight past it. We asked Peter to stop, thinking he may not have seen it or that he thought we’d seen enough rhino, but he told us it was because it was too aggressive and had started to charge us! Lucky one of us weren’t driving otherwise we may have stopped and had a bit of an incident!

Every animal seemed to have its babies on show for us. We saw baby baboons

including a tiny one at the park entrance,

a 2-day old white rhino stumbling around, still a little unsteady on its feet,

giraffe,

zebra,

vervet monkeys,

and a buffalo born earlier that day.

Again we couldn’t have asked for a better day of wildlife viewing – minus the bloody tse-tse flies that seem to be around here too. Fortunately no-one got bitten this time.