Once we arrived in Nakuru, we stayed the night at the Avenue Suites Hotel in Nakuru town. I clean didn't have high expectations for the hotel even though it was perhaps the second nicest hotel in the town. I find that if I set my expectations low, then when the room is fairly clean and there is an en suite bathroom, I am happy. This hotel exceeded my expectations by meeting both of those criteria. Stephanie, Silia, Mary, and I squeezed into a tuk tuk (Stephanie sat on my lap) and we went to dinner at the restaurant that sounded the best in our Lonely Planet. Again, I had low expectations. It had been described as pleasant, which is one of those words that could be a nice way of saying not particularly good (the restaurant at Twiga Lodge in Tiwi Beach south of Mombasa had been described as okay and it most certainly was not that). Once again, our expectations were exceeded. That is not to say that the food was great, but the spring rolls were really good and my chicken pili pili (spicy) was okay (Erin okay, not Lonely Planet okay). We piled in the tuk tuk and headed back to the hotel for bed. Stephanie, Silia, and I were all sharing a room and after we were all ready to go to sleep Stephanie got up to turn out the lights. I was slightly concerned that it would be so dark that she would hurt herself on her way back to her bed. When she flipped the switch, we quickly realized that that was not going to be a problem because the lights from the hallway were shining brightly through the window above our door. We laughed for a bit and then Stephanie went out in search of that switch as well. I am happy to report that she made back to her bed safely and we were able to sleep in darkness.
I had lent my alarm clock to Mary, and she woke us the next morning wondering why we were still sleeping when it was nearing 6:30 (our prearranged meeting time for breakfast). It was only 5:15. I felt a bit bad because I hadn't checked the time on the clock to make sure it was still set correctly after being in my backpack all day. The buttons sometimes get pushed during travel and the time gets changed. This happened to be one of those occasions. Oops. We went back to sleep for a bit, or in my case laid in bed for a while longer, and then got up and ready for our day. We went to the hotel restaurant at 6:30, the time I had been told it opened when I made the reservation, only to find it closed. We went to the lobby to check on the situation. Mary had noticed in the hotel brochure that it said that breakfast started at 7:30. The receptionist told us that breakfast started at 7. We decided to get out money back that we had already paid for breakfast and just eat some of the snacks we had brought on the trip for breakfast instead. We had told our driver to arrive at 7 and we did want to get an early start in the park.
Nakuru town
The park was very close to the town so we were there in no time. Once we had paid our entrance fees, we were off. We immediately ran into a large group of baboons and some impalas. There were several baby baboons. They were really cute. I had seen baboons on several occassions before, so I was happy to finally got some pictures of them.
The bachelor herd of imapala was hanging out amongst the trees. Lake Nakuru National Parl was really pretty. In addition to the beauty of the lake and the surrounding mountains, it was so green compared to the Masai Mara and had so many trees.
I eve got to see a new antelope species (for me, anyways).Female waterbuck
Male waterbuck
Eland
Grant's gazelle
A menagerie of antelope. Waterbuck are the largest ones in this photo.
Lake Nakuru is famous for its flamingos and rhinos. It is the one park in Kenya where you are virtually guaranteed to see a rhino. We saw flamingos first. They were pretty cool. From far away, it looked like the lake had pink sand beaches.
There were so many of them
They are really beautiful birds. There are two species of flamingos at Lake Nakuru. The greater flamingo is larger has a beak that is mostly pink. The lesser flamingo is smaller and has a beak that is mostly black.
Their wings are really pretty
Flamingos weren't the only birds on Lake Nakuru.
Great white pelicans with flamingos flying behind them. Flamingos look kind of weird when they fly.
Great white pelicans, maribou stork, and white-necked cormorants
In addition to waterfowl, we also saw crested cranes
and helmeted guinea fowl
Our first rhino sighting was very exciting. Ultimately, we got to see a lot of them. Most of what we saw were white rhinos.
A baby white rhino
A baboon taking his chances near two resting rhinos
My rhino with flamingos in the background picture. I was hoping to get this photo much closer, but our driver told us our van could not get any closer. I think that actually translated to he didn't want to drive us to where we could have been closer since we could see vans just like ours much closer to them. Apparently, the problems from the previous day were not finished.
I think this one is a black rhino - it's lips are a bit pointier than the white rhino's, which is apparently one of the distinguishing characteristics, as opposed to the actual color. This ones got a red-billed ox pecker on its back.
I saw sweveral animals that I had seen in the Masai Mara. It was really cool to see them surrounded by green and trees, instead of the expansive golden savannah.Cape buffalo - there were a ton of birds flying around them.
Two cape buffalo arguing over something.
Zebra
We even encountered a female lion. I really wasn't expecting to see a lion at Lake Nakuru, so we were excited and surprised when we came across this one sleeping on a tree branch overhanging the road.
She woke up while we were photographing her.
We also stopped at an overlook point. The view was pretty spectacular.
Flamingos on the lake
Cape buffalo wading through the shallow water near some flamingos.
There is also a water fall in the park - Makalia Falls
After we left the waterfall, it was pretty obvious our driver was in a hurry to get out of the park. He was driving very fast, despite our requests to slow down. We continually asked him to stop if there were animals close to the road, yet he continued to drive quickly. We would ask him to stop and he would slam on the brakes causing us to jerk forward. In addition, the nose we made approaching the animals made them all recede from the road, so we lost our opportunity for a good photo.
We had been discussing having lunch at the lodge inside the park all day, yet when we reached the turn off our driver sped by. We told him we wanted to go to the lodge for lunch and he needed to turn around and take us there. He reluctantly did so. We took a nice leisurely two hour lunch (not entirely by choice, it took an hour for our meal to come after we ordered, but ti did taste good).
The view from the lodge
There were a lot of birds on the lodge property. They even had a bird feeding station and put out some bread while we were there.Red-eyed dove
Speke's weaver
After we finished lunch, we told the driver the last few places we wanted to see based on our Lonely Planet map. It was obvious he wasn't happy that we weren't done yet and he put up some resistance to go there. Ultimately, it was a draw - he drove by what we wanted to see but so fast we didn't really get any photos. At least there wasn't anything we hadn't already seen. we headed home around 2 in the afternoon. All in all, the ride was fairly uneventful once we left the park. Despite our uncooperative driver, it was still a fun weekend. While the Masai Mara was amazing, I find Lake Nakuru to be much prettier. I am so glad I was able to spend the day there.
No comments:
Post a Comment