Capturing the Moment

 Lake Nakuru always has a way of being a sleeper hit for safari goers. It is a rather small park, with a strip of land surrounded a large, but shallow soda lake in Kenya's Rift Valley region. It used to have millions of flamingos, but the drastic changing of levels of the lake has wiped out the flamingos food source, cyanobacteria, so now there are just a few thousand of the pink, long legged creatures left. They are joined by white pelicans, and more importantly, white rhinos calling the park home. Lions and leopards can also be found, but for us it was the rhinos that we really hoped to see here.    We set off after breakfast for an all day game drive in the park. Black and white colobus monkeys were our first big find. We had briefly seen them in the Aberdares but this was a really nice viewing of them up in a yellow fever tree. We entered the big open area next, with lots of flamingos and pelicans dominating the shoreline. Groups of buffalo also joined the fray near t...

 It felt great to wake up without an alarm clock and in such a beautiful place. I meandered to the bar, pictured above, to get some computer work done while sipping the first latte offered on the trip. The view down over the lake was amazing and with everyone else in the lodge heading out for early morning game drives I felt like I had the whole place to myself.   Slowly the group started finding their way up to where I was for morning coffee and a grand breakfast buffet. After breakfast we put the finishing touches on packing and eagerly got underway for a game drive around the lake. We weren't disappointed. We had a very close encounter with a beautiful maned male lion right next to the vehicle. Crowned cranes fed near the waterhole, and we were able to find some more white rhinos for David, who missed the fighting ones on the previous game drive.    We also got a rare chance to get out of our vehicle down by the lake's edge. Lake Nakuru really gained a...

Lake Nakuru National Park   The old flooded entrance gate Sopa Nakuru Lodge View from the bar After a long morning of travel we arrived at our next destination  Lake Nakuru. After some quick paperwork at the new gate, since the old one flooded and is now partially under the lake, we sped through the forested side of the park towards the Nakuru Sopa Lodge, our base for exploring this park. The road winded way up the escarpment overlooking the lake, and perched ontop was a beautiful collection of stand-alone bungalows and a huge bar and dining area. We arrived just in time to catch the tail end of lunch. Our rooms, 27, 28, and 29 were far enough away from reception to necessitate a golf cart shuttle service, but we were up for a bit of walking. Everyone was pretty amazed once inside the rooms. The view was gorgeous from on top of the escarpment, there was fine woodwork everywhere, and the bathrooms were ludicrously large...complete with what we assumed was ...

A few flamingos remain at Lake Nakuru  Lake Nakuru National Park was created in 1961 to protect the dense wildlife area in and around Lake Nakuru located in Kenya's rift valley area. The lake is one of Kenya's rift valley soda lakes, which have natural dissolved minerals giving it an alkaline or saline content. It is pretty wild to see a salty lake this far inland and at an elevation of 1754m above sea level. The lake gained fame for the thousands, sometimes millions of pink flamingos that feed along its shores, sometimes giving the illusion that the entire lake is pink. If you ever watch the movie 'Out of Africa' you can see a beautiful overview of Lake Nakuru as Robert Redford flies over it.   A bleak sight at Lake Nakuru  Even though Lake Nakuru National Park is home to rhinos, lions, leopards, and buffalo, it's the hoards of flamingos that are the real draw. However since 2013 there has been an alarming rise in the level of the lake. The rising waters...