On Safari

Just a quick blog about Nakuru National Park. I think Mark is going to try to get pictures up on Friday and he can add to it then.

We went to the park for 24 hours, it is a huge flamingo filled lake, surrounded by forest, savana and other animal friendly parts. It's not a huge park like Tsavo was so as soon as we arrived we were greeted by vervet monkeys, zebra, impala, water buck, buffalo etc. It was really exciting as we were staying inside the park in a bandas (traditional African huts). As well as being famous for its flamingos (and 400-500 other recorded bird species) Nakuru is a rhino sanctuary with some 50 black rhino and 13 very rare white rhino, which were reintroduced in Kenya having been poached out of existance. Nakuru is also home to the rare Rothschild giraffe.

Well we saw so much, many rhino - one mother and baby came wandering around by the car - what amazing funny creatures they are! We also saw giraffes, baboons, warthogs and many types of antelope or and a vulture, thousands of flamingos, pelicans and loads of other birds. One highlight for me was on the first evening, as the sun was going down we spotted a Spotted hyena - it was on the lake shore and we saw it from quite a distance, they have a very distinctive sillouette. We drove around to where it was and intersected it on it's way. We stopped the car about 10 metres away from it and it just sat down and looked at us. We sat and looked at it for a while and when we finally drove off it got up and carried on its way - our first mammal predator! The next day we were determined to see lions and we drove a long way around the park, almost oblivious to the amazing scenery around us - but unfortunately other than an unconfirmed lion that we think we saw through the binoculars but was too far away to be certain, the lions weren't playing. We were heading back when I suddenly spotted a leopard in a tree right by us (about 5 metres away and at eye level). We stopped the car and tried to stop Melissa shrieking to shut the windows. The leopard just looked at us and eventually got up and wandered across the road right in front of us. We were all very excited and jubilant as a leopard is not that easy to find and it was so beautiful.

We had such a great time and it was well worth doing although we were very tired by the time we had got up very early Sunday morning (after an eventful night - see Melissa's blog) to drive 4 hours there, up early Monday morning to go driving around the park and then a four hour drive home again. Still haven't seen lions or hippos - might have to go to Nairobi national park on our way out of Kenya - if we have any money left by then!!!

- Heather