Hooray for the weekend!
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| Three Naivasha girls at Lake Nakuru |
We got up early Saturday morning, loaded into a van, and drove the 1.5 hours up to the nearby town of Nakuru (the district capital and home to one of our two referral hospitals). From there we entered Lake Nakuru National Park for some safari-ing!
The park was originally founded as a bird sanctuary, and used to be home to thousands of flamingos, though the rising and falling levels of the lake over the past few decades has made it a less desirable home. The lake has been rising again in recent years, wiping out the old park entrance and creating a creepy haunted house effect when entering the park.
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| Flamingo Haunted House? |
Now the park is best known as a rhino sanctuary, which is why we made the trek. There are supposedly 50+ white rhinos and 20+ black rhinos living in the park, though they are still major targets of poachers (in fact, two poachers were shot dead in the park while laying a trap for rhinos the night before we arrived!!). We saw 4 rhinos (all from a distance) which was amazing--they look like ancient lumbering dinosaurs!
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| Black rhino! |
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| White rhino taking a snooze in the morning sun |
We were bummed we didn't get to see more (or from up close), but I think the combination of extremely shy animals plus a pretty severe drought kept animals further away from the road-accessible areas of the park. The rains have not started yet in this area, so the area was pretty crispy outside of a green buffer zone surrounding the lake. Our guide was shocked to find that the river feeding the lake was completely dried up--the Makalia Waterfall wasn't even a trickle!
Despite the drought and poachers, we still saw lots of great animals! No big cats, but giraffes, zebras, antelope of various kinds, cape buffalo, baboons, waterbuck, flamingos, and many other birds and beasts! A lovely morning overall, and we were happy to pay the expensive park fees to keep the rhinos safe.
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| Baboon family |
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| One week old impala and her mama |
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| Omgosh baby zebras--soooo cute |
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| Flamingos and a zillion pelicans |
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| Giraffes!! |
Overall, excellent first safari! Spending the rest of the weekend lazing about town and down by the lake--we have a peds resident and another med student staying with us in the house for the weekend, so it's a muzungu party!
--M
