Kenya: Better than London Zoo

Having found myself in Nairobi, Kenya over a weekend with very little to do I looked into some tourism options. I was recommended Lake Nakuru national park, a smallish national park with a vast array of wildlife, but no elephants. I was picked up from my hotel at 7am, and we started the drive west towards the lake.

As we left the city I was a little disappointed by my guide’s information. E.g. ‘In Kenya we grow trees for wood’. I steeled myself for a day lacking in crucial insights. The day started a little overcast, but cleared up as we headed into the mountains. I hadn’t heard of it before my journey to Kenya, but the Great Rift Valley passes through Kenya. The valley is a valley (obviously) that goes from Syria to Mozambique. We stopped at a place along the mountains ostensibly to take a photo.

However the row upon row of tourist shops should have told me that the I was going to need to buy something. As I got out of the van to take the photo, a guy comes up to me and starts pointing out the sights (mountains on the other side of the valley and Lake Naivaha which I was due to visit later). After the reasonably good explanation he attempted to sell me a stone plate with the view etched into it. I really didn’t want it and said so, however the age old tradition of such encounters he almost begged me to start haggling. Having got him down from 2000 Shillings to 300 (£2.30) I felt guilty and paid him. This then brought a pack of other people selling stone ornaments. I managed to escape having only bought a stone elephant, rhino and giraffe.

So, on we went towards Lake Nakuru. The van we were in basically looked like a Nissan equivalent of a VW camper van style mini bus. The windows were a little dirty, so I was a bit worried about how the photos might look. However when we arrived at the park gates, the guide ‘lifted’ the roof so we could stand up in the van and take pictures.

Vans...

I had been told mixed things about this park, namely that the wildlife was focused on flamingos rather than big things that might kill me. Nevertheless my guide promised me he’d do his best to find some lions. Not expecting too much, we drove into the park. Within a minute we came upon some massive storks, then the flamingos, which were quite an amazing sight.

Flamingos

Sadly my camera was purchased with one key criteria – whether it would fit into my pocket easily. It has a pretty lame zoom, so the flamingo pictures were a bit rubbish.

Zebra

Giraffe

We then drove away from the lake shore and soon we were surrounded by animals. Zebras, then white rhinos, a hyena, and buffaloes.  We also passed a number of gazelles, but the guide refused to stop and let us take pictures as apparently there were shit loads everywhere. There was then a buzz over the CB radio. Lions had been spotted! We raced over towards their location.

When we got there we parked near a number of other vans all looking at a tree. Initially I couldn’t see anything other than a tree, but the sound of an American going “here kitty kitty” in the next van convinced me there must be a lion somewhere. Soon I was able to make out the young cub and older mother in the tree. Having posed for a number of photos, the lions ran off into the woods.

Can you spot the lion (probably need to click the picture to see it)

All the vans looking at the lion in the tree! She was just ignoring us.

My initial fears about my guide were completely unfounded. He seemed to know an amazing amount of facts about the wildlife, and spent some time speculating on family dynamics of the animals and talking about the interaction between the species (a baboon calling to warn his mates about lions) etc. David Attenborough must just go on one of the tours, make notes and repeat what these type of geezers tell him. It’s probably a very easy job.

We wandered around some more, saw a black rhino, which looks exactly the same as a white rhino to my untrained eyes – they’re both grey. We then ran into another family of lions, about eight of them, unfortunately not including the big male.

More lions

After a brief stop for lunch we drove around some more, and saw loads of monkey type animals before heading back to Lake Naivasha. This trip involved a boat ride to see some hippos which were much larger in real life than they appeared in zoos.

Monkey getting a piggy back ride

Hippos

Wicked day, much better than Whipsnade and London Zoo combined…