Lake Nakuru National Park and the Masaii Mara-Part 1

The boys' safari faces. Flamingos!

This past weekend I went on safari. I feel like if you spend anytime in Africa this is a must do. Unfortunately this can become kind of pricey but luckily the four of us were able to find a great deal on a four day trip. I need to preface this series of blogs (yes its going to be a series) in saying that we had an amazing time. I took over 200 pictures in the course of four days and have too many stories to share in one sitting.

A few buffalo. This guy was taking care of an itch! First of MANY zebra.

We started our adventure in Nakuru. Nakuru is the fourth largest city in Kenya and has a beautiful salt water lake. We took a matatu there Thursday night which turned out to be highly uneventful (thank goodness!). There was a small delay when we ran into an accident near Kericho. Two semis had collided and lay sprawled in the middle of the road. In true Kenyan fashion there were no police to be seen to direct traffic and everyone was attempting to weave between the two overturned vehicles. Got into the city around 9pm and grabbed a quick bite to eat (probably my one and only attempt at Chinese food in Kenya).



Two male impalas fight. Probably over a girl... A Rothschild giraffe. The rarest in Kenya.

The next day we met our tour guide, Phillip, and our driver, William. Needless to say I used the whole British royalty reference to remember this. We headed to Lake Nakuru National Forest for an all day tour. I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised. The lake is beautiful and you can basically drive right up to the edge where flocks of flamingos feast on the lake's shrimp population. Right next to the lake there are buffalo and impala grazing. And of course zebra everywhere you turn. Up higher in the park we spotted some Rothschild giraffe and a quite large baboon family. My favorite was the baby, however I haven't decided if he's cute or not as up close they kind of resemble a cross between a monkey and a pig.

Baboon family up in the tree. The baby!

We were also lucky to see some pretty rare animals as well. We saw both white and black rhino. The white are slightly lighter in color and have a much shorter horn. They have about 40 in the park and I believe we saw about 10! The black rhino are much rarer as they are solitary animals and prefer to feed at night. Of the 9 in the park we saw one lone male. Of the more rarer animals we also saw a baby spotted hyena and a pair of ostriches (one male and one female).

Ok do the comparison. This is a white rhino. This is a black...

The baby hyena. Think he was guarding the den. I call this osteritch hugging.

Overall the day was great. We made some friends with a bunch of school kids who could not get enough pictures with or of us and had our first real taste of safari. I'm pretty sure I didn't believe the guides when they said this was nothing in comparison to what was to come. That night we enjoyed a great dinner at a very nice hotel in Nakuru (nothing like our questionable Chinese the night before!). We even found this great Hard Rock Cafe style bar tucked away in the back where we spent most of the night. All in all a great start to an amazing weekend. Enjoy the animals (know there were requests for more pictures)!

our hotel in Nakuru! The school kids mob Richie.