Game on

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After what seems like an eternity, but has only actually been 17 days, we hit our first safari park and go for a game drive in Hyena (who’d have thought you could stalk wild animals in a big yellow truck?!). Lake Nakuru National Park is known for its flamingoes, which gather in prodigious numbers to sift for food at the edge of the lake, but the park is also home to zebra, antelope, impala, buffalo, rhino, giraffe and just a small number of big cats.

On our first drive, we spot all the main African staples (zebra, antelope etc.) - getting them out of the way before we hit the Maasai Mara and Serengeti, where we don’t want to waste precious driving time looking at prey! We’re lucky to see not just a white rhino, but several baby rhino, as well as several giraffe and a hyena, lumbering through the bushes. In the morning, we see a lioness reclining beneath a tree, but she’s a long way from the truck and barely moves.

Our next stop is Lake Naivasha. We first visit Crater Lake and take a walk with a few dozen leggy friends... the giraffe are skittish and rarely let us get close, but it’s a much more rewarding experience to view them from the ground, and we spend some time watching them graze and snooze.

After a lunch which seems to take forever to arrive (over an hour for a toasted sarnie... explained by the often quoted T.I.A - This Is Africa), we mount bikes and ride into Hells Gate National Park, just a short distance from camp. Our destination is a gorge at the heart of the park, where natural hot springs have earnt it the name Hell’s Kitchen. We ride in through scores of zebra and impala (and the odd ostrich), then abandon our bikes and scramble down through the gorge. Tomb Raider was filmed here, and some of the concrete foundations laid for the equipment are still there... pretty disappointing for what is otherwise a stunning natural wonder. The climb out rewards us with great views along the gorge, and the ride back in the failing sunlight rounds off a day of exercise that we’ve all badly needed after weeks of sitting on the truck.

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Photos

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Lake Nakuru's famous pink enhabitants

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Our first of the Big Five

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Finally, something taller than me!

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In the chasm at Hell's Gate

Comments

[su]

First entry
I am reading from your first entry. Geez, L. Nakuru brings back memories. Good to have stumbled onto your travel blog. Keep it up. I need to get back out there again. It has been a while, but I am getting my feet wet again, one toe at a time.

[SmithyWorldWide]

Africa is a place you can go back to time and again... so big and so much to see!