A visit to Lake Nakuru National Park
promises you a picture worth a thousand words! This picture hangs in the home of
many a holiday makers in Kenya and abroad or on their face book pages!
The picturesque view of the vast Lake
Nakuru in its entire splendor covered with pink flamingos and 'you' at the
centre of it smiling broadly.
It’s a guaranteed shot- any tourist company
offering Safaris can risk their
reputation on this- an impossible shot to miss- so the song goes- practiced
over the years.
However, a recent visit to the Lake proved
this adage not so true.....
We were already in the centre of things - a
five star room at the Sarova Lion Hill hotel 'Chesternut no.17' right on the
shores of Lake Nakuru National Park- from the hotel ground we had a perfect view of the Lake in
the evening sun set amid a light drizzle that promised us an interesting morning for a game drive.
The buzz from the hotel that night was that
some tourists had spotted a lion during an evening drive and as we slept we
fancied catching up to it in the morn'.
A few metres from the hotel and we had our
first encounter with the wild – two buffaloes going about their morning biz-
whatever it is they do all day! Then the
eagle playing in muddled water, the crown bird- what is famously the 'Uganda
crane', water bucks, a family of warthogs, a huge herd of buffaloes, some
monkeys and baboons. Then a family of impalas, a herd of zebras, gazelles and one in a lifetime view of watching them
pee et al..... it don't get any better than that!
All this laced with beautiful conversations
on how a gazelle has to fight for its right to lead the pack, each displaced in
a coup d’état of sort- physical might often sealing a gazelles leadership. We
witnessed some of these deposed leaders watching from a distance, eating to regain
their strength. And when the time is right a duel will ensure they recapture
their former position, explained the ranger.
It’s the circle of life in the wild-jungle!
Click! Click! Our cameras snapped as the
van moved along the rugged terrain to reveal exotic green vegetation of shrubs
and acacia trees where a family of giraffe towered over.
It was the second time I was taking this
drive in this particular park but still everything felt and looked magical. I
had last visited in 2011/12 August and of course I promised my friend she would
capture the same pictures I did.
Kenya has been experiencing heavy rainfall
in the past few weeks and the phenomenon at the lake was nothing out of the
ordinary, so we thought.
But as the Ranger placed us squarely in the
middle of the Lake, and we huddled closely and smiled, with the tinted blue
lake and a herd of buffaloes acted as our background.
He pointed out that in the last two years
the water levels at the Lake are at their highest they have ever been,
something that even the old men in Nakuru had never seen before.
In fact, he told us that the main entry to
the park had to be relocated as well as the employees quarters following heavy
rainfall and flooding that completely submerged everything in sight to this
date the water levels are yet to rescind.
  |
| Sign post on L.Nakuru National park |
However we could not get close enough to
the shore and our limited lenses could hardly capture the far away flamingoes
that dared still to remain in the Lake.
Disappointed, the Ranger’s earlier
statement echoed in our minds.
“Most people think that Lake Nakuru
National Park only has flamingoes.”
 |
| High water levels at L.Nakuru block off the main entrance to the park |
