Lake Nakuru – Home of the Flamingos, or not

The Lake Nakuru / Naivasha safari was my first one ever. I was excited and every animal you get to see amazed me. But after some time you start to get what I call, the Safari disorder and I’m pretty sure most of the people suffer from it. First, you see a lot of zebras, waterbucks, buffaloes, wildebeests. You extensively photograph them. After a while, you think by yourself “ooh. another zebra, another wildebeest, … another giraffe.”. The people who go on safari are only interested in one type of animal: the predators. The lions, cheetah’s and leopards are amazing creatures … and deadly. Sit back, enjoy the nature and the time in Africa. Hakuna Matata.

I booked this safari in Nairobi at a reasonable price. Just ask your local hotel. I asked my host I met from Couchsurfing. There’s no reason to book it in advance on a Western company website. Instead, the Western company earns from it and doesn’t help Africa’s development and generally, they are more expensive.

Lake Nakuru is famous because it attracts flamingos. A ton of them. Well, used to attract them. The water level increased in 2013 and caused the flamingos to choose another lake with lower water levels as they look for waters where algae are easily reachable. Now they head to Lake Bogaria.

Expectations (photo from the internet):

Reality (when I was there): one flamingo who doesn’t know the big feast is in Lake Bogoria

But oh well, no hard feelings for this pink flamingo. Instead, I am happy I spotted one. The park itself has some other nice sights to offer. I think the place is especially great for bird watchers. The flying birds are way too hard to capture. I lack equipment on a grey day like this.

Our tour guide spotted this little rock hyrax and I was able to make a very close capture of it.
Rhinos are also present in this park.