Lake Nakuru, Kenya

After roughing it at Amboseli, even the basic guesthouse at Nakuru with its indoor plumbing and electricity, warranted five stars from us. Zebras welcomed us, grazing along the driveway and on the front lawn, a sight that Dickson had never witnessed.

This fragile park is an island, separated from the town by a high voltage fence. Nakuru has experienced extreme hardships in recent years, such as the flamingo die-off and diaspora when sewage polluted the lake. 1.8 million of these boldly decorated birds are back, significantly fewer than the 3 million that lived here in 2004. Five years ago, a lion began eating pedestrians who wandered into the park, so an official ordered all of the lions eliminated and imported new prides. The endangered black rhino have made a home here and are slowly increasing their number.

Within fifteen minutes of starting our early morning game drive, we heard alarmed monkeys calling through the canopy. Dickson shut off the engine and whispered, "Look, in the road, a leopard." There it was: muscular, silent, spotted and walking straight toward our open-topped van. "Mommy, I'm scared." Dickson didn't blink in this game of chicken so we trusted too. After many minutes of awe-inspired silence, with a leopard five feet from us, the big cat disappeared into the tall grass. Later, when we asked how he knew the leopard wasn't a threat, Dickson explained how you can read an animal's tail. If the leopard's tail is curled up, it's not hunting. Down between the legs, it's another story. (FYI Rhinos curl their tails before charging.)

Another twenty minutes and we stopped again to observe forty Anubis Baboons parade cautiously passed us, within three feet of the van. Mothers held babies on their backs or tucked underneath them. The alpha male, last in line, sat on a log to make sure his troupe had safely passed before following them. Later in the day, we enjoyed another troupe grooming each other while juveniles played king of the branch, often comically tumbling into the grass.

In West with the Night, Beryl Markham writes of her adventurous life in Kenya from 1910-1940. I read her autobiography in Kenya and found some of her observations described Kenya in 2007!

There were no subtle strokes in the creation of Nakuru....as long as the day lasts, Nakuru is no lake at all, but a crucible of pink and crimson fire - each of its flames, its million flames, struck from the wings of a flamingo,(Markham, 161).

The image of Lake Nakuru is inextricably linked to its flocks of flamingoes. No matter how many times we saw their images on National Geographic or Animal Planet, walking on the muddy shores among these pink and black birds was incredible. The noise is deafening as they all talk at once and beat their wings in the water. As the only creature with a fixed LOWER jaw, flamingoes must eat their blue-green algae upside down! "Why does a blue-green food turn them pink?" we asked. The high keratin content in the algae does the trick. Take away that food source and they return to their original all white color.

In Nakuru, we saw all of the "Big 5." In the days of big game hunting in Kenya, the Big 5 were the most dangerous to hunt because they would always fight back: elephant, rhino, lion, cape buffalo and leopard. The five lions lazed under a distant tree surrounded by an unconcerned herd of cape buffalo. They stood after a while and moved farther away to enjoy the abundant shade of another tree.

Now and then the whimsically fashioned figure of a rhino has moved along the horizon like a grey boulder come to life and adventure bound,(Markham,33).

The black rhino has anger issues and lives alone. That's one of the reasons they have trouble reproducing. Our fortunate group saw three of them, one wounded from a recent fight, bleeding from his neck and leg. The other two, a courting pair, wallowed in a mud hole that is a necessary part of each rhino's territory.

After such a comfortable night and abundant game drive, we wanted another night at Lake Nakuru, but with the Masai Mara separated from us by ten hours over rough roads, we had to move on. The main highways would be deemed impassable and closed in the US. French and German companies are currently building new roads, but for now, bouncing along them is just part of daily life in Kenya and according to Beryl Markham, that's the way it's been for decades.

The more traveled roads were good and often paved for a short distance, but once the pavement ended an aeroplane, if one were at hand, could save hours of weary toil behind the wheel of a lurching car- provided the driver were skillful enough to keep it lurching at all,(Markham,6).

Thankfully Dickson proved very skillful in this regard.

Click here for more photos of Lake Nakuru.