Lake Nakuru National Park Expedition

Lake Nakuru National Park was breath-taking! The drive up was interesting because of all the traffic and how crazy people drive here. They don't really have stop lights or anything, people kind of just go when they want to. We got right into things when we arrived at our campsite. We stayed in hostel-type rooms that held about 15 people each. They were super simple but it was great to have a mattress to sleep on. We did game drives and travelling lectures during the days and just hung out at night. It was super fun! Like the Serengeti, the days often blended together so I am not sure what animals I saw which days. Lake Nakuru National Park was so lush and green compared to the other parts of Kenya and Tanzania I have seen. It seems that this is not normally how the beginning of the rainy season is but we have gotten a bit of rain, so there is no reason the park should be so lush. I have seen a bunch of cool and weird-looking birds that I never knew about. Water birds are such interesting looking creatures! I saw a bunch of the usual animals, buffaloes, giraffes, Tompson's gazelles, water buck, zebras, and impalas. Lake Nakuru is known for its many birds (a ridiculously high number of bird species can be observed throughout the park) but also for rhinos which we didn't see too many of in Tanzania. It was amazing how many rhinos we saw! I actually saw mostly white rhinos (which are much more rare in general than black rhinos) but also one black rhino on the last day. Rhinos are such interesting looking animals! The picture for this post is of a mother and baby white rhino that was literally just in the grass to the left of our car. They were probably the coolest thing I saw during the trip. The same two rhinos crossed the road in front of the train of cars we were in. That was super cool. The car I was in saw a complete rainbow from end to end! (there was no pot of gold though, unfortunately). It was amazing and so bright and just seeing a whole rainbow is something that I never thought I'd see ever. We had the option to do a morning game drive and I went on one of the mornings. We tried to see the sunrise but because of the roads and all the stops we wanted to make along the way we missed the start of it. It was still beautiful, though! The sun and the clouds and the sky all look so much more beautiful here than at home, probably because I know I will only see it temporarily. There were many flamingos out in the morning (which may be my favorite bird after this trip). The wetland areas in the park (which is a large area of the park) are so beautiful! I would have never expected to see them on my trip here. One of the days we drove up to this amazing waterfall. The water was all brown and dirty but it was flowing nicely. It was such a relaxing place to take a break and enjoy. We went to a lodge on the second to last day for lunch and swimming. It actually started pouring so I didn't go swimming but I had a burger and fries and a few African named delicious drinks. On our way back to KBC we got into a lot of traffic but made it to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust which is an organization that takes care of orphaned elephants when they are young and let them go when they are ready to be in the wild. We got to see them feeding on milk and eating leaves from branches. I also got to touch one of the elephants! The texture is so weird and elephants are surprisingly a little bit hairy. It was so cool! We made it back to KBC in good time (we left at 6:30am and arrived at camp after all stops at 5:30pm) and have all been tired but had a wonderful day off today. We have Maasai homestays on Saturday which will be super exciting and another interesting thing to write about!