Travel Blogs Pt4: Lake Nakuru National Park

After visiting the Animal Orphanage, we drove to Lake Nakuru National Park, which is globally renowned for the residence of flamingoes. However, due to climate change and the influence of other factors, the number of flamingoes in Lake Nakuru seems to be much less than before, but there are still some flamingoes residing inside the park.

I would say, instead of the heaven for flamingoes, Lake Nakuru National Park is more like the heaven for pelicans. Pelicans can literally be seen everywhere inside the park, forming large assemblies.

We did spot some flamingoes, but in the form of separate individuals instead of large assemblies.

Lake Nakuru is truly the home and heaven for various birds. I encountered numerous birds, including some whose specific names I am not familiar with. I attached the photos of those birds below. Hopefully you guys know the names for them?

I did not forget one of the main goals for my field trip: to find the big five. This time, I found buffaloes in large herds, several rhinos, and, surprisingly, a lion pride.

I mentioned that I encountered a buffalo on my hiking trip in Aberdare in the previous travel blogs. This time, we were in the SUV, so we came even closer. Buffaloes are very united animals, which can be inferred from the neat herds they form. Stronger individuals are on the outside, protecting the elder and younger individuals on the inside. Their bodies are extremely muscular. They have sharp and dangerous thorns that can kill or seriously injure a lion. They are worthy of the name: one of the most dangerous land animals.

We encountered several white rhinos in the park. We did not find any black rhinos due to their rarity. I identified them as white rhinos by observing the shape of their mouth: they have wide and square lips. Long and sharp thorns grow from their nose, making them favorable targets for poachers.

Buffaloes are strong enough, but rhinos are even stronger than buffaloes, which deeply astonished me. I exclaimed the beauty of nature, which gifts them with armor to defend themselves.

There are also numerous antelopes and zebras in the park. What is funny is that we are so surprised to see these herbivores for the first time. But after we travelled to Lake Nakuru, we became somewhat tired of taking pictures of them simply because there were too many.

There are also baboons and warthogs in the parks. ( There are too many pictures, maybe I will edit a blog only for pictures later on…)

After seeing all these beautiful creatures, I was already pretty fulfilled. But to my surprise, our guide informed us that a lion pride had been witnessed in the area. I have not seen any wild lions before, so I became super excited immediately. From a distance, I saw dozens of cars surrounding something, which I was unable to see. As we came closer, I could finally identify what they were surrounding. It was a tiny brown spot, moving.

It was a lion.

Then, another male lion came into our sight, accompanied by 3 lionesses. They lay cozily on the grassland, enjoying the beautiful afternoon, laughing and ridiculing the silly humans surrounding them.

Lions are truly majestic animals. Their elegance and authority are expressed from the inside out. We shut down the engines of our vehicles, quietly looking at this harmonious family of 5 lions. At this point, every single human looking at these lions was sincerely admiring and respecting the great nature.

We only stayed there for like 10 minutes. Staying longer seemed to be rather impolite, both for lions and for other tourists. We left, still thinking and recapping what we had just seen.

Up to this point, our journey to the Lake Nakuru National Park came to a perfect ending. What I did not expect was, I would see more lions in the near future. In the Maasai Mara, our next destination.