Look! I’m a flamingo!

Our second lake of the weekend was Lake Bogoria, renowned for its birdlife and hot springs. We got there along the same road, turning off just below the town of Marigot. For a few hundred ksh we were able to enter the park without a map or guide. We didn’t see that much before stumbling onto the lake, a gorgeous blue expanse surrounded by mountains and dotted with flocks of pink flamingos. There was much debate in the first few KM about whether we’d be able to drive down to the lake itself and get out of the car, but we decided to keep on going to the hot springs and stop on the way back.

This turned out to be the right call, as we reached the hot springs and found many little turn off points where one could jump across rivulets of boiling water and run at the flamingos at the lake shore. I had changed into closed toed shoes by the point, which I promptly covered with mud jumping around. Still, the setting was breathtaking, as was the climate – cool wind from the lake being met by hot air from the springs (people were boiling eggs in the water). A modest lake in size, but quite alluring in terms of the bird life (we also got super close to some ostriches) and unique in the hot springs and mountains. Although our visit was short, it was definitely a step up in coolness from Baringo.

It started to rain as we danced around the pelicans, so we ran to the car to avoid muddy roads on the way back. We hit a bit of a storm, but still made it back to Nakuru by 6 PM. We did stop to buy honey on the road – a funny spectacle of 7 Masaai women swarming the car and pushing whiskey bottles full quite good and smoky, and makes a nice breakfast change from PB&J with yogurt or cereal.

We thought we would gamble when we reached Nakuru and see if we could buy 24 hour tickets to the game park and do an evening drive. Unfortunately, the tickets were only good for 24 continuous hours, so as our hotel was in the town, no dice. Furthermore, we had to buy our tickets before the morning game drive, meaning we would be at the mercy of the ticket window for our sunrise drive.

Instead of evening drive, we went for a tour around Nakuru as S. figured out how to park the car (an operation involving a hotel security guard, 2 rickshaw drives and the two of us not in the vehicle) in front of our serviceable hotel. Dinner was mediocre Chinese food (our hotel had a Chinese restaurant and was full of Asian tourists) before early to bed for our morning drive.

Sunday morning dawned too early, as we were at the park before 6. Of course, the ticket window person didn’t show up, so we watched the sunrise from the park gates (actually not horrible as we had a nice view of the sky and lake) before the KWS took pity on us with temporary passes. The upside of this was that we got to pay resident prices with our special passes, no questions asked.

Nakuru is famous for the vast numbers of flamingos that flock to its shores, but we managed to spend our first 3 hours in the park away from the shore. We drove our little car as far into the park as we could go, past waterbuck, wounded rhinos and de-submerged hippos. The highlight of this part was the grove of giraffes literally next to the road, including many tiny babies. We turned around at the completely bone dry falls at the edge of the park, and promptly lost ourselves on a windy but boring back road up on the bluffs overlooking the park. The payoff for this was two look out spots and lots of fearless explorer photos.

Finally, we made it down to the lake, and were able to park on the mud flats and get out of the car. We pioneered a number of great poses for the photos –the one-legged arm raise flamingo, the arms extended kikoy-flared bird in flight, the look at me jump – and thoroughly scared the bird life and the other tourists. Then it was back by the rhinos, through a grove of Baboons (they attacked the car and followed us out) and past a lion munching on a fresh kill, and out of the park.
Thanks to S.’s awesome driving, we were back in Nairobi in time to go to the market and buy Masaai blankets for our cold apartments, and engage in some fruitless bargaining (we refused to overpay). It was a nice end to a great weekend – from the wilds of Baringo to the wilds of the YaYa center.