We then headed six hours west to visit Lake Nakuru for a day. Lake Nakuru used to be famous for its huge flocks of flamingos, until eights years ago when they vanished. The birds left when rising water levels reduced their feeding and breeding grounds, but they have started to return in summer of 2020.
When planning our trip to Kenya, articles were emerging about the flamingos returning and even our guide, Ronny was exited to see whether the news coming out was true. Ronny told us on the way the city of Nakuru is one of the largest in a country where the population has more than doubled in the last 30 years. It has been a contributing factor to the floods. The floods in 2011 expanded the shallow lake used by the flamingos considerably and upset the chemical balance behind its ecosystem. More than a usual amount of water dilutes the alkaline level supporting the algae that flamingo feed on. After hearing the backstory on the city we were curious to find out whether the rumours of the flamingos returning were true.
We did two drives round Lake Nakuru and spotted some flamingos. It was not the millions of flamingos present in the lake back in 2011 but about 100 max, so the rumours were true they are starting to return even if the numbers are small. It think the sad part of the drives was to see how overtaken the park was by the lake and could tell since 2011 the magic had disappeared from the place. As with everything in the wild its always luck what you see. Lake Nakuru was ok but I think its needs a couple of years to see if the flamingos return in the masses to give the place back its magic.
Then it was time to head to Amboseli, famous for its elephants, and to see the backdrop of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Amboseli National Park is famous for elephants in fact over the summer the population of elephants in the park had increased by 5%. Within minutes of leaving the lodge, we spotted several elephants. It lives up to the hype. You will see elephants at every turn – herds of elephants, baby elephants and elephants bathing. Everywhere.
We had seen elephants in our trips to Udawalawe National Park in Sri Lanka and Masai Mara in Kenya. In Amboseli you could see the elephants everywhere. We came here as much for them as we did for the view of Mount Kilmanjaro. We were only here for two days and were not lucky enough with the weather as each day it was too cloudy to see Mount Kilmanjaro.
It’s like a photographers playground being in Amboseli with so many elephants in sight and can see us coming back here in the future. It was now time to return to Nairobi and for us to take our second Covid test of the trip before flying out to Rwanda.