Lake Nakuru is at an elevation of 5,755 feet and is located in the Rift Valley 100 miles northwest of Nairobi. Lake Nakuru National Park consists of 73 square miles and includes the lake and land around the lake. There is an additional 116 square miles around the lake that is fenced off as a protection for both black and white rhinos to protect them from poaching.
We visited in May 2014, after a long drive from our stay at the Sarova Shaba Lodge in Shaba National Reserve, a 190 mile drive which took about five and three-quarters hours. We checked into the Sarova Lion Hill Lodge inside Nakuru NP, then went out for a late afternoon game drive which was shorter than the game drives we'd had at Buffalo Springs.
We saw our first lions, but none of our photos were worth saving. The following are photos of wildlife taken from our game drive:
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| Impala |
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| I'm not sure if this is a common or ellipsen waterbuck or a defassa waterbuck (on iNaturalist I got conflicting opinions). |
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| Defassa waterbuck |
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| Cape buffalo |
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| Cape buffalo with Thomson's gazelles. |
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| Rothschild giraffe |
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| Southern white rhino |
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| With cattle egrets. |
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| Olive baboon |
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| Grant's zebra |
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| Flamingo |
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| Helmeted guineafowl |
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| Yellow-billed oxpecker |
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| Red-billed oxpecker |
For whatever reason, I really love the guinea fowl. Are they the same species we saw in South Africa? Those really long drives between places were challenging.
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