Day 11
This past weekend I joined the first group of interns on their midterm retreat to Lake Nukuru. It was an amazing drive as we went through the lush green forests around Kakamega and through the drier Rift Valley to get to Nukuru. On the way we passed a refugee camp for people who were displaced by the post election violence. The camp still exists even though that was over a year ago. When we were buying our park passes monkeys jumped into our matatu and raided our food supply within the span of about five minutes.
The next day we headed out for an all day safari. Lake Nukuru is famous for all of the waterfowl it has, specifically pelicans and flamingos. We saw thousands of birds but was told only a small percentage are currently there. During the peak part of the season three-fourths of the lake is covered with flamingos. Throughout the day we saw zebras, water buffalo, impalas, and gazelles. We also saw a lone hyena strolling at the water’s edge. In the afternoon we saw a family of white rhinos that were absolutely huge. We also saw numerous baboons; once in the distance we saw a group of about 100 moving across the fields. The late afternoons highlights were giraffes and the illusive black rhino. We also saw the famous Nukuru tree lions. They like to chill out on the top of trees but given the intense heat we saw them hanging out below in the shade.
We stayed in a guesthouse in the park so right outside our door we could see zebra and water buffalo. In the morning there was a large family of warthogs with a bunch of piglets running around, very cute. That evening we went to town and saw Jua Cali, a famous Kenyan rapper perform at a club. It was fun to see what a club in Kenya was like, lots of dancing.
