We were up before the crack of dawn this morning – 5:50am. Where possible we will do 2 game drives per day. Inconsiderately, the animals are at their most active at dawn and dusk! We will be visiting a mix of National Parks and Reserves. The difference being that the National Parks, large as they are, are fenced off. No animals in or out apart from humans. They are government run and protected by armed rangers 24/7. The Reserves, such as the Masai Mara and the Serengeti are not fenced – hence migrations. They are run by local tribes.
Today we spent the full day in Lake Nakuru National Park. Because we are carrying everything we need with us, the length of time we spend on actual safari depends on what we find and how long people want to stop for. No pressure. First stop was Baboon Cliff overlooking Lake Nakuru.
We took 4 hours to do the morning drive. The group are mostly chilled so it’s easy to reach a consensus about stopping and moving on. For instance, the first time we saw Zebra and Impala we spent ages ooo’ing and aaa’ing and took a million photos. An hour later we were happy to admire at a slow pace and keep moving.
The picture above is of a male Impala. The poor old alpha male Impala only gets a 3 month stint after which he is replaced and ousted from the herd. Without the protection of numbers he doesn’t last long.
At lunchtime we headed to what was to be our campsite for the night. It is a site run by a woman’s cooperative. We were the only guests but I think they are not long up and running. It was very clean and had a bar. Once fed, we headed off for our afternoon drive while 2 of the guides stayed back to put up the tents and cook dinner. The food has been excellent. They are catering for European tastes at the moment but have told us they will introduce some local fare over the next few days. The cook has to make do with whatever is available on board and only gets to stock up every 3 or 4 days.
The picture below is of a family of gazelles.
