This is a continuation from Safari to Kenya – Lake Nakuru National Park that ended with our going to bed at Sunbird Lodge on Wednesday, March 9 after a day spent at the Lake Nakuru National Park.
Lake Naivasha (Thursday, March 10)
To recap, on Wednesday, March 9, we visited Lake Nakuru National Park and spent much of the day there. We saw Rhinos, Buffalos, Rothschild Giraffes, Colubus Monkeys, numerous species of birds including the Flamingo that Lake Nakuru is famous for, and a Warthog mom defending its baby from a male Warthog! It had been a pretty good day even though many may chalk it up on the minus side of the ledger since we hadn’t seen any big cats. But that’s what going on Safari entails – you experience what Mother Nature sends your way and hold your peace!
Thursday morning began slightly later than usual – we rose about 0645, a good 15-20 minutes after sunrise. After washing up and such, we headed to the main reception-dining area for breakfast. After another wonderful breakfast topped off with some fresh mango we were relaxing over a cup of coffee (tea in Iris’ case) and watching the Lovebirds consume their Ugali for the morning, joined that day by a Black-headed Weaver (third image below; yellow plumage), when David arrived. He was looking cheerful and well rested. We said our hellos, chatted a bit and headed to the Toyota for the drive to Lake Naivasha.
On the drive headed east, towards Nairobi, on the Nairobi-Nakuru highway, David pointed out a few antelope on either side of the road. The usual 22-wheelers thundered their way from Mombasa and Nairobi towards the west of the country frequently holding up traffic, it being a single lane highway except on an up-slope where it included a slow lane. About 9:30am (we had been driving almost 90 minutes), David turned off to the right and we were in the heart of the mid to large-sized town of Naivasha. The main street was wide with shops on our left and the lake on our right but obscured by trees and vegetation. There were numerous lodges on the right on the bank of the lake.
David drove through town until we were past the shopping district. After about a mile he turned off into a gate on the right into a fenced-in property and drove up to an office building. This was the boathouse we had planned to be at before 10am. However, it turned out that the place was closed! David got back into the vehicle and cheerfully said, “No problem! Let’s find another place.”. He then drove back the way we came towards town for a minute and turned left into another boathouse property. This one had a beautiful garden and turned out to be open for business. David went over to the office to pay for the boat ride while Iris and I used the super-clean facilities. After I came out, I walked around the garden and took some pictures.
David joined us after about 10 minutes at the office, having worked out the details. He told us that he’d not be joining us for this segment and that we’d be going with John who’d be with us shortly. David had also paid for a visit to Crescent Island on the lake which is where the movie Out of Africa was filmed. We waited a few minutes and a stoic, middle aged John, a Kenyan who stood about 5’8” and perhaps 180 pounds joined us. We said our hellos, said goodbye to David and followed John to the back of the office building. After we went past the garden and towards the lake, the ground became increasingly slushy and soon we saw canoes and other craft pulled up on the heavily vegetated lakeshore. I was thankful that I was wearing my waterproof boots – navigating that area would have been quite messy otherwise!
We came up to John’s long canoe/boat, one fitted with an outboard motor. He pulled that over to the lake and bade us to hop in after we’d secured our life jackets. After he had us positioned just right, he used a long pole to punt away from the shore and, a minute or so later, we were on the lake proper.
As John pushed away, he pointed out some birds on shore. These were in order below: a Hadada Ibis; an African Jacana; a Marabou stork; an immature Common Moorhen; and a Grey-headed Gull.
Once we were clear of the vegetation on the lakeshore, John fired up the outboard motor and maneuvered carefully away from shore. A few minutes later, we spotted pelicans and then some hippos wallowing in the water, not far from the bank. John told us that Lake Naivasha was a large (I later found it covered nearly 60 square miles, with an average depth of about 20 feet) freshwater lake, unlike other rift valley, soda lakes like Nakuru and Elmenteita.
As we moved further away from the boathouse, we saw a Great Cormorant, more Hippos, some Egyptian Geese, a Pelican perched on a tree trunk sticking out of the water, and another Cormorant perched on a tree trunk or piling.
We then saw a Giant Kingfisher up on a tree followed by a Pied Kingfisher on a tree stump.
John brought us close to the bank and we saw, in quick succession, a pair of African Fish Eagles, a pair of Egyptian Geese, a Sacred Ibis, another Hippo, a Black-headed Heron, and a Squacco Heron. Truly, Lake Naivasha was a Birder’s paradise!
John had a bucket with some fish and decided to show us how an African Fish Eagle swoops down on its prey! As we pulled away from the bank, he asked me to be ready to take a video and then hooted over to the Fish Eagles on the branch waving his arm. He then pulled out a fish and threw it onto the lake’s surface. No reaction! He changed direction and tried again with the same result. The third time, we got lucky! The fish eagle finally decided that the meal was worth it and swooped down on the fish. As best as I could tell, it was able to retrieve it and then flew away to enjoy its mid-morning snack.
Crescent Island on Lake Naivasha (Thursday, March 10)
By now, it was 10:55am and we had been on the lake for just under an hour. I had been kept busy taking pictures every few seconds, such was the diversity of birds on the lake. John put-putted away and a few minutes later, we pulled ashore by two large dead tree trunks resting sideways on a little mudbank extending into the water. We made our way off the boat onto one of these and gingerly walked onto dry land. With that we were on Crescent Island Game Park. (I vaguely remembered watching Out of Africa in the mid-1980’s but remembered very little of the movie. I do remember that my mom and her sisters, my aunts, were quite excited about it!) John walked off the boat without any of the hesitation we displayed, and we were joined by a man dressed incongruously in street clothes, as if he was on his lunch break! He introduced himself as David, our guide for the next hour or so and said that he’d walk us around the island. He started off by telling us that he was Maasai. He told us about how the movie set involved populating the island with animals from the Masai Mara, including predators like lions and cheetah. But these had been relocated back to the Mara when the government decided to convert the park into one where tourists could visit on a walking safari. Given that the fauna no longer had any natural predators, their population ran wild, and the Kenyan Wildlife Service periodically relocated the excess based on annual counts back to the Mara. However, once these animals (Wildebeest, Zebra etc.) were relocated, they had a very high attrition rate, since they no longer had any skills to evade predators!
As David talked, we walked into a stand of trees right up to where a few Zebras were grazing, perhaps 3-4 feet away from the closest. David asked us, “Are Zebras white with black stripes, or black with white stripes?”. I replied, “White with Black”. He said that that’s what most people thought, but that they were dark brown-to-black in the womb and some melanin cells were turned off for the white striped parts. No one knows why this adaptation occurs. I took some close-up photos of the willing Zebras and we then walked over to where a few Masai Giraffe were picking at the leaves on a tree. This time we stood about 30-40 feet away though Iris decided to get closer. David looked up when he heard a hoot and we followed suit, finally spotting the bird on a tree branch above us. He told us that this was a Pearl-spotted Owlet. I was fortunate to be able to capture a clear photograph of this rarity.
We walked further and soon we spotted some Waterbuck, then a herd of Impala and some Wildebeest. The Waterbuck and Impala males were accompanied by their harems! A little later, we spotted an African Grey Woodpecker up on a tree.
By now, it was past noon and time for us to get back to the boat. David walked us back to where John had docked. We tipped him and, with a little more confidence, we stepped back on the boat and donned our lifejackets. John set off immediately, this time no longer meandering near shore but making a beeline for where our boat ride had started. A little later we passed the hippos we had seen earlier and about 30 minutes after leaving Crescent Island, we were back at the boat dock. Just as we were docking, we saw a Goliath Heron.
With that, our morning on Lake Naivasha and Crescent Island was over. After tipping John, we went over to the front of the building past the beautifully manicured lawns and garden and found David waiting for us. He asked us about our day, and we told him all about it! He promised to spend some time with me to identify all the birds we had seen on the lake so that my sister back in Chennai wouldn’t come after me with a sharp implement!
As we drove towards town, I asked David if we could stop to withdraw money – my cash for tips was running low and this was probably my last opportunity to stock up on Kenyan shillings till we returned from the Mara to Nairobi. David obligingly stopped in front of a Kenyan subsidiary of Barclay’s Bank, and I was able to withdraw the much-needed cash. David told us that his sister worked at that bank in Nairobi.
With that complete, we drove the 90 or so minutes back to Sunbird Lodge. Once there, we ate some lunch while David demurred and sipped on a Mango Juice. We then sat for close to an hour and a half and went through every photo of every bird I had collected since the beginning of our Safari on March 4! David patiently identified each one, periodically referring to his Collins Handbook of East African birds to confirm a detail. What an amazing person he is! In many cases where there was some doubt, I was quite happy to move on, but he would carefully check the photo versus the handbook and, more often than not, identify the right species! I will forever be in his debt for that time he spent with me on the afternoon of March 10.
At about 4:30pm, we were done with this work and David set off after we agreed to meet the next morning for our drive down to Porini Cheetah Camp in the Mara at 8:00am.
After a shower and some tea, I took some photos of sunset, and we then went to the dining area for dinner.
Thanks to Iris having spoken to the chef the previous night, we had something relatively new to eat. Soup was good as always, dinner was passable (I don’t remember exactly what we ate) and dessert consisted of my favorite fruits. Caroline served us and we made sure she’d be there the next morning for us to say “goodbye”.
We packed that night – we had to split our gear into that which was necessary in the Mara versus that which wasn’t. Anything which wasn’t needed was to go back with David to Nairobi in our suitcases after he dropped us. We’d be reunited after we got back to Wilson Airport on March 15.
With that, our day was done. We went to bed early by about 10pm ready to head to the Mara the next morning.
Random Tidbits and Musings
- Lake Naivasha is where Joy Adamson lived in the mid-1960s. She was famous for her books Born Free, Living Free and Forever Free about bringing up and releasing Elsa the lioness to the wild as well as her cubs. The lake varies in size and depth depending on various factors. At present, the lake is in fine fettle.
- There are a few sites of anthropological interest in the Nakuru-Naivasha area, this being the Great Rift Valley after all. I googled these while there and while they sounded interesting, we didn’t want to change the program as it was laid out. One such site is Hyrax Hill; another is the Kariandusi prehistoric site – thought to be an Axe factory! If we had more time, or if it was part of the original plan, we’d have visited these.
- We didn’t climb Mount Longonot, a dormant volcano, as originally planned, discarding that in favor of visiting Crescent Island. It was way too warm!
- Even though we didn’t see much in the way of big cats, I think this segment of our Safari was very interesting. We were travelling by road as opposed to by air and could engage more fully in the real Kenya. We saw an ecosystem quite different from the wetlands of Amboseli or the completely dry Samburu. And we saw many of the birds on display in East Africa that we hadn’t in either of our other two segments. For people visiting Kenya, you may choose a different itinerary, but I felt this was completely worthwhile.
- Sunbird Lodge had mosquito nets, but we used them proforma, because they were there, and not because they were really needed. The nights were temperate with a chill in the air when you woke up in the morning. I don’t think I saw any mosquitos whatsoever!
(Photos can be found on this Google Photos Album while videos are at this YouTube Channel.)
To be continued…
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