Want to get caught up? Check out the rest of the posts below!
Introduction
Opening Day
The Villainous Leopard
The Courageous Lions
Lion Love
Samburu was a magical experience for all of us, featuring unique types of animals in a surprising landscape of hills and mountains. We met amazing animals like the Ragnarok gerenuk, the dik dik (ha), and, most controversially, a villainous leopard (RIP to the victims).
That was not all that our leader Kate had for us, though, as our next destination would be something completely different. We didn’t fly this time, like many would. From Samburu we packed into our safari trucks and drove to Lake Nakuru, which was an absolutely fascinating 6-hour drive through the heart of Kenya. We passed through cities and villages while driving through an absolutely stunning landscape. Kenya has such an incredible and diverse topography, I was just embarrassed that I had never bothered to look it up before.
A quick note about driving through the villages between parks
On our way to Nakuru we drove through countless towns and villages. I found it both interesting and incredibly confronting to see the standard of living in some of the poorer villages. The children in almost every village would wave to us with the brightest smiles I had ever seen but the adults seemed, for a 3-second glance, a bit more reserved. Safari trucks stick out like a sore thumb driving through those villages and I’m sure everyone knows just how much people pay to be in those trucks. I didn’t hold it against anyone, as I’m not sure how I would feel watching truck after truck drive through my town knowing that each person in those trucks was paying, for an 11-day trip, close to what the average Kenyan makes in a year. I never really reconciled those feelings, if I’m being honest, and I’m not sure what the answer is, just felt it was worth saying. It’s also worth saying that every person I actually met and spent time with in Kenya was one of the kindest and friendliest people I had ever come across in my travels. I think it is a country of complicated social scenarios mixed with the blessing of some of the most desirable tourism venues in the world and it’s all a bit too much for me to comprehend.
We arrived to Lake Nakuru, a green lush paradise with verdant shrubs, trees, jungle, and wildlife. Samburu and Lake Nakuru were about as different as they could be, in all the best ways. It was so interesting to see some of the same types of animals as before but in such a wildly different area.
Babboons, rhinos, and stilts oh my!
Lake Nakuru was a birdwatcher’s paradise, with countless cormorants, flamingos, and raptors to spot. The first animal that stopped our trucks was not a bird, though. You guessed it again, Lake Nakuru was the first place we saw monkeys and baboons! From Vervet monkeys in the trees and bushes…
…to Olive baboons, it seemed like the mammals were everywhere along the main road. It was absolutely fascinating watching them interact with each other!
And then of course another one looked like it was roaring, which is pretty crazy with how large some of the fangs are on these baboons, but it was really just yawning.
And we fell into a pretty repeatable schedule of game drives and more game drives, each time finding out something new either about the area we were in or the animals we were seeing.
Heck there was one morning at Lake Nakuru that I even briefly thought we suddenly transported to Tuscany!
The wildlife continued to be spectacular, from the tiniest of stilts walking through the lake…
…to Lake Nakuru’s famous flamingos…
…to much larger animals, like our first experience seeing a hippo…
…and seeing its gigantic mouth open at full sprawl.
I think my favorite thing about hippos was seeing that when they go beneath the water their ears automatically flap shut to protect their ear canals, thus when they emerge from the water the first thing that happens is their ears dramatically flap open with a little wiggle. And then this one winked at me, which was flattering.
We saw other birds too, like this beautiful kingfisher with its nictating membrane closed…
…and then saw a mixture of birds and hippos, just to tie everything together.
Quick trivia question for you: what is kind of a similar size to a hippo but is more of a land animal that is also found at Lake Nakuru? Yep, rhinos!
We saw rhombuses of white rhinos…
…and even the super rare black rhino while it was running through a field right at us (which was…quite the experience). We never saw what was chasing it, but mercy it was that rhino fast for as big as it was.
We know you’re talking about the courageous lions soon, but what about the other more “typical” African animals?
Thanks for asking, loyal reader who I promise is not me setting up my own segues. We saw so many zebras in Lake Nakuru, but these were not the Grevy’s zebras, just the regular kind, where the stripes went all the way around their torso.
Zebras seemed super affectionate with each other, and we even saw these two flirting a bit.
The flirting eventually led to, well, other things, but that’s when our guide told us these were actually two males battling for dominance, likely part of a bachelor group. You learn something every day!
Elsewhere we saw baby zebras robbing the attention from what I think were waterbucks…
And then we saw a zebra that looked like it was in some sort of abstract painting.
What about giraffes? You betcha. These were not reticulated giraffes like in Samburu, though, these were Rothschild’s giraffes, more endemic to this part of Kenya.
If you’ll remember during Opening Day I captured two giraffes with their necks crossed and loved that picture. I found a very similar composition at Lake Nakuru and eagerly fired away with my camera without checking to see where it was focusing. I ended up with one of the best pictures ever taken of…
…a lilac-breasted roller. Don’t get me wrong, it was a beautiful bird, but even the roller was kind of looking at me like, “dude I can’t believe you missed the giraffe shot.”
Judgmental rollers, ugh.
And then it happened.
One morning we saw a group of giraffes (called either a “tower” or a “journey”, I think instead I called them a grotesque of giraffes) off in the distance and we radioed to the other truck we were heading down there. We made our way through the mud, our guide called Tim handling the deep trenches with ease.
We turned a corner near where we saw the giraffes were and Tim SLAMMED on the brakes. There was an animal on the trail. A big one.
And it wasn’t just one.
Three lionesses walked literally next to our truck and then plopped down on the other side of us to enjoy the morning sun. I cannot express just how majestic they were, commanding instant respect from all of us. We had them almost completely to ourselves until other trucks eventually came and joined us. I really couldn’t believe our luck!
When I say they plopped down next to us (that’s really the best expression for it, it was actually really funny how they would just be like PLOP when they found a place to lay down), I really mean it.
(that thing at the bottom of the photo is a beanbag that we would rest our big lenses on for a more stable photography platform)
Just like the villainous leopard of Samburu, these lions also had some massive barbs on their tongues.
It was fascinating to see how the three lionesses bonded and cleaned each other.
It was at this point that one of the other guys and I tried an innovative science experiment. When humans see each other yawn, see pictures of yawning, or even read about yawning (you are probably yawning right now, let me know in the comments if you did!), they will nearly always contagiously yawn, a phenomenon called the yawn reflex. This behavior is common in nearly all vertebrates, and I had read somewhere that it even worked across species (humans will yawn when they see a dog yawn, etc.) so we gave it a shot. When a lion looked our way we yawned in wildly exaggerated fashion AND IT WORKED.
Our guide, Tim, was impressed by our grasp of animal behavior and/or was asking Kate in the other truck if we were clinically insane. But hey, it’s only weird if it doesn’t work, and it worked 5 out of 6 times, and still worked later in the Maasai Mara. Science!
(I cannot tell you how many times I yawned writing that last bit)
Later, we happened upon some lions waiting out some rain in what can only be described as a puddle of lionesses. Now that I look at the lionesses a little closer, it just might have been the same three from earlier.
As the rain let up and the lions started waking up, we saw behavior that reminded us that big cats are still cats, complete with the biiiiig stretch.
And, just before curfew, a really stoic picture of one of the lionesses looking into the lush, verdant landscape as darkness closed in.
…and I almost forgot the entire theme for this post. Let’s get to it.
The Courageous Lions
One morning, as we were leaving our lodge and making our way into the park on a game drive, I remember thinking that we had seen the Samburu Five animals and four of the Big Five African animals, so I wondered if and when we would get to see one of the most dangerous animals in the world: the cape buffalo. Right about that time, one was RIGHT NEXT TO THE ROAD and not happy to see us.
What a powerful animal, I remember thinking.
It was a beautiful day to enjoy the scenery around Lake Nakuru.
Later that day, after a wonderful day of seeing some wonderful animals, it started to rain right as we saw our first male lions of the trip, trying to stay out of the rain just like we were.
They were younger lions and their manes had not fully grown in yet so they had cool-looking mohawks and there were pretty flowers between the camera and them, which I thought was funny. They didn’t really seem too concerned with anything going on around them, just waiting out the rain like the rest of us.
But then we saw a herd of cape buffalo approaching, with a calf among them.
We looked back and forth, realizing that neither the buffalo nor the lions realized the other were there. We had no idea what to expect, because lions would normally jump at the chance to separate a calf from its herd for an easy kill. Then again, these were cape buffalo, complete with ornery attitudes and massive horns that could do some serious damage to lions. Also, male lions do not usually hunt, the females handle it.
The buffalo got closer and closer. They were upwind from the lions. Would this be the moment? The Courageous Lions versus the Cape of Angry Buffalo?
Well, the lions finally saw the buffalo and were courageously like OH WAIT ACTUALLY NOPE and got the heck out of there at full sprint, captured expertly by my dear friend Julia Gross.
Image courtesy of Julia Gross @green_grosser
It wasn’t just that the lions courageously ran away, they kept running until they were AT THE TOP OF A STEEP HILL next to a cliff.
One of them roared to try to make up for what happened but we were all like “bro we saw what just happened, come on.”
Moral of the story: avoid cape buffalo.
I cannot say enough about Lake Nakuru, by the way. What an absolute paradise, with some of the most amazing scenery in the world. The sunsets were just as powerful as the incredible wildlife.
The trip continued onward. To the skies, even.
What was your favorite picture? Tell me below in the comments!
