Lake Nakuru National Park

Small in size but rich in biodiversity, Lake Nakuru was gazette as a national park in 1968.It is best known for its thousands, sometimes millions of flamingos nesting along the shores. The surface of the shallow lake is often hardly recognizable due to the continually shifting mass of pink. The number of flamingoes on the lake varies with water and food conditions and the best vantage point is from Baboon Cliff.

Also of interest is an area of 188 km around the lake fenced off as a sanctuary to protect Rothschild giraffes, black rhinos and white rhinos. While flamingo and rhino top most visitors’ wish list, Nakuru offers excellent bird-watching and game viewing, with all the Big Five present, alongside giraffe, waterbuck, gazelle and baboon.

Access
•Roads
The park is 160 km north-west of Nairobi at Nakuru. From Nairobi take the A104 road (direction Naivasha). The main gate and the park headquarters is 4 km south of Nakuru town (from Kenyatta Avenue), take the Moi Road then turn left into Stadium Road which leads to the gate), Lanet Gate
• Air
Naishi airstrip which is located in the southern part of the park

VEGETATION
Euphorbia Forest  
The Rift Valley escarpment rising to the southeast of Lake Nakuru supports Kenya’s largest concentration of the cactus – like euphorbia, a striking tree sized succulent whose thick sap is poisonous to most animals.

Acacia Forest
The southern part of the park supports a cover of lush acacia woodland dominated by the fever tree, so named because early European settlers associated its jaundiced bark with malaria. This is the best place to look for black rhino, lion, leopard and woodland birds.
 
MAJOR ATTRACTIONS
Flamingoes on Lake Nakuru
The flocks of up to two million flamingoes that aggregate periodically on Lake Nakuru were proclaimed “the most fabulous bird spectacle in the in the world” by renowned American ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson.

Rhino Sightings A dozen white and 20 black rhino were translocated to Lake Nakuru in the 1990s and have since bred to form populations of around 50 each species. The white rhino in particular is common on the lakes southern floodplains.

Baboon cliff
The superb Rift Valley scenery of this park is capped by the spectacular Baboon Cliff which offers panoramic views over the lake and its hinterland.

Rothschild’s Giraffe
Lake Nakuru is an important stronghold for Rothschild’s giraffe, a rare western race that has thrived since its introduction to the park in the 1980s. The Nakuru population of this giraffe is the second largest in the world after Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda, and the largest in Kenya.

Other Attractions
•Waterfall : Makalia Falls
•View –points: Lion hill, baboon cliffs and Out of Africa
•Hills :Enasoit , lion hill, honeymoon e.t.c
 
Wildlife
Thomson’s and Grant,s gazelle, the long-eared leaf-nosed bat, colobus monkey, rock hyrax, hippo, leopard, lion, rhino, waterbuck. Impala, striped hyena,bat-eared fox, wildcat, reedbuck, striped hyena,golden cat, black and white rhinos.

Best time to visit
All year round