A brief but productive visit to Lake Nakuru National Park

The female leopard we encountered on the track.

In order to get some photographs of the flamingos at Lake Nakuru we arranged for our charter flight to stop there while we went for a four hour game drive and picnic.  We had seen a leopard cub and his mother at Lewa Downs but the light had been fading and the animals were at a distance from the car.  So we were sent over the moon when at 11.30 in the morning in Nakuru a lovely female leopard came walking down the track straight past our car! 

We were able to get some fantastic photos and film of her as she went about her business, marking, sniffing and generally patrolling her territory and seemingly oblivious of our presence. As you can imagine, that was a boon and a great start to our game drive in Nakuru. There has been so much rain here in the Rift Valley that the water level of L. Nakuru is the highest that I’ve ever seen it.  As a result the salinity of the water has been diluted causing the algae to recede, in turn sending much of the flamingo to migrate elsewhere in search of food.  However there were still several hundred thousand scattered along the shoreline and we were more than happy with that!  All in all, our brief visit to Nakuru park turned out to be a great success.