Lake Nakuru

Lake Nakuru Trips

Lake Nakuru National Park boasts stunning images to fill stacks of memory cards, starting with one of Kenya’s most well-known sights, the breathtaking soda lake and its millions of rose-pink flamingos. At the water’s edge, mother and baby rhinos wallow in mud pools, huge herds of zebra and buffalo graze in the distance, leopards and lions stalking from the sidelines. Standing up on Baboon Cliff, admire the panoramic views over the vast lake and the verdant plains and forests below.

Wildlife highlights of Lake Nakuru

Flamingos: The combination of sunshine and alkaline waters creates the perfect conditions for the growth of blue algae, a super-food for these pretty flamingos, which turn up in their hundreds of thousands to feed. Watch as they move back and forth on the water and you may be rewarded by their taking flight, creating a deep, frothy pink cloud above the shimmering lake.

Black and white rhinos: By 1987, following years of attacks by poachers killing them for their high-value horns, only two black rhinos survived in Lake Nakuru National Park. Thankfully, the rhino sanctuary has worked hard to successfully re-establish both black and white rhinos and you can once again enjoy watching them while on your safari holiday – actually quite similar in colour, they are best told apart by the shape of their mouths. 

Lions: They’re everywhere across the park… indolently draped across rocky outcrops with their young families in tow, sitting in the shade of a tree, mating, or powerfully hunting and killing their prey.

Leopards: Lake Nakuru National Park is also famous for leopards, and it’s not unusual to see them during a daytime safari here. The best place to see these spectacular creatures is high up in the branches of the fever trees that fringe the lake; just keep your eyes peeled for the leopard’s tail dangling down below the branches as he lazily lounges away from the heat of the day.