On Saturday, we went to Lake Naivasha and to Hell’s Gate National Park. The park was beautiful, and we drove and walked around for a while. It takes a bit of training of the eye to spot some animals in the dusty brown and green setting, but there was plenty to see and enjoy. We saw more zebras than I can count, some type of gazelle grazing in the bush, and baboons hiding from us in the trees.
 |
| Trying to move closer to the zebras... slowly! |
 |
| Some odd-looking birds |
 |
| You could rock-climb on this at the entrance of Hell's Gate |
 |
| Baboon eating off the tree! |
Then, we drove around the Lake Naivasha area. The area is a well-known tourist and holiday spot, and you see one advertisement for a hippo safari after another. We opted out of the expensive boat rides and drove and walked around the lake instead. Sammy, our taxi driver, promised that I would see a giraffe on the trip- handfuls before the end of it- and so we had an animal drive in our little white Toyota. Down and around the dusty dirt and rock roads, looking into the acacia trees for giraffes we went. Flower farms lined the roads (Kenya is developing as a leader in the flower farming industry- I’d love to take a tour!).
 |
| Rows and rows of flower farms. |
There were zebra everywhere! I even saw some other Mzungus in the area. I got some closer pictures of the warthogs (I hadn’t come back into contact with them since my first day in Kenya, though there was one on Christine’s front veranda last week), and saw and ostrich roaming around under some trees.
 |
| Ostrich in Naivasha |
 |
| Ugly warthogs! |
And finally, as we were getting a bit tired of driving around, Sammy pulled over and pointed into the bush… Giraffes! Two of them were there, beautiful. I couldn’t get too close to them, but I was able to take a few pictures!
