Highlights of lakes Naivasha and Nakuru in Kenya

​By Roxanne Reid
If you grew up reading books like Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa and Elspeth Huxley’s Flame Trees of Thika, you’ll understand what a thrill it is to stand somewhere between Nairobi and Naivasha at a viewpoint over the Great Rift Valley, a 9600km trench that carves its way through East Africa. Here are some highlights of two of Kenya’s Rift Valley lakes, Naivasha and Nakuru.

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Loldia House

Italians prisoners of war built the Governors Camp Collection’s Loldia House of hand-cut volcanic rock in the 1940s. It’s reminiscent of the homes of the early settlers and the farm it stands on was established in 1904. A giant wild fig towers over one corner of the house and verandah, its branches spreading some 20m from the trunk. Green lawns unfold in front of the house, and the garden sweeps down to Lake Naivasha, full of yellow-bark acacias, bougainvilla, plumbago and clivias. The lounge is full of leather-bound books, a baby grand piano and vases of roses of all colours from the rose farm nearby in Naivasha town.

Views of Lake Naivasha

The views of the Rift Valley’s Lake Naivasha – the only fresh water lake of the Rift Valley – were beautiful from every window and verandah at Loldia House. We could also see the dormant volcano, Mount Longonot, the only mountain in the eastern part of the Rift Valley. We had sundowners on the edge of the lake in the evening and woke as day broke to the sound of fish eagles, red-chested cuckoos and spurfowl. We could see pelicans on the lake in the distance. Before long came the sound of a boat motor as fishermen went out on the lake to catch red tilapia in their nets. 

Meals on the lawns

Our first meal at Loldia House was a delicious lunch of red snapper, served in style on the lawns in front of the house. Dinners were in the dining room, but breakfast was also in the fresh air, looking out at the lake and listening to pairs of fish-eagles calling back and forth. It included fruit, pastries and cooked breakfast, but for me the highlight was a pot of home-made set yoghurt that was superb.

Olive baboons and Kirk’s dik-dik

Loldia House occupies a beautiful spot on a 6 500-acre private farm on the shores of Lake Naivasha. On our drive from the entrance gate we saw some farming activities but more exciting were the wild animals that live on the property. This is where we found hippos, many birds, our first olive baboons (a furrier cousin of the Chacma baboons we’re used to in Southern Africa) and a few pairs of dainty Kirk’s dik-diks with their elongated noses, large eyes and matchstick legs.

Aardvark

Our guide Jacob Ngunjiri lured us out after dinner with a single word – aardvark. He knew, he said, where one had been seen a couple of nights before. We were hooked. He conjured up spotted hyenas, African hares, hippos preparing their beds inland for the night and three pairs of dik-dik. Then at last we found an aardvark. Last time we saw one it was for just a few seconds before it disappeared. Here at Loldia we could go off-road to get a little closer and must have watched it for 15 to 20 minutes as it moved and dug in the soil for supper. So special, especially when we learnt that around here seeing an aardvark is believed to give you a longer life.

Day trip to Lake Nakuru National Park

Although Lake Nakuru National Park was just 90km away it took two hours to get there because top speed through small settlements crammed with lorries, people, shops and cows was around 40-50km per hour. The park is only about 188 square kilometres, on the edge of Kenya’s third-largest town, Nakuru. We saw zebra, big buffalo herds, white rhino, a dozen Rothschild’s giraffe and a feast of birds, including superb starling, crested cranes, a long-crested eagle and bee-eaters. The scenery was pretty too, with yellow-bark acacias against a background of the lake, and many umbrella trees on the open plains.

Flamingos

At the edge of Lake Nakuru, which is a Ramsar wetland, we saw hundreds of greater and lesser flamingos, lured here by the abundance of algae. There were also bunches of great white pelicans, grey-headed gulls and a lone yellow-billed stork. The number of bird species you can see at this park in the Rift Valley totals some 450.

Chasing buffaloes 

​Who would have thought that working to clear an airstrip would be so much fun? When we were due to leave Loldia House, an askari on a motorbike was clearing the landing strip (a very rough-and-ready one) of zebra and buck so the single-prop plane could land. Then he phoned to ask our guide to chase off six buffaloes with the vehicle because it would be too dangerous on a bike. We were game to tag along. The buffaloes were a bit stubborn but we banged on doors and eventually they clustered under a tree in the shade, from where they wouldn’t be moved. Our guide decided it was far enough away not to be a problem for the pilot. Mission accomplished.

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