Muddy Rhino Spotting

Safari van arrived to pick us up almost on time. The company owners were there as well as the driver to collect the rest of our money and hastily slap one of their stickers on the back of the car. Had a minor blue with the owners who were trying to do us out of the second day's game drive we'd agreed to and paid for (blaming the KWS which has apparently changed its entry fee structure "this year"!!) ? something had to go wrong! We stuck to our guns though, polite but firm and were soon on our way as originally planned.

Drive to Lake Nakuru took about two and a half hours, taking us through the Rift Valley. Slow trip in parts - the road is the main north-south highway running from Egypt to Mozambique and so is used by many trucks. Still, we were grateful to have a safe driver, and the trip was beautifully scenic. Also saw some of the tent villages that still exist for the people internally displaced after the post-election violence at the end of 2007. It seems most of them have lived in tents the whole time save for a small minority who have moved into shonky mudbrick houses built by the government for them.

Lake Nakuru National Park is pretty spectacular - even in the rain, which it did for a solid two hours this afternoon (making taking good photos pretty tough). It's smaller than many of Kenya's other parks, and we probably covered most of it today. Famous for flamingoes - there are thousands rimming the muddy (our shoes took a lot of cleaning tonight!) , retreating lake - and the rhinoceros. We were lucky enough to see nine today, having not seen even one in previous safaris! I took over 500 photos today and the computer is too slow to properly have a look through them, so here's just one of those three-tonners to mark the occasion .

Have had some good Kenyan food tonight , washed down by my first Tusker of this trip. Mmmmm.

PS Backblipped yesterday - Maasai Markets in Nairobi