Lake Nakuru National Park

Lake Nakuru National Park was established in 1968 to protect the huge flocks of flamingos that live here. There are often more than one million of these spectacular birds roaming the lake, an awe-inspiring sight even if you are not a keen birdwatcher; so it's not hard to understand why the lake has become such a favourite for African wildlife documentaries. Nakuru is also the place where much of the film "Out of Africa" was shot.

The park is located on the floor of Kenya's Rift Valley and is a mixture of bush lands, forests and a rocky escarpment. Each habitat provides a home to a different species of wildlife. Besides the prolific bird life, the park has now established itself as one of East Africa's premier parks for big game. By the lake, hippo, waterbuck, warthogs, Bohor's reedbuck and zebra can regularly be found. The bushland on the floor of the valley is home to a large variety of antelope and gazelle including eland, impala, Chandler's reedbuck and the tiny dikdik, plus the inevitable pride of lions.

Other animals aside, it is undoutedly the rhinos that are Nakuru's biggest draw card. In the late 1980s the Kenyan Wildlife Services used the park as a rhino sanctuary, and it now has stable black and white rhino populations.