It was another start in the dark this morning.  Tents had to be taken down and breakfast had before we took another game drive through the park.  The sun rise was lovely with many tall Euphorbia sp. Looking wonderful as silhouettes against the rising sun.

Euphorbia silhouetted against the rising sun     (P1090603  DY of jtdytravels)

We were hoping to see a lion or two but it wasn’t to be.  It turned out that we just had to be satisfied with the very obscured lion that was asleep on a rock on our very first game drive at Lake Nakuru.

We did see a couple of Helmeted guinea fowl, something the group hadn’t seen before.

Helmeted guinea fowl      (P1090608  DY of jtdytravels)

We also saw more elephants, including the grand daddy of them all.  He had enormous tusks that almost reached the ground.  He wasn’t for the park for much longer as he must have used up his quota of sets of teeth and therefore was heading to a point where he wouldn’t be able to eat properly.  He would then just fade away due to starvation.  The way of the African bush!

An old bull elephant      (P1090630  DY of jtdytravels)

…and then the group was off!      (P1090631  DY of jtdytravels)

We came across a Hamerkop’s nest in a tree beside the track.  They build very large somewhat untidy nests in the fork of tree.  The same tree contained a number of Weaver bird nests.

Hamerkop and Weaver bird nests      (P1090618  DY of jtdytravels)

Our lunch stop again caused some amusement for the local kids.  It’s a Saturday so the kids weren’t at school.  As the bus pulled up on a nice grassy patch we interrupted a game of soccer.  Their ball was quite adequate for the purpose but the one Shane brought along was a regulation number which quickly took precedence to theirs.   The game continued amongst tethered cattle, bicycles, people standing around, our bus and the rest of us who weren’t kicking the ball around.  This all went very well until one of the kids headed off with the ball, never to be seen by us again.  That made it two balls down!

The soccer game at lunch stop     (P1090646  DY of jtdytravels)

The country we drove through was very pretty.  It was quite hilly, even tending to mountainous, with a lot of road works going on.  It was agreed that we would take a rough shortcut which would take some hours off our journey time.  Ingwe described the road as an African massage.  This was not far from being true however the main emphasis was on the bum as you were tossed from one cheek to the other on the rough road.  It was extremely dusty on various sections of the road however the only dust that got into the truck came in through open windows.  She’s a tight ship.

Travelling through hilly country    (P1090651  DY of jtdytravels)

More anon   David