Palbina Tours and Travel

RIFT VALLEY EDUCATIONAL TOUR * L.NAIVASHA C.CLUB*

Option 1
Day 01: NAIROBI – HELL’S GATE - NAIVASHA
08:30 hrs, be picked from the school compound and drive through the kikuyu farmlands with a stop at the Kijabe View Point. Here we will have a talk about the rift valley, its formation, geographical features, its connection with human evolution and its economic importance. Proceed to Lake Naivasha Country Club for lunch. At 1400 hrs, proceed to Hell’s gate National Reserve. Hell's Gate National Park is famous for its natural hot geysers, eagle and vulture breeding grounds. Driving, walking, camping, cycling and rock climbing can be enjoyed within the park.

Bird and animal life abound in Hell's Gate National Park and birds of prey are of special interest especially the lammergeyer. Zebras, baboons and gazelles are common sights and occasionally cheetahs, leopards and ostrich are encountered. Hell's Gate is one of the few game reserves where visitors can explore by foot and walk amongst the elands, zebras and hartebeest.

Fischer's Tower, formerly a volcano's plug, is a column of volcanic rock named for a German explorer who explored the Hell's Gate area in 1882. The Central Tower and Njorowa Gorges are popular spots for viewing the surrounding scenery.

Natural steam vents rise from fissures in the volcanic rock and obsidian, a black glassy rock formed from cooled molten lava, is a common feature of the landscape in Hell's Gate. Olkaria Geothermal Station, the first of its kind in Africa, is located within Hell's Gate National Park. Olkaria generates power from underground with super-heated pressurized water and is expected to eventually supply half of Kenya's energy requirements. .

In the park, close to the Central Tower ranger station is the Oloor Karia Masai Cultural Center. The center features singing, dancing and jewelry making demonstrations by local Maasai people.
 
Later drive back to LAKE NAIVASHA COUNTRY CLUB for dinner and overnight

Day 02: NAIVASHA - LAKE NAKURU
Breakfast at the club.
At 0900 hrs, proceed to Nakuru via L. Elementaita. After a brief visit to the lake proceed to Lake Nakuru National Park for a gamedrive enroute to Lake Nukuru Lodge for lunch.
Elmenteita is derived from the Masaai word muteita, meaning "dust place", a reference to the dry and dusty quality of the area, especially between January and March. The town of Gilgil is located near the lake. In the south-to-north sequence of Rift Valley lakes, Elmenteita is located between Lake Naivasha and Lake Nakuru. The major Nairobi—-Nakuru highway runs along the nearby escarpment affording motorists a spectacular vista towards the lake. At the southern end of the lake lie the "Kekopey" hot springs, in which the Tilapia Grahamii breeds. Very popular for bathing, the local Masai claim that it can cure AIDS. The reedbeds nearby are fishing grounds for Night Herons and Pelicans The Lake Elmenteita area saw its first white settlement when Lord Delamere (1879-1931) established his Soysambu, a 48,000-acre (190 km2) ranch, on the western side of the lake. Delamere gifted the land nearest the lake to his brother-in-law, the Honorable Galbraith Lowry Egerton Cole (1881-1929), part of whose "Kekopey Ranch", where he is buried, is preserved today as the Lake Elementaita Lodge.
The nearby Soysambu estate is still occupied by Lord Delamere's descendants, including the controversial Thomas P. G. Cholmondeley who has been instrumental in setting up the Soysambu conservancy. The conservancy covers 2/3 of the shoreline and is home to over 12000 wild animals. Lake Elmenteita has been a Ramsar site since 2005 

Late afternoon game drive.
 

Lake Nakuru National park is situated just outside the town of Nakuru, which means it is accessible throughout the year and in all weathers ---- unlike many of the larger National Parks.
  

Despite its relatively small size (190 sq. km), Lake Nakuru Park has a surprisingly wide variety of wildlife, some, such as the Roschilds giraffe, the black rhino and the white rhino, having been introduced from other areas where they were endangered.
  

Probably, most people know Lake Nakuru for its greater and lesser flamingos (Phoeniconaias roseus and Phoeniconaias minor), the latter outnumbering the former by a factor of 10 to 1; however, about 400 other bird species are residents of, or visitors to, the lake.
 

On the side of mammals, in addition to those already mentioned, buffalo, warthog, baboons, colobus and vervet monkeys, waterbuck, impala and other gazelle are virtually certain to be seen. Less certain, but possible, are leopard and lions. Besides   the beauty and serenity of the however, the truth is that the park lies only 4 km off the populous Nakuru town. This poses various consequences, almost all negative for the conservation of this natural area. After Nairobi National Park, this is the second most accessible park, since Nakuru is the fourth city in the country and the headtown of the Rift Valley. Hence the park receives a high visitor number, more than 100,000 every year, of which a great proportion corresponds to Kenyan citizens and residents.

 

But traffic is not the only nor the biggest of the threats: uncontrolled dumping from the nearby city produces a strong environmental degradation, to such an extent that at critical times flamingoes have completely vanished from the park. In 1994-95 there were massive flamingo deaths caused by water poisoning with heavy metals and toxins, due to a combination of climatic and human factors that favoured the overgrowth of cyanobacteria and toxic blue-green algae. This resulted in the start up of a program aimed at processing Nakuru's industrial and urban residues, water and pollution monitoring and protection of the lake basin.

 

Dinner and overnight at L. NAKURU LODGE or Similar.

Day 03: L. NAKURU – NAIROBI
After breakfast, start our journey back to Nairobi, with a stop in Nakuru for lunch/shopping.

Later return to Nairobi early evening.