[Kenya] Lake Naivasha and Crescent Island

We visited Lake Naivasha and Crescent Island on the 6th and last day of our safari adventure. Similar to our Maasai Village Tour, this was an optional add-on to our itinerary. It includes a boat safari and a nature walk with animals so I thought it would be a wonderful experience for me and my family. And indeed, it was!

Lake Naivasha

Our boat safari started at around 2:15pm. Here we saw several hippos that were mostly submerged apart from the very tops of their heads. It was very exhilarating being very close to them but also quite scary because our boat was very small and an angry hippo could easily flip it over. I know that many people are attacked by hippos every year and I shared this concern with our guide but he said we shouldn't worry. To paraphrase what he said, when you send out positive and peaceful energy to the hippos, they will send you that same energy back.

Seeing hippos almost at eye level in Lake Naivasha

We also got pretty close to a couple of pelicans.

Pelicans

We also saw a couple of fish eagles. Our guide said it was a male and a female and that  the female is larger. Our guides tried to get one of the eagles to swoop down from its lofty perch and fly closeer to us on the surface of the lake by tossing some fish he had with him into the water. However, it seems that the eagles might have just eaten and were still full because none of them were attracted to the fish the guides were offering.

One of two fish eagles we saw (the other was perched on another tree)

Our guide also told us that there were a lot of dead tree trunks jutting out of the lake because the water level here has risen several meters over the years.

Many dead tree trunks jutting out of the lake

After being on our boat for about 45 minutes, we docked at Crescent Island for our nature walk with animals.

Crescent Island

Here we were joined by a different guide (her name was Susan). She told us that the reason there are a lot of large herbivores in Crescent Island is because of the 1985 film Out of Africa, which starred Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. This film shot some of its sequences here and the film crew brought many animals here to make it look more like the bush. Once filming ended, the animals were left here where they (or their descendants) continue to live and thrive. Since there are no predators here, going on a nature walk amidst the animals has become a pretty popular tourist activity. (Side note: our guide asked us where we were from and when we told her we were from the Philippines, she happily told us that she actually watches some Filipino drama shows. Cool!)

We did a nature walk with wild animals on Crescent Island

The first animal we got to see here and have a photo taken with is the masai giraffe.

Masai giraffe

We also got to see zebras,

Plains zebras

waterbucks,

Waterbucks

impalas,

Impalas

wildebeests,

Wildebeest

and gazelles.

Gazelles

We spent about an hour walking around the island and Susan very kindly took our photos with the animals. As we were heading back to the dock, it started to rain. We got somewhat soaked while on the boat but on our way back, we got to see the not-so-common sight of hippos out of the water!

Hippos on land

It was an amazing experience and a very relaxing way to end our tour, despite the rain. I'm also happy that we started our boat safari when we did. Our guide Zachary actually wanted us to start a bit later in the day - at around 3pm - because he thought it might be too hot for us to start at around 2pm. But we felt it would be good to start earlier, heat notwithstanding, to optimize our time in Kenya especially because we were all tired. If we started an hour later as Zachary initially suggested, we would end up having gotten badly drenched by the rain while doing our nature walk. That was a close call!

Boat safari in Lake Naivasha

I'm really happy that we added this option to our tour. It cost US$50 per person for both the boat safari in Lake Naivasha and the nature walk in Crescent Island, but given the richness of our experience, it was absolutely worth it.

Nature walk in Crescent Island

Next post: The Giraffes of Kenya