🇰🇪 Emerald Nakuru 🦩

The small town of Nakuru retains some colonial-era British architecture. On our arrival day, a heavy rain poured down, leaving little lambs and puppies huddled under the eaves for shelter. Unlike Maasai Mara, Nakuru is vibrant and green. 🌱 The night before, we stayed at Lake Nakuru Lodge 🛖—a charming place with a swimming pool, office hut, souvenir shop, and bar. Each room is its own little cottage, spacious but with questionable water quality 😫. Dinner featured avocado salad 🥑 and perfectly grilled lamb. Our sweet waiter, Patrick, kept sneaking over to chat after finishing his shifts, and my friends couldn't stop teasing him. We were the last guests lingering in the restaurant, and the staff girls sang us "Malaika" (meaning "angel" in Swahili 👼🏿). That beautiful moment—their voices, the warmth—is something I'll remember forever. Maybe the lodge wasn’t the fanciest, but the people we met made it special. 💖 After the rain, the air carried the rich scent of wet earth and fresh grass. Nakuru’s Rothschild’s giraffes 🦒 (with an extra horn on their foreheads and white-stockinged legs) are different from Maasai giraffes. We spotted a dominant male impala surrounded by his "harem" of twenty females, a battle-scarred rhino 🦏 munching away, and baboons grooming each other for ticks. Then, off to Lake Elementaita for the pink flamingos! 💗 These birds symbolize eternal love, resilience, and hope—and seeing them was a dream come true. Due to rising water levels, Nakuru only had a few flamingos left; most had migrated to Elementaita. A boundary line kept visitors from getting too close, but watching them take flight in sweeping pink waves made the $20 fee totally worth it 🥹. #TravelMemories #NatureTherapy #Nakuru #Flamingos #KenyaSafari 🌍✨