A sight to behold on Lake Baringo

We’re on a girl’s day out off the paradise island of Ol Kokwe, which is right in the centre of Lake Baringo. We set off from the pier at Island Camp after breakfast, on our way to the mainland shore and then to Bogoria, the alkaline lake neighbouring the fresh water Baringo. Bogoria is about 20 kilometres away from Baringo. In 2013, it was thought that Baringo’s waters would spill into Bogoria because the water level rose phenomenally. But it did not happen.

As we make our way by boat, a huge crocodile swims past the copper-coloured vertical wall of Gibralter Island. Nearing the shore of Baringo, the rust cliffs on the mainland hide the many denizens in the crevices. I look for the Verraux’s eagles that have nested here for decades but don’t see any.

I’ve been poring over the late Leslie Brown’s Encounters with Nature where he writes about his first visit to Lake Hannington (today’s Lake Bogoria). It’s October 1949 and midnight. Lying under the stars beneath a mosquito net, he hears a strange murmur from the edge of the lake. It gets louder and he finally decides to see what it is.

In the full light of the midnight moon he sees crimson pink birds iridescent in moonlight, drinking water from the estuary where the fresh water stream flows in. Captivated, he spends hours staring at spectacle below – and being stung by mosquitoes all the while – but it’s a small price to pay for what he sees.

Until this point, nobody had ever studied flamingos in the wild. Brown returned in 1953 and found that there were three times more Lesser flamingos – at least 1.5 million – than his count in 1949.

SPELL-BINDING FLOCK

Standing on the soaked and crusty shoreline by the Soracho escarpment, the caustic blue waters of Bogoria are filled with red legs and beaks and crimson wings – we estimate we something like 5,000 Lesser flamingos alongside a handful of the taller and more white Greater flamingos.

It’s a cacophony of murmurs and cackles. Flocks lift off the lake and fly like animated pink and crimson ribbons far into the lake and back. We’re just as spell-bound as Brown was.

After a picnic of cold cuts, cheese and chilled wine while watching another spectacular trio of Crowned cranes, we leave for some more sight-seeing up the escarpment and past Sandai to a little-known ox-bow lake that came into being in 1994 – hence its name: Lake 94.

Past beautiful succulent euphorbias and aloes in full bloom, the flat lands are full of maize fields thriving on water from the irrigated canals of the Sandai River. Maasai ostrich wander about. Finally we reach a point from where we can proceed no more.

Lake 94 by the Molo River is flooded. The path is overgrown with scrub. Back in 2005 we had enjoyed a picnic on the shores where my nephew learned to play the ancient game of bao with some young lads of the Il Chamus people. They had scooped little cupolas in the sand just like a real board game.

Looking through binoculars, there’s water hyacinth in Lake 94 which then drifts into Lake Baringo. Hopefully, the authorities will work fast to fight the weed before it chokes the beautiful lakes. 

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Fact file

Lake Bogoria is a 45-minute drive from Baringo.

Enjoy a picnic lunch with eggs boiled in the famous hot springs of Bogoria. On Lake Baringo, check in at Island Camp www.islandcamp.com. At Bogoria, there are beautiful camp sites including good hotels to stay at.