Lake Nakuru, Sunday 8/21 - Monday 8/22

	We brought some serious binoculars for enjoying the views from afar... here's Dan looking down on Lake Nakuru from our room, trying to decide if the lump a quarter mile away is a rock or a rhino.
	...Merrie hopes it's a rhino. (It turns out, BTW, that it was a buffalo) (although we saw plenty of rhino at Lake Nakuru).
	This was our view from breakfast: baboons, impala, and zebra grazing just fifty yards or so away from us. A guard stood on the deck during meals to keep baboons away from the deck.
	Dan enjoys the view too...
	Merrie especially liked the dung beetles... really... this one was probably two or three inches long (that's a large leaf he's on). Really, Merrie was a big fan.
	A male waterbuck hangs out a few feet from his herd of females. We can see this one well enough to confirm that he's a Defassa waterbuck, without the white oval that characterizes the common waterbuck.
	The shore of Lake Nakuru was a wall of flamingos, visible from the road even miles away from the park as a huge pink band. These are lesser flamingos; the greater flamingos are off in the distance...
	Dan ponders what cool things he can do with the fun digital camera next.
	Our guide (Titus) waits patiently by our open-top van while we enjoy the beach.
	The happy couple looks surprisingly relaxed, given that the buffalo were just a hundred yards or so behind the camera. Fortunately they aren't very interested in people.
	At this point, we were pretty excited to find leopard tracks, since we weren't expecting to find any leopards (although we would eventually see three).
	Our safari friends hang out and take their own pictures.
	A rather serene scene with rhino, zebra, and impala living in happy harmony.
	The birds - like this superb starling (that's the name of the bird, I'm not just pointing out that he's superb) - often found safe haven on top of large animals with whom no one was going to mess.
	Two white rhinos, a mother and her calf, graze patiently. The rhinos at Lake Nakuru were quite friendly, coming close enough to our car that - had we been bold and/or stupid - we could have reached out and touched them. We also saw one black rhino at Lake Nakuru, but from quite a distance, so no good pictures. The black rhino are more rare and less friendly.
	Here it's easier to see who's mom and who's baby.
	A mating pair of crowned cranes (they mate for life) chats with some Egyptian geese.
	A huge group of pelicans shared the shore of the lake with the flamingos.
	The baboons hung out among the impala and kept clean.
	The smallest baby baboons generally get a ride with mom.
	The warthogs were surprisingly cute and were generally found in families. This one was by himself, and was debating whether to climb into his hole by the road.
	Most of our hotels had mosquito nets over the beds (except for the one that actually had mosquitoes, in Amboseli).
	These impala were sparring outside the hotel, two young males getting ready to challenge an older male for a herd of females. Male impala spend a few months guarding a herd of females, and basically spend that time stressed out and hungry, so in a few months they're usually a little less feisty and room is made for a new dominant male.
	Another breakfast, another nice view, another happy honeymooning couple.
	We had spent the previous afternoon looking in every tree for a leopard, and were on our way out of the park having enjoyed the fruitless search, when some swahili was spoken on the radio. Titus announced "there is a leopard!", which in Titus-speak meant "sit down because this unstable vehicle is going to go fast now and I'm going to get you an awesome view of the leopard!" Which he did. Actually he got us within five feet of this leopard, with no one else around.
	The leopard walked up to our car, thought about us for a few minutes, and quietly slipped away into the woods.

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