Lake Nakuru vs Aberdare

Question

I will have only one shot at a national park in Kenya in a couple of weeks…very short trip. If you had a choice between spending two days and a night at Lake Nakuru or at Tree Tops or Ark in Aberdares, which would you choose, and why? I am leaning toward Lake Nakuru because it appears that the diversity of wildlife is greater there; birds, zebras, giraffes, rhinos, and the occasional big cat. It appears that the main draw at Tree Tops or the Ark are elephants and warthogs.

Thanks!

safariquestions · Accepted Answer · June 8, 2020

Hi,

I’ve been to both parks, so hopefully can offer some insight!
Lake Nakuru is a smaller park, quite open. I had nice sightings of rhino, flamingo, buck. Apparently there are big cat there, but we didn’t see any unfortunately (glad some of the other posters had good viewings). There is a lovely lookout that you can have a picnic lunch at.

Aberdare National Park is a lot more like a jungle. We saw elephant, buffalo, hyena cubs. The Ark is a lovely place to stay – I didn’t have the pleasure of staying there, but did have a tour around it and it looks lovely. It looks out over a waterhole which apparently gets a mixture of animals.

I have to admit, I’d probably give Nakuru my vote, probably because I liked the flamingos which I’ve never seen in the wild before and I’ve been to quite a few different game parks. But it depends what you like. If you have any more specific questions, feel free to PM me.

As a side comment, Masaai Mara is a lovely game park and you’ll have lots of sightings, but takes longer to get to than the other parks and it’d be nice to have at least 1-2 full days inside the park.