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The Lake Naivasha Country Club is across the lake from Naivasha township, northwest of Nairobi (click map to enlarge)
The Lake Naivasha Country Club is located on the opposite shore of Lake Naivasha from the town of Naivasha, Kenya.
Built using old colonial architecture and opened in 1937,[1] Lake Naivasha Country Club provides accommodation in rooms and cottages across 12ha (30 acres) of green lawns shaded by mature acacias and fever trees.[2] The public rooms also display the British colonial style. The residents' lounge has a massive fireplace and large bay windows. The bar adjoins a billiards room, for playing billiards and snooker in the British tradition.[2]
Views across Lake Naivasha are dominated by the shadow of Mount Longonot, 2,777m (9,111ft) high, a dormant volcano which, in 1983, was declared a Kenyan national park (52km2). Mount Longonot also can be seen from the eastern escarpment on the scenic highway to the region.[3]
History
The Lake Naivasha Country Club opened in 1937 as an intermediate staging post for Imperial Airways' flying boat (seaplane) service travelling from Durban to London.[1] Previously known as the "Lake Hotel" in the 1930s, [4] there were papyrus-thatched chalets.
The area was popular with members of the Happy Valley set during the years between the World Wars. Also on the shores of Lake Naivasha is the Djinn Palace, which gained notoriety in the Happy Valley days.
There is fishing for black bass and tilapia, and a boat trip during the day provides a close view of Naivasha's wide variety of birdlife and its hippo colonies.[2]
Crescent Island, 15 minutes away by boat, is a private game sanctuary, with zebra, wildebeest, gazelle, vervet monkeys, hares, genet cats, waterbuck and giraffe.[1] Crescent Island is one of the few places in Africa where people can wander on foot among herds of antelope since there are no predators on the island.[2] LNCC will arrange boat trips for a reasonable charge.
Naivasha is also a site for birdwatching, with over 300 species of birds on display: three bird walks a day have been offered along the grounds of the country club, including early morning bird walks which are particularly good for rare sightings of birds. They have a bird-sighting book available publicly to record birds one sees.[2]
1 2 3 4 5 "Lake Naivasha Country Club" (wildlife, map, photos), Go2Africa, 2003, go2africa.com webpage: NavArchived 25 September 2006 at the Wayback Machine .
↑ "Destination Kenya – The Rift Valley" (tourist sites), Daily Nation Online ("Kenya's Premier Newspaper"), accessed 2006-10-02, NationAudio.com webpage: NationAudio-RiftValley.
↑ "Camp/Lodge accommodation in Kenya – Rift Valley and its Lakes – Lake Naivasha" (overview), @ctiveWEB NZ Ltd, 2006, webpage: KE1-NavaishaArchived 1 November 2006 at the Wayback Machine .
The Great Rift Valley is a series of contiguous geographic trenches, approximately 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi) in total length, that runs from Lebanon in Asia to Mozambique in Southeast Africa. While the name continues in some usages, it is rarely used in geology as it is considered an imprecise merging of separate though related rift and fault systems.
Lake Baringo is, after Lake Turkana, the most northern of the Kenyan Rift Valley lakes, with a surface area of 130 square kilometres (50 sq mi) and an elevation of 970 metres (3,180 ft). The lake is fed by several rivers: the Molo, Perkerra and Ol Arabel. It has no obvious outlet; the waters are assumed to seep through lake sediments into the faulted volcanic bedrock. It is one of the two freshwater lakes in the Rift Valley in Kenya, the other being Lake Naivasha.
Lake Naivasha is a freshwater lake in Kenya, outside the town of Naivasha in Nakuru County, which lies north west of Nairobi. It is part of the Great Rift Valley. The name derives from the local Maasai name ɛnaɨpɔ́sha , meaning "that which heaves," a common Maasai word for bodies of water larger enough to have wave action when it is windy or stormy. Naivasha arose as the British attempt to pronounce the Maasai name. Literally, Lake Naivasha means "Lake Lake."
Nakuru County is a county in Kenya. It is County number 32 out of the 47 Kenyan Counties. Nakuru County is a host to Kenya's Forth City – Nakuru City. On 1 December 2021, President Uhuru Kenyatta awarded a City Charter status to Nakuru, ranking it with Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu as the cities in Kenya. With a population of 2,162,202, it is the third most populous county in Kenya after Nairobi County and Kiambu County, in that order. With an area of 7,496.5 km2, it is Kenya's 19th largest county in size. Until 21 August 2010, it formed part of Rift Valley Province.
Lake Nakuru is one of the Rift Valley lakes at an elevation of 1,754 m (5,755 ft) above sea level. It lies to the south of Nakuru, in the rift valley of Kenya and is protected by Lake Nakuru National Park.
The Aberdare Range is a 160 km (99 mi) long mountain range of upland, north of Kenya's capital Nairobi with an average elevation of 3,500 metres (11,480 ft). It straddles across the counties of Nyandarua, Nyeri, Muranga, Kiambu and Laikipia. The mountain range is located in west central Kenya, northeast of Naivasha and Gilgil and lies just south of the Equator. The mountain range is called Nyandarua among the Agikuyu people in whose territory this forest and mountain range is located. The name Nyandarua comes from the Kikuyu word rwandarua meaning a drying hide, due to the distinctive fold of its silhouette.
Mount Longonot is a stratovolcano located southeast of Lake Naivasha in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya, Africa. It is thought to have last erupted in the 1860s. Its name is derived from the Maasai word Oloonong'ot, meaning "mountains of many spurs" or "steep ridges".
The Aberdare National Park is a protected area in the Aberdare Mountain Range in central Kenya located east of the East African Rift Valley. It covers the higher areas and the Aberdare Salient to the east.
Naivasha is a town in Nakuru County, Kenya, 92.8 km (57.7 mi) north west of Nairobi. From 1969, the population expanded by a factor of 17 times to over 198,000 at the 2019 census. It is situated on the shores of Lake Naivasha, from which it takes its name. The name Naivasha derives from the local Maasai word ɛnaɨpɔ́sha, meaning "that which heaves", a common Maasai word for bodies of water larger enough to have wave action when it is windy or stormy. Naivasha arose as the British attempt to pronounce the Maasai name. Literally, Lake Naivasha means "Lake Lake" and Naivasha Town means "Lake Town".
Hell's Gate National Park lies south of Lake Naivasha in Kenya, north west of Nairobi. Hell's Gate National Park is named after a narrow break in the cliffs, once a tributary of a prehistoric lake that fed early humans in the Rift Valley. It was established in 1984. A small national park, it is known for its wide variety of wildlife and for its scenery. This includes the Fischer's Tower and Central Tower columns and Hell's Gate Gorge. The national park is also home to five geothermal power stations at Olkaria. The park is equipped with three basic campsites and includes a Maasai Cultural Center, providing education about the Maasai tribe's culture and traditions.
The Happy Valley set was a group of hedonistic, largely British and Anglo-Irish aristocrats and adventurers who settled in the "Happy Valley" region of the Wanjohi Valley, near the Aberdare mountain range, in colonial Kenya between the 1920s and the 1940s. In the 1930s, the group became infamous for its decadent lifestyles and exploits amid reports of drug use and sexual promiscuity.
Kenya Wildlife Service is a state corporation under the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife established by an act of Parliament; Wildlife Conservation and Management Act CAP 376, of 1989, now repealed and replaced by the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act, 2013. At independence, the Government of Kenya committed itself to conserving wildlife for posterity with all the means at its disposal, including the places animals lived, forests and water catchment areas.
Tourism in Kenya is the second-largest source of foreign exchange revenue, following agriculture. The Kenya Tourism Board is responsible for maintaining information about tourism in Kenya.
Tourism in Uganda is focused on Uganda's landscape and wildlife. It is a major driver of employment, investment and foreign exchange, contributing USh 4.9 trillion to Uganda's GDP in the financial year 2012–2013.
Most of the peaks on Mount Kenya have been summited. The majority of these involve rock climbing as the easiest route, although some only require a scramble or a walk. The highest peak that can be ascended without climbing is Point Lenana, 4,985 metres (16,355 ft). The majority of the 15,000 visitors to the national park each year climb this peak. In contrast, approximately 200 people summit Nelion and 50 summit Batian, the two highest peaks.
The Great Rift Valley is part of an intra-continental ridge system that runs through Kenya from north to south. It is part of the Gregory Rift, the eastern branch of the East African Rift, which starts in Tanzania to the south and continues northward into Ethiopia. It was formed on the "Kenyan Dome" a geographical upwelling created by the interactions of three major tectonics: the Arabian, Nubian, and Somalian plates. In the past, it was seen as part of a "Great Rift Valley" that ran from Madagascar to Syria. Most of the valley falls within the former Rift Valley Province.
The Olkaria Area is a region located immediately to the south of Lake Naivasha in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya, Africa. It is geothermally active and is being used to generate clean electric power. The region has an estimated potential of 2,000 MW. This is almost double the maximum daily electricity peak demand recorded in 2008/2009 for the entire country.
The Kigio Wildlife Conservancy is a protected Conservancy near Gilgil in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya. It is owned and operated by the local community.
The Northern Acacia–Commiphora bushlands and thickets are a tropical grasslands, savannas and shrublands ecoregion in eastern Africa. The ecoregion is mostly located in Kenya, extending north into southeastern South Sudan, northeastern Uganda and southwestern Ethiopia and south into Tanzania along the Kenya-Tanzania border.
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