Lake Elmenteita , also spelled Elementaita , is a soda lake, in the Great Rift Valley, about 120 km northwest of Nairobi, Kenya.
Video Lake Elmenteita
Geography
Elmenteita comes from the word Masaai muteita , which means "place of dust", a reference to drought and dustyness of the area, especially between January and March. The town of Gilgil near the lake. In the south-to-north order of the Rift Valley, Elmenteita is between Lake Naivasha and Lake Nakuru. Nairobi-Nakuru main highway (Jalan A104) stretches along the nearby steep slopes giving the riders a spectacular view of the lake. Today the lake is a protected area due to the fame of birdlife and has also been crowned as one of the heritage sites together with Lake Nakuru and Lake Bogoria by UNESCO.
At the southern end of the lake there is the "Kekopey" hot springs, where Tilapia graham breeds. Very popular for bathing, local Maasai claim to cure AIDS. The nearby reed bed is a fishing spot for cranes and night pelicans.
Maps Lake Elmenteita
History
The Elmenteita Lake area saw its first white settlement when Lord Delamere (1879-1931) founded Soysambu, a 48,000 acre (190 km km) farm on the western side of the lake. Delamere confers the land on the other side of the lake to his brother-in-law, the respectable Galton, Lowry Egerton Cole (1881-1929), who is part of his "Kekopey Ranch", where he is buried, preserved today as Lake Elementaita Lodge.
The Soysambu farm is still occupied by the descendants of Lord Delamere, including controversial Thomas P. G. Cholmondeley who has been instrumental in establishing Soysambu maintenance. Conservation covers 2/3 of the coastline and is home to more than 12,000 wild animals.
Lake Elmenteita has been a Ramsar site since 2005.
Ecology
More than 400 species of birds have been recorded in the Lake Nakuru/Lake Elmenteita basin. Elementeita attracted visiting flamingos, both larger and smaller varieties, which ate shrimp and insect larvae in the lake and on the blue-green algae. The fish were introduced to the lake from Lake Magadi in 1962 and since then the flamingo population has drastically reduced. The fish attract a lot of fish-eating birds that also eat eggs and flamingo chicks. More than one million birds previously raised in Elmenteita are now said to have sought refuge in Lake Natron in Tanzania.
The edge of the lake is grassed by zebra, gazelle, eland and boar family.
The lake is usually very shallow (less than 1 m deep) and limited by mud flats encrusted with trona during the dry season. During the late Pleischocene and the beginning of the Holocene, Lake Elmenteita is sometimes united with the expanded Nakuru Lake, forming a much larger dilute lake. Remnants of former lakes that are joined are preserved as sediments in various locations around the lake basin, including former beaches.
Recently lake levels and flamingo numbers have subsided because of increased human activity has drained the catchment area.
Related sites
Nearby is the Kariandusi Museum, on an important prehistoric site where stone handaxes and machetes were discovered in 1929 by Louis Leakey.
Elmenteita Badlands is a lava flow to the south of the lake, covered in bushes and includes some spectacular spectacular peaks.
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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