3 Days in Lake Naivasha with Kids

When choosing destinations for our family holiday to Kenya, Lake Naivasha was a clear choice due to its unique blend of nature, adventure and relaxation. After several days of amazing game drives in Ol Pejeta Conservancy, we were looking for an opportunity to enjoy some outdoor physical activity. During our three days in Lake Naivasha with kids, we found many family-friendly outdoor adventures in which highlight the regions’ natural beauty and rich wildlife.

We love family activities which mix physical activity along with nature. Our day trip to Crescent Island on Lake Naivasha hit on both marks. We saw hippos on our way to the island, then enjoyed a walk around the nature reserve soaking in all the amazing Kenyan wildlife who roam freely around.

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During our visit to Lake Naivasha with kids, we also enjoyed two excellent family hikes in the nearby national parks. Our first being in Hells Gate National Park, which is famous for being the inspiration for many of the iconic locations in the Lion King movies. Our second national park was Mount Longonot National Park, featuring a popular hike up its massive stratovolcano.

To help you plan your family trip to Kenya, here’s how we spent our three days in Lake Naivasha with kids:

Day 1 – Lake Naivasha With Kids

Lake Naivasha Boat Safari To Crescent Island

After setting into our family-friendly resort on the shores of Lake Naivasha, we ventured out for our first activity of the day – a boat safari to Crescent Island.

The boat safari is a popular activity on Lake Naivasha, so we had to wait our turn to get a boat. But when we did, it was a private boat just for our family. There were life jackets for everyone including kid-sized ones.

As our boat made its way towards Crescent Island, we saw a variety of interesting birds including herons, white-breasted cormorant and a few distinctive African spoonbill.

While the birds intrigued us, spotting our first Lake Naivasha hippos truly excited us. Even just seeing their heads poking out of the lake water, you can sense how massive these African animals are!

Crescent Island has an interesting bit of history. Crescent Island boasts a fascinating history as a filming location for the 1985 movie ‘Out of Africa,’ which showcased Kenya’s stunning landscapes. They imported many African animals to the island, including the Big 5. After filming wrapped, they removed the dangerous animals leaving behind the peaceful ones.

Today visitors can go on a walking safari around Crescent Island. Guides are optional and free (they work for tips). When dealing with wildlife, we have learned it’s always useful to have a guide, so we hired one for our walk around the island.

Crescent Island is a beautiful island with many magnificent trees and grassy plains. African wildlife is abundant here and we loved getting to walk around freely with them.

During our walking safari on Crescent Island we saw many ostriches, waterbuck, vervet monkeys (including babies!), fish eagles, impalas, gazelles, wildebeest and lots of zebras. We even saw a few hippos swimming in the water just offshore.

The highlight of our walking safari in Crescent Island came at the very end when we encountered a small herd of five Maasai giraffes, including two very young ones. Getting so close to the giraffes on foot was an enormous thrill for everyone in the family.

As we set out on our family walk in Hell’s Gate National Park, our guide pointed out the dormant volcano Mt. Longonot in the distance. This was exciting as we have another family hike planned for there the next day!

The road through Hell’s Gate National park runs parallel to many tall cliffs made of volcanic basalt columns. These columns are very interesting to look at and are very beautiful. Our guide showed us one spot along the cliff where echoes are very strong. As you can imagine, our kids thought it was hilarious and spent a lot of time making new and funny echoes.

There’s an abundance of wildlife in Hell’s Gate National Park, and much of it was on display as we enjoyed our family hike. The first animals we saw were impalas. Next we saw a family of baboons and some rock hyrax at Fisher’s Tower, a rock tower popular with rock climbers.

You may be interested to know that many of the locations within Hell’s Gate National Park were inspiration for locations in the original Lion King movie. You’ll see the rock where Mufasa shows Simba all the land that will be his one day just behind Fisher’s Tower.

Continuing along the road, we saw warthogs, water buffalos, gazelle, waterbucks and hartebeest. We were very excited to see two Maasai giraffes grazing nearby! Apparently there are leopards in Hell’s Gate National Park, but they are very rare to see in the daylight hours. We did see leopard footprints in the dust on the road – a chilling sight!

After a while, the grassy meadow turns into a sage forest. I spent most of my time looking in the treetops for leopards (who like sage trees and acacia trees), but alas they proved elusive.

Finally we reached the very edge of Hell’s Gate National Park to the overlook of Ol Jorowa Gorge. The Ol Jorowa Gorge is famous for being the inspiration for the Lion King scene where stampeding wildebeests trample Mufasa.

We would have loved to hike through Ol Jorowa Gorge, but apparently it’s been closed for 5 years now due to flash flooding risk.

Perhaps the highlight of our day was interacting with a class of middle school girls who were there on a field trip. They looked so nice in their bright red school sweaters. As we were enjoying the views of Ol Jorowa Gorge when they asked if we could get in a picture with them.

They were so enamored with our daughter’s blond hair, they wanted to spend time with her and talk to her. It was an amazing cultural experience for our family, and especially our daughter.

As usual on our family trip to Kenya, we hired a guide at the gates to the Mount Longonot National Park. They were asking us all kinds of questions about our kids capabilities regarding the distance, elevation gain and altitude, but we were able to convince them of our kids excellent hiking capabilities.

After our last few Kenya hikes being along roads, we were super happy to see the Mount Longonot trail is along a real hiking trail. The initial 3 km of the hike takes you from the national park gates to the rim of the caldera.

Along the ascent to the caldera, we walked through a forest of sage trees and very sharp, thorny acacia trees. We could see a herd of zebras grazing in a meadow along the lower slopes of the stratovolcano. We also noticed the tiny hoof prints of a dik dik in the dirt on the way up.

The initial ascent to the Mount Longonot caldera is a bit steep in places, but there are concrete steps in place for the really steep parts. There are many viewpoint along the way up if you need to stop and catch your breath.

It took us about 1 hour to hike up to the Mount Longonot caldera. As we reached the top of the trail, the massive caldera came into view and it was truly amazing.

The crater on Mount Longonot is fully intact all the way around and measure nearly 2 km in diameter. This massive caldera is completely covered with lush forest along the bottom making it look like an ideal setting for Jurassic Park.

Many people will simply hike to this caldera lookout point on Mount Longonot, but we chose to continue and do the amazing 7 km hike around the caldera rim.

The amazing thing about hiking along the caldera rim on Mt. Lonognot is that you enjoy views on both sides. The incredible caldera below is, of course, always visible on your left, but you can also enjoy views of Lake Naivasha (with Crescent Island) and Hells Gate National Park too.

The rim of the caldera is not flat and to get to the highest point, we had to gain another 200 m in elevation. The hiking trail is of a normal width for the duration of the caldera rim hike, but it’s important to note that there are some extreme drop offs at times which made me a little nervous. Our kids are experienced mountain hikers, so we trusted them, but make sure your kids are aware of the dangers and to stay on the trail at all times.

The areas around the Mt. Longonot summit are very steep, and the crushed lava rock on the trail was a bit slippery, but we persevered and made it to the summit! Roughly at the halfway point of the caldera hike, it was a special moment to stop at the Mt. Longonot summit sign and enjoy views overlooking the caldera to where we started the rim hike.

As we neared the end of the caldera rim leg of the hike, we started passing groups of school kids, similar to our experience the day before in Hells Gate National Park. Many of the school groups were very excited to see our Canadian kids and there were big “Hellos” and high fives all around. Some even stopped to take pictures with our kids.