The team bent over backwards to make sure that we enjoyed our stay. When we last visited in June 2008, we also felt that Lake Natron Camp had a great atmosphere. Its simplicity fits the harsh environment anything lavish might have felt gaudy or inappropriate, nestled in amongst the surrounding Maasai villages. The style is unique and there is a sense of adventure in the design itself. Though rather rudimentary, it is also quite fun. Lake Natron Camp is certainly one of the most unusual camps we have ever stayed in. The camp also sits alongside a natural spring which feeds into a nearby soda lake − a swim in the cool water is also a great way to combat the heat. This allows the light and lovely breeze through, but softens the suns rays and heat dramatically. While this lake remains deadly to most, it is still a vital ecosystem.(Note that this camp is often simply called 'Lake Natron Camp' but should not be confused with the nearby Lake Natron Tented Camp.) It is a very open environment here, so each tent and the main mess tent are sheltered under a thick camouflage netting/mesh. The proposed construction of a hydroelectric plant on the Ewaso Ng’iro River and a soda ash plant on its shores threatens the lake’s salinity and the flamingos. If they spent any longer in the lake, they would have died.Ĭurrently, Lake Natron is under threat. It burned their eyes and skin, but they managed to drag themselves ashore. Everyone survived the crash but they were in the water unprotected. In 2007, a helicopter carrying a group of wildlife videographers wishing to get footage of the flamingos crashed into the lake. People have occasionally survived the lake’s potency. Lake Natron would have saved pharaonic embalmers a lot of work. The ancient Egyptians used sodium carbonate and bicarbonate in the mummification process. Photo: Shutterstockįor most humans, the lake’s qualities are more suitable for the dead than the living. The lake doesn’t quite have that instant effect. The graphically eerie positions looked like the finger of Medusa had really touched them. Wildlife photographer Nick Brandt made headlines in 2013 by staging photos of the mummified remains of the poor creatures around Lake Natron. They drown in the toxic potion, and their outsides and insides calcify. The mirror-like surface tricks them into diving into the red waters for food. Some alkaline tilapia (a member of the cichlid family) can sustain themselves in the cooler parts of the lake.īut to some wildlife, especially birds, Lake Natron can be a death trap. Somehow, a few species of fish, invertebrates, and algae manage to live in the lake. In Lake Natron, their pigment paints the water a striking red. Generally, cyanobacteria carry different pigments. The lake’s salinity has welcomed salt-consuming, halophilic microorganisms called cyanobacteria, which need photosynthesis to survive. Lake Natron’s deceptively glassy surface. Its average alkalinity is 10.5, its pH surpasses 12, and its water temperature ranges from 40˚ to 60˚C. This concentrated the trona (sodium sesquicarbonate dihydrate) and natron (hydrated sodium carbonate) in the leftover water, creating a highly toxic brine. Since the lake had no outflow and received irregular rainfall, it endured thousands of years of intense evaporation from the heat. During the Pleistocene period, a rare type of lava rich in sodium and potassium carbonates ran down the slopes of the Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano and into the lake. It’s fed by the Southern Ewaso Ng’iro River in Kenya. This shallow but wide lake is just three metres deep but 22km wide. Tanzania has no less than four alkaline lakes, but Lake Natron is the most famous. Lake Natron is a hypersaline and highly alkaline lake located in the eastern section of the volatile East African Rift. In North Tanzania, a unique inland lake turns wildlife to stone. That’s a legend, but a natural wonder in Africa today does just that. We all know about the Greek monster Medusa, whose deadly gaze turned men to stone.