Lake Natron

This morning, I got the weekly email from Roadtrippers.  It had the usual assortment of oddities, but the one that caught my attention was the headliner.  In this case, it was Lake Natron, or the lake that turns anything that drinks from it into stone.



The photo above is one of the animals that supposedly had the bad idea to drink from the lake, and was petrified.  Not surprisingly, I thought this sounded interesting.  Then I decided to do a little internet search and found out that, not surprisingly, while not exactly a hoax, the tagline and brief description on the Roadtrippers site is also not exactly true, either.  For details, see:

http://news.discovery.com/earth/photographer-rick-brandt-lake-natron-131003.htm
http://www.geekosystem.com/natron-birds/

So, while the lake is interesting, in the end I elected not to put it on my list.  What bothers me most about this is the travel sensationalism.  Travel journalism, like any other journalism, should be accurate and reliable, regardless of the platform.