The trip to Masai Mara was not without complications. Max Mugo, our tour guide, had car trouble on the way to the Mara. The car completely died. He had to call his taxi guys to pick us up in Kericho, a small city famous for tea. We got there by hitching a ride with a local after being stuck on the side of the road. The taxis took us from Kericho to Narok, where a friend of Max's had brought his safari vehicle for us to go on in. The drivers name was Museti, and a very nice guy he was. We finally made it, several hours late to our campsite outside the gate. It was very strange, because I was at the camp and asked the people if all of these camps were the same. Everyone assured me they were not. As I looked around, I KNEW this place was familiar. Come to find out, this is where I stayed on my very first trip to east Africa, in 2005, when I went on a camping safari. Very strange sense of deja vu. We had a bit of a problem when Joel stepped on an acacia thorn the first day there, and it got infected. Good thing we didn't hike much. He was not a happy camper (literally)!
In the Mara, one of the major animals is the lion. It is one of the so-called Big Five-lion, elephant, buffalo, rhino, and leopard. We would see the first three, but no rhinos or leopards. That was okay, I am really not that big on trophies, etc. It was just great to be there. We saw lots of lions, and I thought I would share some pictures here.
Here are a couple of lions passing in front of another safari vehicle.
They are amazing animals, big, powerful, scary...
Its interesting how unconcerned they are with other creatures, knowing that nothing can really bother them here.
Of course, everyone knows that the female actually does the hunting, and the male may come in for the final kill. What's impressive about the female is her legs and the size of her paws. And these are young lions, not even fully grown. But the paws are huge and I can only imagine what it would feel like to get clubbed by one.
One of these videos may show the lions mating, I'm just not sure which one. It was interesting, since they engage in activity for just a few seconds, then he gets off, the rest for a while, and then do it all over again. He may be the king of the jungle, but in terms of stamina, well....
This is another young male lion, actually seen on day 2, along with a whole bunch of lions just hanging out under some scrub bushes, sleeping. They hunt at night.
We also saw cheetahs, which have to be the most blase animals in the Mara. They KNOW that nothing will mess with them. Here these two were surrounded by probably ten safari vehicles, and these cats were completely uninterested. I really think they are my favorites.
One good thing about Max, is he would let us sit there for as long as we wanted, just watching the animals. We spent a long while here, as well as with the cheetahs. They didn't do much, but are just fun to watch in their sublime boredom.
Another animal we saw a lot of in the park are giraffes, which are just very cool as well. They also seemed very unconcerned that we were around. We didn't see as many as I thought we would, though it may have been because they like trees, and many of the forested areas were too wet to get into. That was also the problem with the notoriously shy rhino, who likes scrub brush, and the leopard, who spends all day in a tree and comes down at night.
I'm not even sure if he is doing anything in this video, but they are really cool animals.
Here I am in our vehicle, I just can't say how cool it is to be at a place like the Mara. I know it's expensive and difficult to do, but everyone should travel to east Africa to see this at least once.
Here I am at the entrance to our campsite. Everyone we talked to later asked "which lodge/hotel did you stay at?" Uh, they don't know me very well. What, stay at a lodge when a perfectly good tent is available!! It was very nice, and cool to be out camping like from "Out of Africa."
And here is what our tent looked like. We had one for the boys and one for us. We slept very well, it didn't rain, and was cool but not cold. A really great experience.
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