Erin's Travels: Safari in the Masai Mara

My safari got off to an interesting start. If I go all the way to the beginning, I booked through this guy Anthony who was recommended to me by someone at work as someone who could give me a nice tour of Nairobi. During that trip, he mentioned that he can also book safaris, so I asked him to give me a quote for 3 days, 2 nights driving safari in the Masai Mara over Labor Day weekend. He came back to me with a price that was unbeatable - over a hundred less than the other quotes I was getting. I paid cash through a transaction that consisted of me meeting him outside the gate of my apartment complex and handing it to him. I asked for a receipt, which of course what I meant was that I wanted a receipt right then, but I was told he would bring one back the next day for me. I never did get a receipt, so on the day of my departure I was wondering if my promised transport would actually show up. I was 90% confident that it would since he was likely to lose all of his CDC business if it didn't, but I couldn't help but wonder. My transport was 15 minutes late (7:45AM), but arrive it did. I was off. Our next stop was at a guest house nearby to pick up two additional people in my group. They were nowhere to be found. The proprietor of the establishment, finally came out and told us that they were still sleeping and had said that they had been told their pick up was at 9AM and that they refused to come out until then. You can imagine what I was thinking at this point. My driver/guide (Barry) and I headed to the office to pick up one more person (Esther) and our cook (Mr. Matthew) before heading back to get them. They were sitting outside waiting when we arrived. They (Aron and Jerrin) were really nice about the whole mix up, which was not what I was expecting given the earlier message we had received. I immediately forgave them. Besides, I was about to spend a lot of time with them over the next couple of days, so holding a grudge would have just ruined my experience. We were chatting about the whole ordeal earlier and it turns out that they had told the proprietor that they could be ready in 10-15 minutes if we could wait and she had told them that we were refusing to wait for them! That was totally not true. I'm sure that had she relayed what they had actually told her, we would have waited. I have no idea what her motivations for creating all of that drama were.

By about 9:30 we were on the road headed to the Masai Mara. Shortly after getting out of Nairobi, we stopped at an overlook.

Me at the overlook

I took several photos out of the van window along the way.

Mt. Longonot - I'm hoping to climb this in a couple of weeks.

We stopped for lunch in Narok about 2 hours into the drive. I'd say we were more than half way there, distance-wise, but we drove for another 3 hours after that because the roads were so bad. The paved road had so many pot holes that we swerved our way down it trying to avoid them or, in the really bad parts, drove in the dirt next to the road instead of on it. The probably lasted for about an hour and a half before we turned on to a dirt road. That road was a bit like riding a roller coaster. Parts of it had been washed out to form gullies, which we straddled, still swerving all about as the gullies permitted. I should also mention that the gullies were banked, enough so that we found ourselves instinctually shifting our weight in the opposite direction of the tipping to prevent the van from rolling (all the while smiling and laughing at each other). Do I actually think the van would have tipped all the way over? Absolutely not, but it was definitely a wild ride.

Our first stop once we arrived, was at Esther and my campsite. Aron and Jerrin were staying at a lodge inside the park. We dropped off our things (and Mr. Matthew) and headed back out for an afternoon game ride. Sunday was a full day game ride, about 10 hours including a break for lunch, and then we had an early morning game ride before heading back to Nairobi on Monday. It was so incredible. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was not to be as close to the wildlife as we were. Driving into the Masai Mara reminded me a bit of driving into the National Parks in States. In both, the scenery dramatically changes as soon as you pass through the gates. In the national parks in the States, you are met by amazing scenery and geological wonders. In the Masai Mara, you are immediately surrounded by by wildebeast and antelopes. I saw nearly everything I had hoped to see while there. The only things we missed out on were cheetahs and rhinos. I will see rhinos when I go to Lake Nakuru, and I am hoping to take another safari in another part of Kenya before I leave to get another stab at seeing cheetahs. I think the most amazing thing during the trip was our first lion siting. We came upon a male lion sleeping in the grass near the road. We ultimately we parked right next to him. We were literally hanging over the edge of the van looking down at him. It was so incredible. Since I saw so many animals and took so many photos, I've pulled out some of the best ones and grouped them by animal instead of going through things chronologically like I usually do.

Gate to the Masai Mara National Reserve

Our van with the top popped for maximum wildlife viewing. That's Esther in the window.

Jerrin and Aron

Views of the Masai Mara - the sky and clouds were pretty amazing too.

The Mara River

Sunrise on Monday morning

Birds (only a fraction of them) of the Masai Mara

Secretary bird

Lappet-faced vulture

White-backed vulture

Marabou stork on left and white-backed vultures on right

Male ostrich

Female ostrich

Cinnamon-chested bee-eater

Rueppell's starling

Wattled starlings

Superb starling

Superb starling and lilac-breasted roller

Lilac-breasted roller

Wart hog

Baby wart hogs! Mom and dad might be ugly, but the babies are really cute.

Gazelles and antelope

Topi

Elan

Young impala practicing fighting for the females

Male and female impala

Impala

Thomson's Gazelle

Hartebeest

Giraffes

Wildebeast - there were sooo many of them! We saw thousands upon thousands of them. Zebras like to hang out with them because they have a better sense of smell. The zebras have better eyesight and can run faster (zebras are smarter too).

Mom and baby

Thinking about crossing the Mara River. We watched a heard thinking about making a crossing for about an hour hoping to see one. The crocodiles come out after them once the stampede starts across.

A couple brave souls start across

More are coming

Even more

We were getting close to a stampede

And then the giant safari bus on the Tanzanian side of the river (pictured below) pulled up and parked itself right where the animals come up from the river and scared them all off. I'm glad we got to see a few animals cross, but a proper crossing would have been much better.

Once the safari bus scared off the main part of the heard, those that had crossed started calling for the rest of the heard. There was some contemplation by some members of the main heard about crossing, but the safari bus was just not going to let it happen. There were a few wildebeast and a zebra that got trapped between the safari bus and the river, so they decided to re-cross the river back to the other side to rejoin the main herd.

The zebra made it just fine, but the four wildebeast got pushed down stream a bit by the current and ended up climbing out in a place that wouldn't allow them to get all the way back up because parts of the bank were too steep. We watched them try with all there might to scale the bank without success. Three of them finally decided that they would cross the river again back to the other side. It was obvious they were very tired. So much so that one of them could barely climb out of the water. We watched with anticipation hoping it would make it before a crocodile decided it would make a good meal or before it drown. When it did finally crawl onto the bank, there was a cheer from all the vans watching. The one that remained was still trying to climb the bank when we decided to leave.

Zebras

Baby zebra

Crocodile

Hippos

Hippo with red-billed oxpeckers perched on it and Egyptian geese behind it

The Big 5 (well, 4 of them anyways since I didn't see a rhino)

Buffalo

with a red-billed oxpecker

Elephants

Baby following mom

Believe it or not, there is a leopard in that tree - can you spot it?

Lions - this is the first one we saw

It turns out there was another right around the corner from us. There was a female too, but while the guys didn't care that we were around, she did and headed into the bushes.

Cubs munching on a wildebeast - you can just see a horn and a hoof

Mom watching

Dad was a bit further away

He had a wildebeast of his own

Listen closely (don't watch if you're squeamish)

Another lion pride - mom with cubs

Playing

Here comes dad

A lion couple feasting on a wildebeast - it's a good thing there are so many because they sure do get eaten by lions a lot.

A mating pair - yes, we saw.

Another pride - two females and 8 or 9 cubs, we didn't see the males

Some of the cubs were awfully busy down on the river bank

We drove around to get a better look at what they were doing, it turns out they had a wildebeast stashed down there.

Another highlight of the trip was our second evening at the campsite. Maasai from the nearby village came and performed traditional Maasai dances around our campfire. It was great entertainment.