Safari In The Mara

The journey to the Maasai Mara was incredible bumpy.

Arriving rather bone shaken, we were to enter this national park in our truck (which Krissie had aptly named Tessa). Sean and I had been told by our guide at Lake Nakuru that it was a guarantee that I would see lions in the Mara. Lions, like Tigers, feature highly in my book, so I was going to hold him to this guarantee.

After negotiating all the Maasai sellers shouting 'everything for 1000' at the gate, in went we all in Tessa. We drove for a while spotting the usual zebra, worthogs, antelope and thompson gazellses (it's incredible how blase you become about all these creatures!) before Chris thought he could see cheetah. We later discovered that these were in fact termite mounds and not cheetah ears. However, whilst we thought they were cheetahs it made Nina's question of "Can I go to the toilet" (i.e. get out of the truck a few feet from what we thought could be cheetahs) all the more amusing.

Driving on we had our first encounter with elephants (that's the third of the Big 5). Chris quickly double-backed and drove the truck up a dirt track to get a closer look. I don't think we could have been any closer. There was one elephant with two infants and they passed up the left of our truck, crossed in front of us and hid into the trees to our right. We were so close that you could see every wrinkle and crease on their faces. It was amazing! I couldn't help but think that elephants are rather smaller than I imagine them to be, but they are just incredible to see. And how nice to see them with big tusks and their big African ears. And it just goes to show what an effort Chris went to to get us so close to the elephants when the truck got stuck in black sand (that's not its name but I can't remember its proper name) on the way back to the main road prompting Chris to get out an put down some ramps (which the truck well and truly buckled). He's a good man that Chris.

Having arrived in the Mara late afternoon, we then headed out another gate, passing herds and herd of wildebeast, buffalo, gazells, antelopes, zebra, worthogs etc on the way - even a couple more ostrich. I've done another collage for you!

We hadn't yet seen lions though. So to our camp for the night before getting up early to get back into the Mara again at 6am to try to spot some felines on the hunt!

It was an incredible sunrise over the Mara as we made our way back in. How nice to see the Acacia trees sillouhetted against the red sky. There were lots more tourists this morning than there had been the afternoon before. They were all in their pop-top jeeps. There was us in our massive truck. Hysterical! But again, Chris was on a mission and we (and only we) immediately spotted a cheetah (an actual one this time) strolling along the grasses. And that was followed not long after by another cheetah relaxing on top of a mound. This poor sod though had been found by all tourists in the park and the spectacle of 10s of jeeps surrounding it and it not batting an eye-lid was hysterical. Aparently to some Japanese tourists, the sight of us in our truck was more interesting and photo worthy than the cheetah. If only they'd have moved their bloody jeep out of the way so that we could have gotten a closer look at the cheetah!

We then drove south through the Mara, passing a massive herd of elephants on the way. We reached the flag-stone where the Mara and the Serengetti divide and then parked up next to the river. A ranger guide took us along the side of the river so that we could spot the hippos and crocodiles. I love hippos, they really should be one of the Big 5 you know. And given the size of one of the crocs we saw, they should be a 'Big' something too! Handbag maybe? It was quite crazy to be walking along side the riverbank with all these dangerous animals in the river. We saw hippos swimming (they're flipping quick!) and doing their usual head bobbing and snorting.

But still no lions unfortunately. That guy's guarantee was not paying off. Oh well, we'll be going into the Serengetti in a few days. We'll definitely see them there.

We headed back towards the campsite and on our way had the most amazing experience. We spotted a herd of giraffe. There were 13 in total all having a drink. In the distance we could see a herd of elephants, and before we knew it the herd of elephants was passing through the herd of giraffe. Baby elephants and all. It was incredible. The elephants seemed to nod to the giraffe as if to ask 'is this ok if we pass through you?' to which the giraffe seemed to bow and part in the middle as if to reply 'no problem son'.

I've started to also take a real shine to warthogs (which of course all the locals call 'Pumbas' even though that's not swahili at all and is just a made up name). We passed some where you could really see their blond punk manes. And they have to bend down on their knees in order to eat. They're actually very cute to watch.

And the African love of football is so much so that there is even a football pitch in the Mara.

Still no lions. But regardless we still had an incredible day.

We will now head back to Nairobi and Karen Camp for a couple of days before we make our way into Tanzania.

Here are the photos:

BT55_Maasai Mara 10 - 11 Feb 2011