Today we were spending ALL day in the Masaai Mara
National Park. I still have a small
sliver of hope that I would see my million animals in the middle of their
migration, but the more I think about the logistics of the park, I think my
expectations may have been set a little high.
We were up at 6.20am, for a 6.30am breakfast and a 7.30am departure from
camp. We also had to make our lunches
today as Susan wasn’t going to be coming with us today, so with some
sandwiches, fruit, a popper and biscuits we had our safari picnic all packed
for the day. Anne and I had kept our
tent flaps open all night last night and it was very liberating and refreshing
and not too cold at all. It is a shame
that the mesh in the tent was too thick and we went able to see the stars from
inside the tent, which is a shame as at night the sky is lit up like a
Christmas tree with no pollution r street lights to tame their shine. As I was walking to the showers last night I
was hope to see a shooting star, but I was out of luck.
10 minutes after our departure from camp, we were
straight into the Reserve (after getting our tickets checked) and we were 3
people short as the balloonists were collected at 5am this morning for their
balloon ride and we would meet up again with them around 10am this
morning. First animals off the rank were
a family of banded mongeese (plural of mongoose?) They were pretty cool to watch and when they
stood up on their 2 legs they looked very much like meerkats. The Masaai
Mara National Reserve is a large game
reserve in Narok
County, Kenya, contiguous
with the Serengeti National Park in Mara Region, Tanzania. It is
named in honour of the Masaai
people (the ancestral inhabitants
of the area). It is globally famous for
its exceptional population of lions, leopards and cheetahs, and the annual
migration of zebra, Thomson's gazelle, and wildebeest to and from the Serengeti every year from July to October, known
as the Great
Migration. When it was originally
established in 1961 as a wildlife sanctuary the Mara covered only 520 square
kilometres of the current area, including the Mara Triangle. The area was
extended to the east in 1961 to cover 1,821 km2 and converted to a game reserve. The
Narok County Council (NCC) took over management of the reserve at this time.
Part of the reserve was given National Reserve status in 1974, and the
remaining area of 159 km2 was
returned to local communities. The
terrain of the reserve is primarily open grassland with seasonal riverlets.
Our morning was spent seeing wildebeest, topi, zebra, and Thomson's
gazelle which migrate into and occupy the Mara reserve, from the Serengeti plains to the south and Loita plains
in the pastoral ranches to the north-east, from July to October or later. Herds
of all three species are also resident in the reserve. We also saw out fair share again of dead
animals, mostly zebras and wildebeest and with that comes the vultures that
come to pick at the dead carcasses. Some
of the dead animals were still either quite fresh or not eaten much which at
this time of year it is like a buffet for the animals (lions etc.) and
sometimes they kill just to kill and don’t need to eat as they are full. Most of the time it is the weak that the
predators prey on, hence not eating them-I am sure that they just don’t kill
for the sake of it-so they? Our ULTIMATE
plan and I think anyone that does an African safari, is to see the BIG
FIVE!!!! And we were in the right place
for it as all members of the "Big
Five" (lion, leopard, African
elephant, African
buffalo, and Black
Rhinoceros) are found in the Masaai Mara. The population of Black rhinos
was fairly numerous until 1960, but it was severely depleted by poaching in the
1970s and early 1980s, dropping to a low of 15 individuals. Numbers have been
slowly increasing, but the population was still only up to an estimated 23 in
1999. So we may have to try a little
harder to see a rhino, but we were lucky to have seen a white rhino in Nakuru
anyway, so we can still cross him off the list, along with the elephant, lion
and buffalo as also been seen, so we realistically just needed to see a leopard
and our list would be complete. But I do
know how hard these guys are to find, even with only 1 tree per kilometre for
them to lie in wait, it was going to be a difficult task. The term big
five game was coined by big-game
hunters and refers to the five most difficult animals in Africa to hunt on foot. Subsequently the term
was adopted by safari tour operators for marketing purposes. The members of the Big Five were chosen for
the difficulty in hunting them and the degree of danger involved, rather than
their size.
A few decades ago someone coined the Little Five, who
mimic their namesakes but represent the smaller and more seldom appreciated fauna.
Buffalo weaver, rhino beetle, elephant shrew and leopard tortoise are
joined by the awkward and fairly repulsive looking insect the
Antlion. These animals were probably
going to be harder to find than the leopard so if we weren’t going to see all
of the Big Five (the leopard) then we were happy to settle for the Ugly Five! The
member of this most exclusive club includes hyena, wildebeest, vulture, warthog
and the marabou stork and they are known in the African community as the ugly
five because they are awarded the title of the ugliest animals found in Africa. The wildebeest are in the park by their
thousands, vultures we have seen plenty of on the dead animals, warthogs-even
though they are ugly they do hold some form of cuteness when they are on the
trotting move in numbers, we saw briefly a hyena-which is a surprise as they
are known to be nocturnal animals and we have seen the very ugly Marabou stork
and I think it is well appointed to the group of the ‘ugly five’. That is out back up if we don’t see the
leopard. It may not have the same catchy
images, but all the same we will take that claim to fame.
As mentioned and as in the Serengeti, the wildebeest are
the dominant inhabitants of the Masaai Mara, and their numbers are estimated in
the millions. Around July of each year, these ungainly animals migrate north
from the Serengeti plains in search of fresh pasture, and return to the south
around October. The Great Migration is one of the most impressive natural
events worldwide, involving some 1,300,000 wildebeest,
500,000 Thomson's gazelles, 97,000 Topi, 18,000 elands,
and 200,000 zebras. These
migrants are followed along their annual, circular route by hungry predators,
most notably lions and hyena. As the
morning wore on, we certainly saw hundreds in many different herds of
wildebeest but none of the thousands all crossing the plains together. I may have been living in a dream world
maybe? Other animals we saw included Thomson's
and Grants gazelles, impalas, elands, Coke's hartebeests, hundreds of zebras and a herd of elephants that we were
lucky to follow for around 20 minutes as the silently walked, and for such a
large animals they can cover some ground.
They were great to watch as all the herds we have seen have had ellies
of all ages including some really small babies which were cute to watch. We then got the call that the balloonists
were ready to be picked up from the airport at 10am. So we started to make our way to them when
Alex came to a T junction that had a fairly deep ditch that he didn’t want to
take the chance of going over and getting stuck. So to save time and backtracking the way we
had come, we rang the balloon people to get them to come to us and drop them
off. In the meantime there were some
people needed to go to the bathroom and now that we weren’t going to the
airport where we would have used their facilities, in the middle of nowhere,
where wild animals roam, people had to take a ‘pee’ buddy for someone to keep
an eye out and I’m not sure what help that would be in a lion came out of
nowhere, but maybe it is just knowing that maybe someone else would get eaten
too as reassurance. We waited a further
30 minutes and with Dan trying to phone the balloon drivers to find out where
they were, Dan wasn’t 100% sure they were they were telling us the truth, so he
decided to meet them back at the airport and we would back track back the way
we had come to get there to collect them.
There has to be a better system with the ballooning. We lost an hour yesterday and then today we
are losing time trying to find a point to collect them and it was getting a
little frustrating for us on the truck.
So with some game driving done
on our way to the airport we arrived at 11.30pm. There was an Air Kenya flight just preparing
to take off and it was a large aircraft and when we drove in we would have been
30m away from the plane…imagine doing that anywhere else in the world. The Keekorok Airstrip/Airport is a
small civilian airport, serving Keekorok in Masai Mara and
the neighbouring communities. Situated at 1,768 metres above sea level, the airport has
one unpaved runway measuring 1,280 metres in length. I think you can use the term airport very
loosely, even for Africa which the ‘terminal’ consisted of an out building that
had 2 disgusting toilets, a picnic shed with some tables and a small outdoor
market that consisted of 3 people selling Masaai items off a tarp. Yes it is a very basic airport, no security,
no fencing and no check-in counters. The
‘pee’ guys were spewing that they had pee’d in the wild and then we did end up
coming to the airport but after seeing the toilets there they are glad that
they took the chance with the wild animals, that is how rough they were. The balloonists
still hadn’t arrived yet, so it gave us time to get out of the truck and watch
the Air Kenya plane take off which was pretty amazing with a plume of red dust
behind the plane as it gained momentum to get off the runway. Again we would have been 20m away from the
actual runway, but when the plane took off it was about 80m in the air by the
time it got to us as we were at the end of the runway. Not one to pass up a shopping opportunity, I
took a look at the make shift market and it was all the stuff we had seen all
week or I have seen in Nairobi until a necklace jumped out at me and after
trying it on, getting a great price after a small haggle I walked away with
some more Masaai jewellery. So the
morning was not totally lost and the balloonists finally turned up at 11.45
when originally we were trying to get to them since 10am this morning.
So we could finally start out
afternoon game drive and we now had all the crew back with us. We were making our way to a place where we
could have our lunch that we had made earlier this morning. After more zebra, elephants and wildebeest we
had stop at what we were told was the border of Kenya and Tanzania. There was a simple stone monument with a K on
one side and a T on the other, no fences, no security and San told us that it would
be the only time that you could enter Tanzania without a visa! I love these quirky border photos, along with
the equator/tropic of Capricorn/Antarctic/Arctic and any other imaginary lines
across the world. Not everyone is into
that stuff, which is fine but I LOVE it.
We were back in the truck for a further 10 minute drive getting us to a
place called Picnic Point where we were to have our lunch. As soon as we arrived there were vervet
monkeys to greet us and Dan recommended that we eat in the truck as they have
been known to come and steal your lunch right from your hands. Jess had to go to the bathroom and left her
bag of lunch on the truck steps and for us sitting on the truck we heard a rustle
and Anne jumped up and saved Jess’s lunch from a monkey that had come into the
truck. The cheeky bugger. After we had eaten there were a bunch of
rangers stationed here, and they offered a short walk along the bank of the
Mara River for 200KSH (2.50AUD) and who can so no to that? The Mara
River is a river in Mara Region in Tanzania and Narok
County in Kenya, and lies
across the migration path of the animals
in the Serengeti/Masai Mara game reserves. The Mara River basin covers a surface of
13,504 km2, of which approximately 60% is located in Kenya and 40% in
Tanzania. From its sources in the Kenyan
highlands, the river flows for about 395 km and originates from the Mau
Escarpment and drains into Lake Victoria.
As soon as we got off the truck
you could see on the opposite side of the river about 15 big fat lazy
hippos. The Mara River is one of the
famous river that you see all the wildebeest crossing during the Great
Migration and hence the happy, fat and lazy hippos as this time of year as it
is ‘buffet’ for them as they can pick off the slow and injured wildebeest as
they see fit. Really these most
dangerous animals in Africa were not looking to scary today as they basked in
the sun. We walked along further and we
could see numerous carcasses of the unlucky wildebeest that didn’t make it rotting
in the sun, and yes there is a smell that accompanies that and after about 10
minutes the smell got a little much for Evie and we walked up to the dusty road
for a further 10 minutes and got some pictures from the bridge that spanned the
Mara River. On one side of the bridge was Kenya and on the other side was
Tanzania. Our guide was telling us that
just yesterday there was a crossing of the river of around 500 wildebeest. DANG!!!
We were a day late to see what I think is one of the animal kingdoms
most amazing shows of the world. Oh
well, we saw the river where it all happens, we have seen the animals by the
hundreds we just weren’t going to see the two together and after the week that
I have had (AMAZBALLS) I was going to be okay with that. We also saw some very very BIG Nile
crocodiles and I would NOT want to mess with them. They were MASSIVE.
We were back on the road at 2.30pm and there didn’t seem
to be too many animal about in the afternoon.
There were some black storm clouds looming and with the dry yellow grass
and the colour of the sky it made for some pretty dramatic photos. Who needs animals when you have scenery like
that? You could also see where it was
starting to rain and where it wasn’t and it was nature at her best putting on a
show for us as there was blue sky patches in amongst the dark clouds and was
actually quite breath taking and eventually the rains caught up with us and the
people on the other side of the truck had to close their windows, but due to
the direction of the drops we could keep our windows open. Of course there were always herds of zebra
and wildebeest, we saw 2 more lions, some more elephants and the highlight of
the afternoon was going to be the closest thing we were going to see of the Great
Migration and it was a herd of wildebeest heading over one of the rises about
2lm from where we were. There would have
been over 1000 animals that snaked their way from the top of the rise all the
way back to the last straggler that was about 50m from the truck and he looked tired,
they were all walking so slowly. I would
put money on him that he would be picked off by a predator in the coming
days. But what an amazing sight and this
was enough for me to say I had seen some of the migration. It just completed what had been an amazing trip
and I am so thankful to have been here, met some amazing new people and so
thankful just for every single day I get to live on this magnificent world of
ours.
It was time to start making out making out way back to
the gate. It was a little earlier than
planned, only by an hour. Dan and Alex
were worried that if it kept raining that there would be a high possibility
that the truck could get stuck and we DID NOT want that. It was also bizarre that I did not have
internet connection at the camp, but when I tried my travel modem in the middle
of the game park I picked up FULL bars!!!
So when we were roaring back to the gate I was able to get onto Facebook,
touch base and see what was happening in the world including the fall out of
the JKIA Airport burning down. Ain’t technology
a wonderful thing? We were back to the
gate at 5pm which officially concluded our last day on tour, which is a little
sad as tomorrow is a travel day back to Nairobi and we were leaving more than
half of the group in Narok to continue their trip into the Serengeti on Sunday. Getting back a little earlier back to camp
gave us extra time to get all our crap together that had been spread out over
the last week. I am a classic ‘spreader’
when it comes to the truck and I always end up with 7 different bags of stuff
floating around and it was time to condense it all back to my backpack. Poor Evie and Big Chief had been on a few
spending sprees and they had a lot of things to pack and it was hilarious with
the amount of souvenirs they had bought (not all for them but grandchildren and
such) and I thought I was bad!!! Big
fella (Pete) was given the duty of collecting the tip money for our 3
MAGNIFICENT crew. Tipping is always a
touchy issue with people, like religion and politics and we just decided it was
best to have 3 envelopes and people could put in what they want and that seemed
to work out the best without putting people on the spot and for me not knowing
what people have put in is probably the best, as it really infuriates me when
people don’t tip when we have had amazing crew.
Our last supper was at 6.30pm with a feast cooked up by
Susan of chapatti, lentils, beef stew, and mash potato. I also had 4 beers to finish off from the
fridge, Anne had 8 beers and with the help from our fellow travellers they were
all drunk by the end of the night. See,
that is what you do for friends, help them drink their beers; I told you were a
great group……. I had also decided to
hold off on the influx of the showers until later and I was rewarded with all
the hot water I could ever want-woo hoo.
Even though we had an early start in the morning (5.20am) we were up
till just after 10pm (very late for us) and then were tucked in snug as bugs in
our sleeping bags not long after. Anne
and I closed the flaps of our tent tonight as there seemed to be a few rain
clouds floating around and after reading for a little while it was time to
enjoy the last night in out tent.
No comments:
Post a Comment