We were up at 6.15am,
for a 7.00am breakfast and an 8.00.am departure from the lodge. The girls
had seen dik-diks this morning out the front of our tents! I hadn’t seen them, but I will make sure I
look for them in the morning. They are
so CUTE those guys!!! The lodge has some
animal bones, including an elephant skull and an elephant shin bone. These things were massive, as you would
expect, but cool that you could handle them and get a few pictures. The previous night we had asked ‘our’ waiter
to pop a bottle of champagne in the fridge last night, so as we climbed into
the van for our full day in the park, Shelly, Shane and I were sipping on a few
cold-ish bubbles.
10 minutes after
our departure from the lodge, we arrived at the Sekenani Gate entrance to the
park. Pete had popped the top of the van
before we left the lodge, and forgetting what my first experience was like at
the gate, we were totally unprepared.
Pete had to get out to purchase and validate our park tickets and we
were left alone, in the van. Doesn’t
sound too bad, but then we were accosted by Maasai women. There were seriously were over 10 Maasai
women shoving beaded bangles, wooden statues, necklaces etc through the open
windows. There were even some closed
windows not latched properly and they pried them open to get more things in the
van. We told them politely about 500
times, no thanks, no thanks, no thanks and I told the Elkins to not make eye
contact our look at the items they were showing us, in the hope that they would
go away. But I tell you those women were
relentless. They tried all the tricks in
the book, just take it-looking is for free, it’s only one dollar and then they
wouldn’t take the item back and even resorted to dropping the items on the
floor of the van on purpose and again not taking them back. I must give them 100% credit for trying, but
this van of mzungu’s wasn’t going to be buying anything today. Thank goodness Pete finally came back and
after passing through the gate and getting our passes checked we were in the
GREATEST GAME PARK OF ALL TIME.
First animal that
we saw off the rank was a Hartebeest.
Here we go….. here we GO!!!!
The Maasai
Mara National Reserve is a large game reserve in Narok
County contiguous with the Serengeti National Park in Mara
Region, Tanzania. It is named in honor of the Maasai 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 kilometers 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 began
with the Hartebeest, then two giraffes and a baby (who was SUPER cute) and
seriously within 20 minutes of being in the park we saw two cheetahs. They were a distance away, maybe 200m, and we
all got a chance to see them through the binoculars as they were in no hurry,
just enjoying the sunshine. Who would
believe they would be one of the first five animals to see! Then Shelly and I were 150% sure we saw
another one in the long grass, I even took a picture of it on my 30x zoom. We were that certain that there were three,
and we were trying to show Shane, when an actual third cheetah popped up his
head. WHAT!!! Then one more showed up looking over the
plains, so Shelly and I agreed that we had seen 5……. Pete found a road that got us closer to the 4
cheetahs and I have to say they were phenomenal animals to get close to, and
they didn’t even seemed fazed at us as we did 2 loops around them and to not
stress them out, we headed back to the main road to continue the days
viewing. CHEETAHS! Craziness.
The morning was
spent seeing ostriches, 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. 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 Maasai 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 and Shane was desperate to see a leopard, which on all my game drives in
Kenya-I have never seen one in the wild, I have only seen leopards in the
Serengeti 5 years ago. But with our luck
seeming to be in good stance, maybe we will see a leopard in the coming 2 days. But I do know how hard these guys are to
find, even with only 1 tree per kilometer 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.
The wildebeest
are the dominant inhabitants of the Maasai Mara, and even though we were out of
the migration season, there are resident herds that live in the Mara and I was
quite surprised to not have seen a SINGLE one since entering. I thought it very strange and still had hopes
of seeing one of the ugliest animals on the plains of Africa. 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. Shane really wanted to see this phenomenon,
but it was not going to happen in January, I was here in the August and I
didn’t see it all in full swing, but I did see thousands of wildebeest last
time.
Other animals we
saw included Thomson's and Grants gazelles, impalas, elands, Coke's hartebeests,
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 surprisingly quite swift.
They were great to watch as all the herds that we saw during the whole
day had elephants of all ages, including some really small babies which were
cute to watch. We were also lucky enough to see a male and female lion and as we approached them, we also saw them get lion intimate-and lets just say that it did't last long and the female didn't look impressed and instantly fell asleep! Another amazing sight to behold from the animal kingdom!! As we were not heading
back to the lodge for lunch, we stopped under an acacia tree to eat just after
1pm. We had a packed lunch from the
lodge which included roasted chicken, a sandwich, fruit, marble cake and a fruit
box. Pete had blankets that he spread
out under the shade of the tree and we sat and just took in the scenery and the
realization that we were OUTSIDE the van eating food on the plains of the
Maasai Mara! Brave or Ballsy? Of
course being in the park all day and having small children, there needed to be
a toilet stop, which Pete took us to what they call Lion Lookout, where the men
went to the left and the ladies to the right.
Something needs to be said about peeing behind a tree in the open, in
the middle of nowhere, where wild animals roam, but when you gotta go, you
gotta go!
There didn’t seem
to be too many animals about in the afternoon, as it was pretty hot out there
and they were seeking refuge out of the sun.
This is normal, but sometimes you will see a few animals braving the
heat. We did see a single elephant that fell asleep against a tree which was pretty awesome. He would have a scratch against the tree, then drift off, have a doze and then wake again. Our afternoon sightings included
some birds, zebra, elephants, and hartebeest when we came across a MASSIVE herd
of buffalo that we stopped to observe for over 30 minutes. The African buffalo is not an ancestor of domestic cattle.
Owing to its
unpredictable nature, which makes it highly dangerous to humans, the African
buffalo has never been domesticated unlike its Asian counterpart, the water buffalo. Other than humans, African Cape buffaloes have few predators aside from lions and are capable of defending themselves. Being a member
of the big five game, the Cape buffalo is a sought-after trophy in
hunting. They didn’t look so scary to
me, but I certainly didn’t want to see a mad one and we were lucky we get a
calm crew of buffalo. There would have
been over 200 of them, and I got a few good shots of a bird annoying one of
them as we turned off the engine and just observed them.
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. It was time to start
making our way back to the gate, as you have to be out of the park by 6pm. After passing some more elephants, we saw one
of the rangers little Suzuki Swifts driving slowly and then stop, so Pete
thought that he would check it out and man, we got so much more than we could
have ever thought. We were on the main
road and the rangers in the Swift pointed to our left and we saw a large female
lion stalking, slowly walking, step by step.
We then turned to our right and we saw what she was stalking, and it was
an unsuspecting hartebeest. He was
facing the other way, so he had no idea what was coming, he couldn’t see the
lioness. As the rangers were there, they
waved us off the road for us to be able to get a closer view (you’re normally
not allowed to leave the roads) and we had just turned off the car engine when
the lioness moved forward and she grabbed the hartebeest by his neck in one
bite. Just seeing this single move was
amazing. The god-daughters were
enthralled and Zoe was the only one who got it all on video as I was taking a
gazillion photos! A KILL!!! Can you believe it! Over the course of the next 20 minutes, the
lioness didn’t release her grip off that one spot on the victim’s neck; there
was no blood that we could see, even with binoculars. A clean kill so to speak. Within 15 minutes the hartebeest gave its
last kick and she finally let the animal go.
We just saw a KILL!!!!
UNBELIEVABLE and we were lucky enough to have the rangers there to get
us front rows seats. We just couldn’t
believe our luck today and what a way to end our drive on day one!!! The lioness kept looking around and then she
decided to carry her dinner into the trees and out of sight of other
animals. Seeing her doing this was also
a feat, carrying a dead animal the same size as herself was cool.
How lucky am I to
be able to share this with my family and to be so thankful just for every
moment of every single day I get to live on this magnificent world of
ours.
Goodnight Maasai
Mara……
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