Masai Mara: Day 3 PM

We set off in search of larger herds of wildebeest, going up to the top of a hill called Lookout Point to get a panoramic view. We didn't find wildebeest there, but we did find trash. Two overflowing barrels of trash with mountains of trash beside each one. Not only that, but driving through this whole section we saw plastic bottles and bags littering the landscape. We stopped and picked up where we could, but it wasn't always safe, and it would have taken all day. Not cool, not cool at all.

Joseph took us in a new direction, determined to find the herds. We continued to see small herds but no big ones. We saw a few way in the distance, but no photos could capture those. I estimate that, all told, we saw at least 50,000 wildebeest today. Not bad at all.

We decided to start driving back; it was already 4:30, and we were 75 km away from our gate with only two hours to get there. So we went at a decent clip. I was surveying the landscape when all of a sudden I saw a huge male lion lying next to a tree. I shouted for Joseph to stop, and we got a bit closer. Said gorgeous male had not one but two wildebeest kills next to him. He'd eaten the eyes and part of the legs/hide of each one and laid them head to head where he could keep an eye on them. They were fresh kills, likely from the morning. This is times of plenty - a sole lion can kill two wildebeest, hide them in plain sight, and not have to try too hard to fend off other predators and scavengers. Amazing.

We drove on, this time on a relatively 'main' road and soon encountered one of my favorite sights of the day - a 300 strong herd of wildebeest being led by a smaller herd of topi away from the Mara and back toward the Serengeti. The topi were the leaders, scattered throughout to keep them in line, and made up the rear. I called them the border control, deporting the wildebeest. We watched as this massive herd crossed the road behind us, the line seeming not to end. Add some water and a few crocs, and this is what I imagine the Mara River crossings to look like. It was hilarious with my own backstory but also truly amazing to watch. It took several minutes for them all to cross the road. And that answered the question of where are all the wildebeest.

Again, we drove on. We passed a long-haul truck, who beckoned for us to stop. Lions, they told us. Two males on the side of the road, just ahead. We drove on, wondering what 'just ahead' and 'on the side of the road' meant since we didn't see anything. And then we did. One male lion lying RIGHT on the side of the road, the other one a few feet away. They were young males, with small manes, probably not long out of the pride. As we watched the one on the side of the road saw something and walked a few feet away. He found a small piece of metal pipe and dug it out of the ground and then triumphantly took it into the bush to play with. Lion #2 decided he wanted to play too, so he tried to grab it, but the owner wasn't budging. We drove on.

At this point we took a quick detour and crossed the border into Tanzania and the Serengeti, to avoid a muddy spot. The border control was nonexistent. Excited for Serengeti later this summer!

We covered a good chunk of mileage, crossing back to the Mara Triangle side, and were only about 16km from the gate when we saw a car stopped for something. Lions! We got closer and saw five females and five cubs. Three of the females were in full view; the cubs romped around the other two in and out of hiding. So incredibly cute! We watched for as long as we could, but it was 6:07 with 16 km to go. No more stopping.

At about 6:26 the gate was in sight, and we had to stop to let some elephants cross. No worries there. It was really getting dark as we headed back to camp, but we did stop to watch a herd of 30 elephants crossing a stream. We watched until it was so dark we could no longer make out the elephant shapes and then headed back in.

What we didn't realize until then was that usually on full day safaris the group is back in the mid-afternoon. We pulled in to camp at 7:14 (okay, maybe we watched the elephants for longer than we realized), and met a frantic Maurice who had been worrying about us for hours! Joseph had been on the radio all afternoon but apparently wasn't on the camp channel that far out. Joseph later told us he'd never been back past 4:00 on a full day. We are just that eager to see animals.

The day's tally was 22 lions - pretty darn impressive, in my opinion. Definitely the best predator day I've ever had. And almost all of them were very good sightings from close up. Wow. Not to mention the wildebeest!

We were pretty tired and had a 6:15 am departure planned, so dinner was a fairly quick affair, and we headed to our tents. I showered, read my folk tale, and then fell asleep. Another awesome safari adventure in the books.

Such a gorgeous boy!

That mane!

Wildebeest for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Notice how he arranged them and ate them in identical ways.

Graphic, but I found this fascinating. Esp all the organs in the sac.

Wildebeest everywhere.

Side-of-the-road lions.

Finding his metal pipe piece.

Almost got it!

All mine.

Topi and wildebeest.

The only crossing we saw that day...

Wildebeest deportation by topi (the lighter-colored antelope here)

Tanzania-Kenya border. Seriously.

More lions!

Lion baby tails - squee!

Not currently on cub duty.

Peeking out to see who's there.

Laughing lioness.

Serene lioness.

Lip-licking lioness.

Bed felt so good!

Masai Mara: Day 3 AM

Day 3 was billed as a full-day safari when we'd head to the other side of the park along the Tanzanian border to hopefully see some of the migration, which was starting early. The day before a few groups had seen a series of Mara River crossings by wildebeest - how cool! Unfortunately, the day was overcast and chilly, and wildebeest like to cross when it's hot, so we knew from the start we were unlikely to see a crossing. We also knew that many of the 500K strong wildebeest herd had headed back towards Serengeti with the weather change, but we were hoping to see some big herds. And we did. And then some!

We had a relatively late start - 8 am - and had a leisurely breakfast before starting out. My big concern was toilet stops along the way, but Joseph assured me there were a few flush toilet options. (Five knee surgeries = squat toilet is just not happening.) We met some lovely giraffes on the way to the park gate and then stopped to let some buffalo cross the road in front of us. First on the agenda was to find some rhino close up; we found a mom and baby, but not close up. Just wait, Joseph told us, they'll come. We waited. And waited. And waited. And, finally, they did come, crossing right in front of us! How cool!

We went off to find our lions from the day before but instead heard one of the females from the day before had a kill and was dragging it home. We sped there but only arrived to see her drag the baby zebra carcass into the forest. Three giraffes looked on, perhaps excited it wasn't them! She finally left her zebra and walked, breathing heavily, to get a drink of water from a stream. We didn't see any other lions around, so it might have been a snack just for her.

After that we did head towards the south and the Serengeti, about 75km away. En route we stopped by the Serena for a bathroom stop. The exciting thing here was seeing the dassies (rock hyrax) lining the Serena's access road. A few posed very nicely for us! Most were piled up together for warmth, very cute.

Bladders empty, we headed on. It wasn't long before we saw our first wildebeest. Joseph told us it's unheard of to see a wildebeest on this side of the Mara on June 7th. He said they were at least a week or two early. As we drove on we saw more and more wildebeest; these are the successful ones who've survived the several hundred kilometer journey as well as a Mara River crossing. We congratulated these guys but were sad to see a number of carcasses, particularly of young ones. 1.5 million wildebeest attempt the journey each year; up to 250,000 of them don't make it. Predators aren't the only dangers - they die of dehydration, exhaustion, and injuries sustained in their journeys. Predators do make use of those who die of other causes; we saw some particularly happy vultures.

As we approached the Mara River, we started to see scattered herds of wildebeest on the far side who had not yet attempted to cross to, literally, greener pastures. Joseph said it was nothing like he'd seen a few days ago, but it was still pretty impressive. Everywhere you looked, wildebeest dotted the horizon. The herds seemed to move as one - from a distance you could see them all start to move in one direction and then seemingly move in the other. A few males in each herd would run and chase out other males every now and then, but it was mostly a slow-moving group, grazing as they went. As we got closer, the sound was incredible. The males were lowing all at once, a virtual cacophony of moo-like sounds.

It was late morning by now, and we were starting to scout for a place to have our picnic lunch. We saw a vehicle on the far side of the river parked in one spot for a while so assumed there were some cats there, but it would take us quite a while to get there. Joseph had a picnic tree in mind and headed toward it, but as we got closer we saw a number of vehicles there. They were watching - surprise, surprise - a pair of mating lions. At this point we really didn't believe Joseph when he told us how rare it is! We watched one copulation, which, since it was in short grass, was slightly more visible, but it was also the same thing we'd seen several times yesterday. We moved on.

There's one all-weather crossing point for vehicles over the Mara River, a bridge between the Mara Triangle and the Narok County Council sections of the park, managed by different organizations. As soon as we crossed the bridge Joseph told us that there was a big difference in the management styles, and we saw immediately what he meant. The Triangle's roads are well-maintained, with proper drainage and regular maintenance. The roads on this side, not so much. They were muddy with no drainage and not particularly passable. It was an amazing difference.

We finally found a good tree for a picnic; when we got there we were surrounded by several hundred noisy wildebeest, but they moved off as we settled in. Lunch was a gourmet affair, and we tucked in immediately.

After finishing we drove on in search of bigger herds, encountering black-backed jackals and a number of other antelope as we went. Bones and carcasses were in even greater supply on this side. We reached the area where we'd earlier seen the vehicle and found six very lazy lions completely passed out in and among the trees. They were barely visible from the road; if we hadn't had a reason to look, we wouldn't have seen them. They were five lionesses and one young male. We watched them for a few minutes, but they were really not particularly interesting, so we moved on.

I'm breaking up this day into two posts for the sake of photo/story overload, so bear with me until - probably - tomorrow.

Good morning giraffe!

Buffalo crossing.

Mama rhino grazing. Baby isn't tall enough to see with the grass.

Mama and baby finally came close.

They run with their tails up like warthogs!

Love the folded ears on baby.

Lioness and her zebra.

Giraffes watching lion drag her kill.

Hamerkop.

Dassie!

The very first wildebeest of the tour! You can just see some dots on the horizon (smaller than trees) that are more wildebeest.

All those dots on the far bank are wildebeest.

Just a few wildebeest to start with close by...

Yet another pair of mating lions. Check out his lustrous mane!

Love the pose :-).

Wildebeest EVERYWHERE we looked. It was a bit crazy.

Black-backed jackals.

Secretary bird!

Vulture and stork, waiting for their turn.

Only three visible here - two to their right in the tree, one to the left.

Pile o' lions.

Home, home on the range! Is sort of what it felt a bit like.

This one didn't make it, but circle of life.

Just imagine miles of this!

Masai Mara: Day 2 PM

After lunch and the spa, I rejoined the group for an afternoon in search of lions and rhino. Our first sighting as we left the camp was male sheep with an ingenious form of birth control - a shield attached around their waist and hanging down to the ground to prevent mating. Fascinating! Probably in use elsewhere, but I hadn't seen it.

As had been the case on each drive so far, we encountered a herd of elephants right beyond the park gates. This particular herd had a very special sight: one mother elephant nursing two babies at the same time. Twins are exceedingly rare in the elephant world; as I did more reading on the subject, I found it was also very rare for a mother elephant to adopt an orphan elephant the same age as her baby. Given that these two were almost exactly the same size, it's likely they are a pair of twins. What an amazing sight! Joseph said he had never seen this before.

We drove on into the Out of Africa section and began looking for our mating lions. With the help of another vehicle, we soon found them. Although, as I look at photos now I think this was not the same pair as the morning. More on that later. This pair mated quickly after we arrived, and we then sat and waited for the encore. The lions just completely pass out after a mating session and do nothing except roll over, yawn, and occasionally look up after it's done. It took about 25 minutes for the next viewing, so they clearly had had a tiring day. Sometimes it's only fifteen minutes between sessions. My favorite part of the mating is that one or both lions starts growling and/or roaring toward the end. It's such an amazing sound!

We drove on and soon encountered a pride of ostriches (aren't collective nouns fun?), one male and several females. The lighting was perfect, so my photos turned out great. Lots of zebra and antelope and birds, but I was apparently not too into taking photos of these. We drove on in search of rhino and finally spotted one quite a ways away. While there are some parts of the Mara where you can off-road, there are a number where you can't. Rhino territory is in the 'can't' segment, so we had to be content with zoom lenses and binoculars. We did see another rhino in the distance beyond this one, but there was no hope my camera could capture it.

It was getting late, and we had to be at the gates by 6:30, so we started back. We stopped on the side of the road to watch the mating lions from earlier perform again (that's four copulation sessions so far, if you're counting) and then headed on. Just as we started picking up speed, we saw a head pop up on the other side of the road. ANOTHER pair of mating lions! Looking at photos, it now seems that this pair was the one Joseph and I had seen early in the morning.

There was a rainbow in the background of the photo at this point, and the lioness was posing oh so perfectly. Love these photos! We saw one mating session and then headed to the gate.

On the way to the camp we encountered a herd of elephants; several of them were grazing on the side of the road just a few feet from our vehicle. Only one of my photos came out (it was getting dark), but it was just a butt shot.

We arrived back at the lodge to warm towels and roaring fires. By now Mohamed had our drink orders down, and I happily accepted my soda water. Dinner was perfect - Mara Triangle ostrich! - and I thoroughly enjoyed the tender steaks. After dinner I went back to my tent, showered, and got into bed. I forgot to mention that each night when they turned down our beds the staff left an African animal folk tale on our bed to read. The first night was why the aardvark lives underground, the second night was (I think) how the leopard got his spots. Such a nice touch. I slept very well this night.

Sheep birth control.

Twins! One is nursing, the other one is heading that way.

Pretty much the same size.

Sticking close to Mama.

Yawn.

And, nap.

And, rest. You can see how hard it is to find them in the tall grass when they're lying down.

Oh, wait, one more time for the tourists.

Pride of ostriches.

Yum - it's what's for dinner!

Black rhino. The other one is waaaay in the distance.

Super zoom.

Rainbow lions!

Love the tongue.

I adore this photo.

And this one.

Love the eyes and the tongue here!

One last session for the day.

He yawns as she walks away.

This photo would have been so much better if the silly elephant hadn't started to walk away.