All Day Safari

We were up early to be able to see some of the animals before the heat of the day. The plan was to cover a huge amount of the park today and crossing our fingers see some lions. But the start of the day turned out even better. The leopard is one f the big five most people miss when they come to Africa, it is a hard animal to find and when you do it is normally very shy. It was amazing and we were luckier than most.

The leopard had killed a wart hog and drug it up into the tree. It had left its breakfast for the surrounding bushes and then came the mass of safari tourists. The vans were all parked in between the leopard and his kill and he was sitting, watching and waiting. The animal was very shy and hid most of the time but we were able to see it pretty good and with the help of the other cameras in our van get a few very good looks.The poor wart hog was only half left in the tree and was dangling between a few limbs and although it was a little gory it was amazing to see how this leopard had drug its kill up into the tree to eat it.

Driving around all the gazelles and other deer type animals were every where. It is sad that on the first evening we were exciting by every possible animal but by the end of this full day we would be disappointed when we saw a brown speck on the hill, go to check it out and it was a deer...how spoiled!

Driving through the park there are so many elephants. The African elephant is so much larger than the Asian elephant we are used to seeing and it was beautiful to run into the herds of the females and their young. A few times we saw herds as large as 30 elephants. They all moved slow and spent all of their time eating. They would stroll across the grasslands pulling up grass as they went and snacking the whole day. Of course the absolute cutest ones were the young trailing behind their mother elephants.

One of the easiest ways to make sure you see all the good sites is to look on the horizon and see where all the other safari vans have stopped and are grouping up. You know at that point something must be here and if they stay a while you know it is good. This was how we found our first lions.

There were two lions just sitting in the shade trying to stay cool in the hot African morning. The two males were a little small but also a little rough looking, the driver told us that they were old. These guys were also playing hard to photograph but we stayed for quite a while and got some good shots. It is hard to tear yourself away when there is a male lion just feet from your van. But again nothing really seemed to bother them. I am sure they have seen millions of tourists in these same safari vans day after day but for each of the tourists we never see lions. So the lions were happy enough to put up with us. Then one got fed up and walked away but he came right for the nose of our van and took a sharp left, it was so amazing to see him that close up.

Driving across the grasslands of the park it is amazing the amount of interaction between species as well as the remains of encounters between predator and prey. There were a lot of vultures flying around circling carcasses as well as entire skeletons laying out in the sun where a water buffalo had been taken down. By no means am I summoning any Elton John songs for you but the circle of life was apparent everywhere we went.

The next part of the day was by far our favorite part of the whole safari, the watering hole. The bend in the Masai River was where we were going to see crocodiles, hippos and have lunch. Now most people who know my family know how much Joan loves hippos so I was very excited to take some photos for her, but I never thought that they would also be my favorite part of the whole trip!

We pulled up to the watering hole and at there was a group of tourist vans, and a group of game wardens. Now each of these game wardens carry guns and are there to protect the visitors. Seen as most people do not jump in the river they take this opportunity to "teach" the visitors and hope they want to offer up some cash. The game warden who came up to us explained that the nocturnal hippos come out and graze in the near by grasslands and head back to the water in the morning. It is their job to sweep the area and make sure that all the hippos go back to the water so that we can come and watch them. Once they are all in the river opens for tourists.

The hippos are very territorial and there were three main groups we could see at the bend. The group on the far right side had a few smaller crocs intermixed in their group but I guess the crocodiles know better than to attack a hippo. Only when their food supply gets really low will they gang up and try to take a very young hippo.

The best part was the baby hippo. The warden said it was less than one month old. Yancy saw the tiny ears popping out of the water and was always next to a very large hippo. Finally after a long time of watching the little ears it seemed to be swimming to the edge. The baby hippo was head butting against it's mother's bum trying to push her out of the water. The baby hippo would then open up its mouth very wide as if taunting the other hippos, play fighting. But as soon as one of the hippos would come out of the water, or even to the waters edge it would hid underneath the mother's belly.

The hippos played the whole time in the water, play fighting should I say. It looked as if they were quite aggressive but the warden told us it was a daily routine.

The only time the warden ever had to shoot a hippo was when a drunk Chinese tourist came and was messing about on the side of the river and fell in. How horrible! The warden said that he was really angry at that man because he loves the hippos so much. But no matter how cute that baby looked they are mean when you get in a tangle with one. The warden also said not to be fooled by their huge size and that they are slower in the water than on land, they can charge and chase you down if you are bothering them or their young while they are grazing.

This migration turned out to be pretty disastrous for thousands of Wildebeasts. The river that they cross was extremely high this year and when they tried to walk across the current was too strong and thousands drowned in the process. By the time we got there, a few weeks after the migration period, most of the carcasses had been washed down river but on some of the banks the water level has dropped and there are piles of carcasses being eaten by a variety of vulture and vulture like birds.

The next stop on our leg was Tanzania. The Masai Mara is the Kenyan side of the park and the Tanzanian side is the Serengeti. The migration is between these two park as one is always green and lush while the other dries out for a few months. We were not too far behind the migration but there were still plenty of animals to be seen. The only marker between the two parks is the well driven road, ruts and all, shuffling the tourists over, is a three sides stone pillar which of course we crossed in order to walk from Tanzania to Kenya for the photo op. So now there is another country to add to my list which erks Yancy.

After lunch we had strolled into the hottest point of the African day and so the animals were all in hiding keeping cool. The only animals dumb enough to be out in the heat of the mid day were humans...go figure.

The next few hours were spent at the airport, rather airstrip, in the middle of the Masai. Another tourist was coming in just for the evening and following morning, a Japanese tourist who, it turns out, came all the way to Kenya for 3 days! What a long trip for such a short amount of time! While there we watched a group of Italian tourists dressed to the nines in their Dolce and Gabana, YSL, Armani etc outfits waiting for their plane. Plane ended up having a flat so they bordered, disembarked, waiting and boarded again. It was my first time ever seeing a plane get a tire change, and it was pretty much the same as a car. The pilot came off and cranked one tire off, the nicely dressed stewardess stood in her heels in the shade of the wing, a few more men went over to help, tire off, next one on and off they were rich tourists and all.

The last bit of the day was looking at animals for the Japanese tourist it was fun being excited again about animals we had become blase about. Good thing for him the Canadian on our van worked in Japan and was fluent in Japanese. But just as we were about to pack it in for the day we found a couple of lionesses resting. They are the ones that do all the work, raise the young, hunt, etc and the males only come around to eat and mate. While not as majestic as the males they sure were mean looking but so beautiful.