Kenya

Finally, I have some free time to organize the photos from our safari. Kenya, not surprisingly, is amazing. Everyone always says it's the trip of a lifetime and it's true. It's a little like watching a National Geographic special, except we're in the middle of the Masai Mara, experiencing the real thing, complete with thousands and thousands of animals, a lion taking down dinner, and wildebeest crossing the river.

Hannah took most of these photos, though we all have at least a few in here. We downloaded about a thousand photos and narrowed it down to about a hundred. These photos aren't in chronological order. Instead I grouped them by subject. Parent advisory: a few photos might not be appropriate for young children!

There is a direct flight from Abu Dhabi to Nairobi which takes just under 5 hours. We didn't want to spend too much time in the city and were lucky enough to coordinate with our safari planners, Go2Africa, transportation from the international airport to the local airport. After a 30 minute ride in a small plane, we landed near Siana Springs, our lodge for the first half of our trip, located just outside of the Masai Mara.

The landing strip near Siana Springs with our plane in the background

Siana Springs is a tented camp with room for 80 people in 40 tents. "Tented camp" is a slightly misleading term. It's true that the sides are made of canvas and the entire front zips open, but the interiors are the size of a standard hotel room with wooden furniture, plumbing, and electricity for lighting, available when the generator is turned on in the late evening and early morning hours. There is a high fence around the property to keep the larger animals out, but smaller animals and those that can fly in or swing in through the trees make themselves at home.

The girls' tent is on the left. Ours is on the right.

It takes about 20 minutes to walk in a big loop around the camp. Scenery included open meadows, elephant viewing platforms, and a small pond.

Vervet monkeys, like the one on the left, are everywhere. They sneak into the open dining hall and steal sugar bowls and other items off of the tables before guests come in for meals. The larger Colobus monkeys hang out up high in the trees, usually in groups of about six.

Bushbuck deer also wander through the camp, right in front of our tents. The younger ones had an entertaining interspecies interaction.

Banded mongoose trot by.

The open dining hall.

Sometimes the Vervet monkeys scamper right across the roof.

 

John in his element, enjoying the campfire.

Tree hyrax near the dining hall. Okay, so they look a little like cute rats, but they're still cute.

Mike, our intrepid Masai guide for the first three days. He has an amazing knack for tracking down the exact animals we wanted to see within just a few minutes, The guides have a good network with texting and radio contacts to determine where certain animals are, but Mike is also excellent at finding them all on his own.

On the way to the Masai Mara are lots of small Masai villages and flocks of sheep and goats being tended to by young Masai herders.

Before we even make it to the park, we come across a herd of giraffe.

The gate to Masai Mara is about thirty minutes from Siana Springs. There is an entry, but no fence. Wild animals are free to wander in and out of the park as they please. Domesticated animals, such as the herds of sheep and goats, are not allowed in the park, which is a good thing because they eat all the plains grass down to a much shorter level than the wild animals.

 

The Masai Mara is the place to be in August if you want to see the Great Migration. Wildebeest and Zebra are everywhere. There are somewhere between 2 and 3 million Wildebeest in the world. I think we saw about half of them.

 We're lucky to see the elusive leopard within thirty minutes of entering the park and another one the next day.

We see several cheetah families too. They're slightly smaller than the leopards and have tell-tale black tear line markings on their faces.

Mother and Child

Zebras are everywhere, usually mingled in with the Wildebeest.

There are lots of large Topi antelope in the Mara. They're also called "Blue-Jeans" because of the dark bluish gray markings on their legs. They love to stand on termite hills.

More deer include the big waterbuck, the diminutive dik-dik (about 18" tall), the medium Thomson's gazelle and slightly larger Grant's gazelle. Everywhere.

Water buffalo

Warthogs. Just like Pumba in the Lion King, they really do stick their tales straight up in the air when they run. Terribly ugly and terribly cute, all at the same time.

Baboons. A big baboon walked right across my path our first evening at Siana Springs, maybe 10 yards in front of me, but I didn't have a camera. We see more in the Mara.

Hyena and jackals

Elephants tend to keep to themselves, in small herds. All of the animals in the park are used to the human visitors and let us get fairly close. Black market ivory trade is a huge problem world wide, but there is no evidence from what we saw in the Masai Mara. The Masai take great pride in the animals. Many have leased land surrounding the park to conservation groups to provide even more land for the wild animals. The Mara itself is 1,510 square kilometers (583 square miles).

Usually the plains are full of animals, but every once in a while we come across a vast plain with nothing on it but a lone tree. These are good places to have lunch, far away from bushes that might be hiding sleeping lions.

 

So we pick a tree and eat lunch in the middle of the Mara. (Small world story: on our first day we had one other person with us. Patty could have been from anywhere in the world, but she happened to be an American that just moved from Oregon to Abu Dhabi three weeks earlier. She was visiting her brother and sister in law who were doing a month long volunteer service at the Masai Mara dental clinic adjacent to Siana Springs.)

Back in the Land Rover. It's August in the Mara, but we're just south of the equator so technically that means it's winter here. Plus the Mara is a mile above sea level which makes for cool mornings and t-shirt weather in the afternoon. Much cooler than Abu Dhabi!

Mackenzie, starting to look a little wild herself.

We see lions every day, usually sleeping off a meal, like this one. They open their eyes when they hear a truck, but close them again after a few seconds. Definitely not worried about humans.

Mike spots a group of three lionesses and two cubs under some bushes. And then we get to see a lion in action...

   

Suddenly one of the lionesses decided that it was lunch time.

 Within seconds she charged ahead, grabbed a wildebeest by the neck, and killed it. Our guide Mike was a little upset that she went for a baby wildebeest instead of an older one.

Birds are everywhere. We always know if there is a fresh kill because vultures hover in a circle, waiting for the predators to finish their meal. The other birds shown here are the Marabou stork, the lilac-breasted roller (National Bird of Kenya), the Kori bustard, and a pygmy kingfisher.

An interesting nest in an interesting tree.

A male ostrich. Usually they are in pairs.

Here's a lion couple taking a break from mating. They stay together for about a week and have intercourse 52 times a day. Brief encounters, but no wonder they sleep a lot. We saw a more active couple a few days later. Here comes the adult supervision part...

That is one satisfied lion. Modesty not required in the Mara.

The wonders of the Mara don't end with the lions. Mike receives word that the Wildebeest are crossing the river. Again. Apparently they don't go in one big circle on their annual migration. Sometimes they decide to cross back to the other side because the grass is greener over there.

Usually we feel like it's just us in the Mara, maybe a truck or two way off in the distance. But word of a leopard siting draws a small crowd. And word of a wildebeest crossing draws a flash mob. The tourists take pictures of each other because it's funny to suddenly run into all of these people. But what we witnessed made it all worthwhile...

At first the animals are hesitant to cross. The zebras usually take the lead.

More follow.

And then the wildebeest follow.

And they keep on coming.

And then it starts to look like absolute carnage when they trample each other trying to climb up the far bank.

Their panic is well founded. If you look closely, you can see that a crocodile just got a wildebeest.

 Here's another crocodile, just a short distance upstream. They are huge, up to 20' long.

And just a little further up the river...

A crash of hippos. (I had to look that one up.)

Somewhere in the middle of all these animal sitings we moved to another lodge for our last two nights. Porini Mara is a small eco-friendly tented camp with just six tents, or room for twelve people. We shared a single table with the other guests that turned out to be from Australia, England, Kenya, and another couple from Chicago. The mix led to some fascinating dinner conversations.

Our new tent. (There's a Vervet monkey sitting in the shadow on the path.)

Inside our new tent.

Our guides for the last two days, Ben and Tipa. Two more excellent animal trackers. Lots of the Masai really do wear the red clothing. Traditionally they wore animal skins stained red, but in the 60s, when the animals became more valuable alive than dead, the Masai started wearing cloth from India instead of hides.

Our new truck is a Toyota Land Cruiser. The open trucks are the best way to see the animals. The bumpy ride on the rough dirt roads is jokingly called an African massage, but every bump is worth it.

A few family shots.

An early morning sun-rise

Africa is also known for beautiful sun-downers. Pick a spot and watch the colors.

The staff at Porini Mara waving goodbye. We came for the animals, but discovered that the Masai are exceptionally friendly people too. We saw so much and had an absolutely amazing adventure, although we never found the rhino, so we'll have to come again. Soon.