Game Drives at Maasai Mara National Reserve
Trip Start
Apr 27, 2010
1
24
39
Trip End
Ongoing
Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya
Thursday, July 1, 2010
We were soon spotting elephants quite frequently, some in groups while others off on their own. Also saw the usual suspects - zebra, gazelle, buffalo, warthogs, giraffe - but after 3.5 hours we still hadn't found any cats. That all changed as were heading for the gate and came across two lions relaxing in the grass. Henry then spotted the rest of the pride a short distance away and pulled us up right next to them. Had a great view of a bunch of cubs, two of whom were playing tug of war with a wildebeest tail. Unfortunately there's heavy fines if you stay in the park after it closes, so we had to leave after only a short while.
Up early the next morning to get into the park again and right off the bat we see a female lion chowing down on a wildebeest. We stayed with her for a bit then moved on and not 15 minutes late we see our first big male with a fresh kill of his own. Seeing two lions with different fresh kills is incredibly rare, so we consider ourselves hella lucky. We watched him rip open an organ and dump out the contents which can only be described as 'grassy shit'. He spent the next few minutes covering it up with grass before returning his attention to the carcass. Stayed a few more minutes with him then moved on.
At the river we saw a bunch of hippos and a massive croc, but were disappointed to have missed the wildebeest migration by a few days. The rest of the day saw no more highlights until near the end when we saw a group of elephants. Half of them were play fighting on one side of our truck while the other half were bathing on the other side.
Overall Masai Mara was pretty wicked, especially for the lions we saw, but I was a tad disappointed to have not seen a leopard or cheetah. Oh well, there's still the Serengeti...
