Masai Mara Safari!! (Day one)

Our sweet ride!

I might be the luckiest person in the world.

One Wednesday my landlord mentioned in passing that he was thinking of going on safari - he heard that the wildebeest were making an unseasonable migration back into Kenya from Tanzania during the wrong time! Apparently they were running out of food and water in their typical grazing spots in the Serengeti and were moving back into Kenya to find grass and water. It sounded like a fun trip to me, so I agreed to go if he was serious...and by Friday night we were at the grocery store shopping for food for my first African camping adventure!

Alkesh, my landlord, two of my neighbors, and two of our other friends all piled into Alkesh's awesome 4x4 safari vehicle at around 11am on Saturday morning and started the 4 hour drive to the Masai Mara National Reserve (a continuation of the Serengeti, but what it's called in Kenya). The drive was incredibly scenic, and we wound through fields of sugar cane, up through the hilly highlands, and through long stretches of endless tea plantations. The road was great and paved for the first 2.5 hours out of Kisumu. Eventually we reached the end of that luxury, and were on a not-too-terrible-for-Kenya dirt road. The car we were in was absolutely perfect though: it was so big and stable that I could barely feel the bumpy roads. And the best part of the vehicle was that Alkesh had had the roof custom cut - the whole front roof panel could be lifted up and off, making an epically huge sunroof that you can hang out of while animal watching!

Baby giraffe :)

We got to the gate of the park in about 4 hours, paid our entrance and camping fees (a total of $100 for 24 hours for non-citizens!), and were headed to set up our tents when we were flagged down by a game warden. Alkesh knew a lot of the wardens, and he wanted to tell us that a leopard had been spotted in the area and that he recommended that we skip setting up the tents and instead go track the leopard while he was around!  We all enthusiastically agreed that setting up camp in the dark was worth the chance of seeing a leopard, which is one of the more rare animals to encounter!

We had the warden hop into the car and took off down a dirt road into the park. From the gate we could already see elephants, zebra, warthogs, and giraffes grazing. I was so psyched and hyperactive (anyone who knows my reactions to animals can probably imagine) that one of my friends actually joked that it was actually more entertaining watching my reaction than watching the animals themselves. I was bouncing in my seat and incredibly happy to be driving through a place I had watched over and over again on the Discovery Channel :)

Within about 10 minutes we had made it to the spot where the leopard had been seen.....and sure enough, there he was! High up in a tree he was napping, and not far away dangled a dead impala - he had recently made a kill, and dragged it all the way up into the branches of a rather prickly looking acacia tree to protect it from getting stolen by scavengers. I was so amazed! People come on safari 10 times and don't ever get to spot a leopard (pun intended). Here we were, less than half an hour into our safari and I was hanging out of a Jeep taking photos of a leopard with a kill!

We watched the sleepy leopard for a few minutes, but he seemed pretty cozy in his napping spot, so we made our way further into the park. There were huge water buffalo lumbering around, hyenas prowling, giraffes gracefully gliding, and gigantic elephants everywhere. The warden had heard there were rhino around as well, (which are also notoriously hard to find) and we made out way in their general direction.

The Big Five: Leopard, lion, rhino, water buffalo and elephant!

Sure enough, about 10 minutes later we spotted a rhino and baby rhino galloping across an open plain. There were a few other cars on the move in their direction, which seemed to spook them a bit, and they just ran in circles for a few minutes trying to get wherever their destination was. We snapped a few far off pictures, but we felt like the human attention was bothering them, so we opted to go on a search for lions.

Our campsite in the middle of herds of wild animals

In honor of the search, we blasted "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and kept moving. The positive lyrical vibes totally worked, and soon we approached two mommy lions with about 7 baby cubs!! They were lying just next to the dirt road relaxing in the grass. I was totally floored - we got so close to them, and by being able to stick our whole upper bodies out of the roof of the safari car, I practically felt like I could just reach down and scoop up an adorable baby lion to take home! They were being tortuously cute, and were rolling onto their backs with their little bellies and feet in the air, snuggling nose-to-nose with each other, and generally just enticing me to steal them.

Lions cubs being adorable

I was forcibly retained in the vehicle, and it was approaching dusk, so we started to make our way back to camp. But by seeing the lions we had successfully seen all five of the "Big Five" that people typically attempt to find on safari (leopards, elephants, rhino, water buffalo and lions!). I'm not sure who determined that those were the "Big" animals to see, but we saw them all and a LOT more in our first 2 hours in the park!!

I was practically overwhelmed and completely giddy with happiness, and was so glad that I agreed to the whirlwind, 24-hour safari! We drove the 30 minutes back to camp through huge fields of grass that was dotted with zebra, wildebeest, elephants and giraffes. We even saw hippos dragging themselves out of the river to start grazing for the evening. Just before it was dark we got all the tents up, food unloaded, and a modest campfire started. It was surprisingly cold and windy, and we made a pretty basic dinner of baked potatoes and corn in the fire....except they were all either burnt or raw...so we put together a salad, ate bread and butter and canned beans, and a glass of the finest boxed wine available in Kisumu.

It was a relaxed evening, and we were all pretty exhausted from the heat and the long drive and the excitement. But as tired as I was, and as brave as I was convincing myself to be, it was still a bit unnerving to be able to hear hyenas, lions, and hippos making noises in the dark just beyond the campfire. I tried to put that out of my mind, and cozied up in a rather small tent with my Dutch friend Annemeik (anne-a-meek). I put in some earplugs and was out almost immediately....

To be continued!

The rest of my safari shots are here: https://kristynspictures.shutterfly.com/9973