Masai Mara: Big Cats and plenty more
Thursday, July 8th, 2010Our first act in East Africa after acclimatising in Nairobi was to set off to Masai Mara National Reserve for our main safari of this East Africa trip. We chose Masai Mara ahead of some other parks, like Serengeti or Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, because it seemed to have all the major animals, and because it was precisely the right time for the 1.5 million migrating wildebeest to arrive in Masai Mara. And in any case, even though Serengeti is more famous because it has a cool name, it is in fact part of the same ecosystem as Masai Mara – just on the other side of the Kenya-Tanzania border.
We had anticipated joining a group to keep the costs down but we weren’t terribly impressed with the safari vans most companies offered. It seemed like we’d be jostling for position with the other people in the group to peer out of the roof, and that if you were on the wrong side of the van you’d miss out on the best views. So instead we sucked it up, paid more, and went by ourselves in a jeep for a three-day safari with our guide/driver Jackson and our cook Nicholas. In hindsight, we think this was a good decision, as besides giving us the best viewings possible, it also allowed us to determine exactly what we wanted to do each day, and to go to certain places inside the park that the vans don’t go to because of the poor conditions of the paths. That last point was critical because for most of our key sightings there weren’t many other vehicles around (and sometimes none).
In summary, the safari was fantastic and was a brilliant way to begin our East African adventure. Overall we saw more than 20 different animals not including birds, some in enormous quantities and some only once. The breakdown went something like this:
More than 1000: wildebeest, zebras.
In the hundreds: Thomson’s gazelles, impalas, buffalos, topis
Dozens: elephants (including a herd of 40), giraffes, grand gazelles, hippos
Around 10: baboons, crocodiles, warthogs, banded mongoose
The rest: hyenas (2), waterbucks (4), elands (3), hartebeests (4) and jackal (1)
And as for the three big cats: lions (10), cheetahs (6) and leopard (1)
The main highlights were:
Feasting Cheetahs: Cheetahs aren’t a guaranteed sighting at Masai Mara, so when we saw three of them together on the second morning, we were pretty happy even though they were quite a distance away. By this point, we’d ‘ticked’ all the boxes and were satisfied. But about half an hour later in another area of the park came the biggest highlight of the trip: seeing three cheetahs, no more than 15 metres away from the jeep, devouring some poor animal, probably a gazelle. We missed the actual kill but still, we were the first on the scene (only two other jeeps came later in any case) and we watched the cheetahs for about half an hour as they finished their meal, licked each other clean (and they needed to, as their faces were bloody) and then found a tree to rest under. What was almost as interesting was to see, as soon as the cheetahs had walked away from the remnants of their breakfast, a dozen or more vultures descend on the carcass and rip apart what was left. (Apparently seventy percent of what’s left by the hunting animals in the park is subsequently eaten by vultures.)
Impala breakfast in a tree: On the first afternoon we spotted a leopard (also not a guaranteed sighting, and rarer than a cheetah; Jackson said he hadn’t seen one in his three previous trips) who had set up camp among some trees near a river. Because the leopard had cubs, it wasn’t likely to move far over the coming days, and the next morning we saw it again. This time, it was halfway up a tree but clearly visible – as was the dead impala that it was gnawing on. We watched it eat everything off the bone and then disappear deeper into the bushes.
The Lion King: On the second morning, we got our first taste of lions when Wendy spotted two lionesses relaxing on the grass in a far-flung corner of the park (we watched them for a few minutes at very close range until they got up and walked away, and no other vehicles arrived during that time). Later that morning, we saw a mother with four cubs, and in the afternoon, two more lionesses and our first male adult, for a total of 10 lions in one day. On all three occasions we were able to get extremely close and really observe them, which was wonderful.
The Mara River: Late on the second morning (given all the detours to see the big cats) we arrived at the Mara River hoping that a herd of wildebeest would be crossing. Unfortunately, a few hundred of them had already crossed that morning and were now relaxing with a near-equal number of zebras (who also migrate from the Serengeti). The toll of the morning’s crossing was evident: we saw six wildebeest carcasses in the river, felled by the many resident crocodiles and hippos (who we could easily see in the river as well). Three brave zebras who had been left alone on the southern bank decided to make a run for it, and we watched them wade to the other side unharmed as the crocs, already full after their morning feast, let them pass. Meanwhile the vultures lurked nearby, waiting for approval from the crocs, it seemed, to go after the wildebeest corpses. Even though we didn’t see any wildebeest crossing, it was still a brilliant show of the animal kingdom in full form.
On Monday afternoon we returned to Nairobi completely satisfied and ready to tackle our next target: the famous Rift Valley, which stretches all the way from the Dead Sea to Mozambique.
Nick