Maasai Mara: Anniversary Night and Day Three

After our game drive, we headed home to shower and hang out until dinner. We showered pretty quickly and headed to the bar at the lodge which had a great sunset view. Sun sets early on the equator at about 6:45. Since all the other guests were European, we were the only ones enjoying the sunset. This is a phenomenon we noticed on our honeymoon. Europeans refuse to deviate from their schedule and eat earlier even to catch a spectacular sunset. Per usual, we enjoyed fantastic service since we were the only ones at the bar.

After our first drink, I asked the waiter to take a photo of us since it was our anniversary. What followed was a typical “crazy wazungu” moment (wazungu = white people). The waiter, in full Maasai wardrobe snapped the picture while moving backwards and moving the camera up to his eye. It was understandably blurry. I asked him to repeat the photo only to have the same thing happen. Hmm, ok. Normally I would have just forgotten the whole idea but I really wanted an anniversary photo! M was dispatched to the room to get a mini-tripod and I proceeded to build a little stand of cocktail tables to get an appropriate height to take this photo with the auto-timer. The Maasai thought I was insane. Here is this crazy girl running around stacking tables to get a photo they already took. At least 5 of them stood and watched us take photos.



M arranged for us to have a private meal (meals were served buffet style normally) so we ate on a little patio overlooking the Mara. It was amazing but we were a little confused when we were assured that “a Maasai warrior is just down the path to protect you so don’t be afraid.” Protect us from what? People or animals? And how dangerous could eating dinner be? Dinner was very good although we attracted a lot of attention from the bugs (non-biting luckily) because we had lanterns on our table. About ¾ of the way through our main course, an index card-sized moth made a dive bombing run on our lantern and ended up in our steak sauce gravy boat. My resulting squeak brought the Maasai warrior running but we assured him that the bug was no longer a threat since it was now wallowing in the sauce drowning. Needless to say, we finished up dinner quickly and retired to our screened tent.

The next morning, we set off early on our last game drive of the trip. We stopped at sunrise to snap a few photos of the amazing sky and our trusty truck before hearing that someone had spotted some mating lions. We pulled up to a shaded tree surrounded by 6-7 other safari vehicles. There we saw a huge male lion and a female in heat. The guide told us that when females are in heat, lions will mate up to 20 times a day every 15 minutes. This comment drew many off-color comments from the men in the surrounding cars although the women were given a quick rebuttal about 20 seconds later. Apparently, the mating of lions only takes 20 seconds and the male lion is snarled at and hissed at if he tries to stick around any longer than that. The female lion in this case nearly took the poor guy’s head off after 21 seconds. (As always, click into the photo to enlarge it)



We drove around for several more hours spotting some lion cubs and a million zebras until we heard that someone had spotted cheetah cubs with their mother. When we arrived, the mother and her cubs were hidden in a bush but you could see their little heads poking out.



After about 25 minutes, the mother decided to move to an adjacent bush to get a better sightline on some zebras. She left first and her cubs all followed except that instead of staying in the bush, one decided that it was time for his close-up. With several safari vehicles crowded around, he crawled out of the bush and started posing like a little sphinx. Everyone was shocked that the mama would let him come within a few feet of the cars but she appeared unperturbed (which makes you wonder about the “wildness” of these animals who apparently also use the safari cars to stalk game sometimes). Nonetheless, he gave me my favorite photo of the entire trip below.



We drove quickly back to the airstrip and a whirlwind 48 hours came to a close. A fantastic 1st anniversary as a close to a great year!