Maasai Mara: Day One

Before we arrived, we did a lot of reading about Kenya and compiled our list of “must-do’ activities. The Maasai Mara was at the top of this list. The Maasai Mara is the northern part of the Serengeti and the part that is in Kenya. Apparently Tanzania has a monopoly on the name “Serengeti” and this causes no love to be lost between Mara and Serengeti safari guides.

There was no better time for a splurge trip than for our 1st anniversary so we booked a 3-day, 2-night safari at a tented camp just outside the Mara. (Travel tip: the animals aren’t wearing electric collars, they have no sense of the distinction between being in the Mara and being outside. It’s cheaper to stay outside. Our lodge was 100 yards from the Mara). As you can see from the photo below, our accommodations were awesome:



We took off from the airstrip in Diani and two hours later touched down in the Mara. The flight was beautiful and you could see a ton of animals before we landed on the dirt runway. We were met by park guides in traditional Maasai costume and immediately began a game drive slowly slowly.

The first thing that strikes you is the vastness of the Mara. It’s big sky country similar to Montana or Wyoming. It’s astonishingly beautiful and the 360 degree view is amazing, oh and then you add animals so it somehow gets better. Check out the video below.



We immediately saw herds of wildebeests. These animals number over 2 million in the Serengeti ecosystem and comprise the largest land migration on earth each year as they follow the grasslands from Kenya into Tanzania and back. We were at the tail end of the migration in the Mara but their numbers are still startling despite being at lower capacity than normal.

We quickly realized that wildebeests are the Bakers of the animal kingdom. As most of you know, Baker is our adorable, clinically insane, rather spacey Springer Spaniel. Baker has no nerve endings (he’ll dive into streams in January and just lay down contentedly) and no common sense (he is scared of virtually all sounds including the sound of his own voice when it echoes). As we drove along the dirt track towards the wildebeest, we noticed that they like to stand in the road until the truck gets pretty close and then run frantically out of the way and often veering back into the way in their panic as they sprint and toss their heads. We saw one literally dart across the dirt track 4 times. This happens whether the truck is going 5 miles per hour or 30. Often they have ample time to mosey out of the way but instead they prefer to wait until they can freak out. Sounds like Baker.



A few elephants and lion later (we’re saving the lion pics for another blog), we arrived at our lodge for lunch and a short siesta before we headed out for an evening game drive. During the evening game drive a storm swept over the plains just as we were going out. It provided amazing light for this shot:



That’s a mama cheetah. She climbed the tree to scout out the game that she was about to hunt with her two juvenile cubs in tow. We eventually had to leave before she killed anything because you have to be outside the park before dark but it was incredible to witness her start her hunt.

Here are some pictures of the rain moving across the savannah. Those small dots are wildebeests.





It was a fantastic first day and we finished with our first real, hot water showers in a month which was also a plus!