It's been a little more than a week since I returned home from my second trip to sub-Saharan Africa. I think it's about time I started blogging about what I found there so I can remember it years from now. Isn't that part of what this whole blogging exercise is about after all?
I've been giving the subject of how to write about this trip a lot of thought over the last month. And for those of you doing the math at home, that would be since I got back, while I was there and even before I left home and saw my first lion or gazelle or visited my first Masai village. Yep, that's right, I was thinking about how to record what I've seen in my time in Kenya and Tanzania before I even saw any of it. That might seem strange. To me, it seems natural. I'm constantly thinking about how to organize information. This blog is no different than anything else when it comes to that sort of stuff.
So what's the big deal? Why is this trip so difficult? I saw some animals, interacted with the locals, maybe did or saw a thing or two that made my heart race a little faster. What's all the fuss about? How much can I really say about all that? Well, as it turns out, a lot. There was so much that we saw over the course of two weeks in east Africa. It's a challenge just thinking about how to present and memorialize all the parks, the cities and the local culture we experienced.
Do I write a single blog post about all the wildlife we spotted? What if there's too much great stuff (there was) and the post ends up being really long and can't keep the interest of the audience? Do I make it a multi-parter? Will that lose people from post to post or will I have the dozen or so regular readers of this blog on the edge of their seats waiting for the next part? I think, for the record, that answer to that last question is probably no.
What about separating the trip into different posts by park? We visited six parks or reserves in our two weeks. Don't all the parks kind of have to be a little different to do that? Otherwise I am just writing the same thing over and over, right? What about by day? In addition to ending up with a lot of posts (like 14), doesn't that present the same challenge as separating the trip record by park?
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| Lion. Grass. Masai Mara. Not sure what else to say here. |
How about devoting posts to specific animals? Doing that would mean even more posts, right? I mean separate posts for six parks or 14 days seems small compared to the 30 or 40 different species of animals we saw last month. Should I lump some of them together? One post for predators and one post for prey? What about the birds? Do they get their own column? Or columns for predators and prey? And what about the non-animal stuff (because there was non-animal stuff)? One post for that? Two? Five?
I realize this is not my first time doing this type of a trip. Why not copy the same format I used back in 2015? Good question. And the answer is because last time, we really only visited a single park in Chobe National Park in northern Botswana. We saw the same animals from the water and the land and interacted with two specific animals (hippos and elephants) in very intimate ways. It made sense to write about specific species and our visits to four countries in six days in a non-sequential way.
In the end, I've made the decision this time to devote a single post to each of the six parks or reserves that we visited and sprinkle some other thoughts about the two countries in between those six posts. Didn't I just say that each park had to be a little different to approach things that way? Yes, I did. And fortunately, that's sort of exactly what happened. In many ways, there was a different story or narrative about each place we went to watch what has to be one of the greatest displays of nature in the world.
So let's start at the beginning of our trip, meaning the Masai Mara National Reserve in western Kenya, a 580 square mile portion of grassland set aside in 1961 to preserve an environment and ecosystem that has been greatly reduced in size since white man set foot in Africa. The name of the place comes from the Masai people and from their word to describe the landscape when viewed from a distance; mara means "spotted" in the Masai language.
We arrived in Kenya at about 1 a.m. on a Sunday morning after a multiple hours long layover (with delays) in Amsterdam. Of course, there are no planes that fly from Amsterdam to Masai Mara so we started out not at the Reserve but in Kenya's capital city of Nairobi, where we spent a day and two nights. Before we could experience Masai Mara, we'd have to get there from Nairobi. That's not to say that you can't fly to Masai Mara. I'm sure you can, in a small plane to what is likely a dirt landing strip. But you can't fly directly there from Amsterdam. We'd have to drive.
Before we left home, I checked out how long it would take us to get from place to place on this trip. It seemed to me that we'd be doing a lot of driving (or in our case, sitting while someone else drove) and I wanted to be prepared for just how long we'd have between stops. The time I wrote down to get from Nairobi to our hotel at Masai Mara? 5 hours and 10 minutes. Seemed pretty reasonable to me.
Six and a half hours after we left our hotel in Nairobi, we got to the Masai Mara gate. Not our hotel. The gate. We'd have about another 90 minutes or so after that to get to the hotel. Rush hour traffic; a little shopping or browsing at the curio shops; some bathroom breaks along the way; a stop to gaze at the gorgeous Great Rift Valley (more on that much later); some slow time behind trucks (or lorries, if you prefer); and a stretch along an in construction road (read: dirt) financed by the World Bank extended our journey by a few hours. Oh, and by stretch along a dirt road, I mean 2-1/2 hours worth.
Concerned about the long trip? Don't be. There's plenty to see along the way. If you go, you'll be traveling through Masai land, which means you will see plenty of Masai wrapped in their signature tartan blankets herding cattle, sheep and goats. You'll also pass through town after town made up of concrete and corrugated metal buildings (with maybe the odd mud and stick building thrown in) in towns that will seem anywhere from too small to support a population to so crowded as to be completely chaotic. You'll pass hotels you might not ever consider staying in, butchers with freshly carved animal parts hanging in the unrefrigerated storefront window, hair salons (or saloons depending on the local spelling) and bar after bar after bar with Coca-Cola-provided marquees and red plastic chairs. This is Kenya; don't impose your own standard of what a town is. It won't matter, after all.
Eventually, and with a 2-1/2 hour African massage just before the end, you'll get to the gate. If you can get by the Masai women selling just about everything while your driver or guide or you get your park tickets, you'll be in a different world very soon. A tip here: as difficult as it may be for you and unless you really want to buy something, ignore the women. If you tell them you don't have room in your luggage for whatever it is they are selling, they will come back with something smaller. If you say you don't like the color or material or whatever, guaranteed there will be an alternate product available. As hard as it may be, it's probably best to not engage.
So now you are in. And you are probably in a place that most people think of when they think of Africa and particularly a safari: vast rolling fields of yellow-green grass maybe a foot or so high with the horizon (whether it be near or far) punctuated every so often by a solitary acacia tree with a twisted trunk topped by an umbrella-like canopy of leaves on thorn covered branches. And maybe a lion or elephant or something nearby, right? This is what I wanted to see the first time I visited this continent. I was just in the wrong spot and didn't know it.
I realize this is not my first time doing this type of a trip. Why not copy the same format I used back in 2015? Good question. And the answer is because last time, we really only visited a single park in Chobe National Park in northern Botswana. We saw the same animals from the water and the land and interacted with two specific animals (hippos and elephants) in very intimate ways. It made sense to write about specific species and our visits to four countries in six days in a non-sequential way.
In the end, I've made the decision this time to devote a single post to each of the six parks or reserves that we visited and sprinkle some other thoughts about the two countries in between those six posts. Didn't I just say that each park had to be a little different to approach things that way? Yes, I did. And fortunately, that's sort of exactly what happened. In many ways, there was a different story or narrative about each place we went to watch what has to be one of the greatest displays of nature in the world.
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| Lions in various states of repose. Masai Mara National Reserve. |
We arrived in Kenya at about 1 a.m. on a Sunday morning after a multiple hours long layover (with delays) in Amsterdam. Of course, there are no planes that fly from Amsterdam to Masai Mara so we started out not at the Reserve but in Kenya's capital city of Nairobi, where we spent a day and two nights. Before we could experience Masai Mara, we'd have to get there from Nairobi. That's not to say that you can't fly to Masai Mara. I'm sure you can, in a small plane to what is likely a dirt landing strip. But you can't fly directly there from Amsterdam. We'd have to drive.
Before we left home, I checked out how long it would take us to get from place to place on this trip. It seemed to me that we'd be doing a lot of driving (or in our case, sitting while someone else drove) and I wanted to be prepared for just how long we'd have between stops. The time I wrote down to get from Nairobi to our hotel at Masai Mara? 5 hours and 10 minutes. Seemed pretty reasonable to me.
Six and a half hours after we left our hotel in Nairobi, we got to the Masai Mara gate. Not our hotel. The gate. We'd have about another 90 minutes or so after that to get to the hotel. Rush hour traffic; a little shopping or browsing at the curio shops; some bathroom breaks along the way; a stop to gaze at the gorgeous Great Rift Valley (more on that much later); some slow time behind trucks (or lorries, if you prefer); and a stretch along an in construction road (read: dirt) financed by the World Bank extended our journey by a few hours. Oh, and by stretch along a dirt road, I mean 2-1/2 hours worth.
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| Lioness with two cubs. There's a third in the tree that hadn't yet emerged. |
Eventually, and with a 2-1/2 hour African massage just before the end, you'll get to the gate. If you can get by the Masai women selling just about everything while your driver or guide or you get your park tickets, you'll be in a different world very soon. A tip here: as difficult as it may be for you and unless you really want to buy something, ignore the women. If you tell them you don't have room in your luggage for whatever it is they are selling, they will come back with something smaller. If you say you don't like the color or material or whatever, guaranteed there will be an alternate product available. As hard as it may be, it's probably best to not engage.
So now you are in. And you are probably in a place that most people think of when they think of Africa and particularly a safari: vast rolling fields of yellow-green grass maybe a foot or so high with the horizon (whether it be near or far) punctuated every so often by a solitary acacia tree with a twisted trunk topped by an umbrella-like canopy of leaves on thorn covered branches. And maybe a lion or elephant or something nearby, right? This is what I wanted to see the first time I visited this continent. I was just in the wrong spot and didn't know it.
Think you will see animals (other than cattle, sheep and goats) along the way to Masai Mara? You probably won't. These animals know what trouble-makers us humans are and I'm sure they really want to stay away. But once you are inside the gate, you might see something pretty immediately. About five minutes after we passed the gate we saw a pride of lions from a distance and partially shown in the photograph above. This seemed like a pretty good sign to me.
Masai Mara is classified as a National Reserve. The other two prime wildlife viewing properties we would visit in Kenya are National Parks. What's the difference? Well, National Parks have relatively few roads and some are one way, meaning if the wildlife is far away from your truck or car, there's not a whole lot you can do about it; it's going to stay far away from your car. In a National Reserve, you have a lot more flexibility; you can't exactly go just where you want, but there are generally speaking a lot more ways to get close to what you came to see.
You may have noticed every picture in this post so far has been of a cat. Mostly lions. I know the first picture doesn't seem that it's a picture of cats, but trust me, it is. If there's one thing Masai Mara is known for, it is cats. And if there's one huge advantage in finding cats in the wild, it's the ability to not have to stick to a relatively small number of roads. So Masai Mara is both stocked with cats and has rules in effect to enhance the viewing of cats. Our guide suggested we spend our time there trying to find as many as possible, particularly lions, cheetahs and leopards, because we might not have the same opportunity to view them in quite the same way elsewhere. Sounds good to us; we're in! Let's get going on our first game drive. We grabbed some lunch, rested for a couple of hours and then set off.
Cats have a way of attracting cars. Or should I say cars with gawking tourists inside with every sort of camera known to man. The same kind of cars as our small group occupied. Toyota Land Cruisers with three rows of passenger seats (so everyone gets a window) and a top that pops up to allow the tourists to stand and see and take pictures of the animals in the wild. On our first Masai Mara game drive, we found a cluster of cars and headed for it. We arrived at the spot shown in the cover photo of this post.
What we had found (or perhaps more accurately what someone else had found) was a group of bachelor cheetah males keeping themselves cool in the late afternoon sun on the grasslands. They were almost perfectly squashed into the shade of their acacia tree and their ability to lie almost perfectly flat on the ground in the foot-high grass rendered them almost invisible. I managed to take a picture zoomed in on one of the cheetah's heads (above). It's really pretty difficult to spot these animals. Their yellow coloration which looks so bright in the sunlight shows more grey in the shadow of a tree. I can imagine some sort of prey heading for the shade of the lone acacia only to be surprised to find five hungry cats. Although let's face it, most prey animals probably have better eyesight than me.
This was a special moment for me. We had failed to see any cat other than lions (not that I'm complaining about that!) the last time we visited Africa and seeing a cheetah on our first day in a Park or Reserve was a real thrill. I'd come to Africa on this trip with a Top 10 list of animals we missed on our first trip in 2015. Cheetahs occupied the four spot on that list so this was a significant find for me even if they were just lying around in the shade so they could barely be seen.
Before we continue, and just so you don't get the wrong impression about this cats thing, we did see other animals in Masai Mara and we did stop and look at them. It's not like we went careening around the park only interested in felines. I have plenty of photographs of elephants, zebra (first time I'd seen them in the wild), impala, topi, hyena, hippos, storks, buffalo and all sorts of other stuff. It's just that as wonderful as all that was, for the purposes of this blog post, we're focused just on the cats. We'll get to plenty of the other stuff in other parks. If there was a can't miss encounter or amazing photograph of some other species that we came across in Masai Mara, I'd write about it or just show you the pic. Trust me on this one. This same sort of disclaimer could apply to each of the other five parks, although I'm not sure I'm putting it in every post.
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| More lions. This time with some food. |
My hope that the group of lions we saw just minutes into the park would be a good omen for us seemed like it was coming true. In addition to the pride just inside the gate (and our cheetah encounter), we would see a lot of lions over the next day and a half. Five separate groups in fact.
One of our greatest hopes about this trip was that we would see a pride of lions hunting and making a kill. That may seem kind of morbid or sick but we saw the start and middle of one in August of 2015 and had to leave right before the exciting part because the people who were in the car with us had to get to the airport. We figured twice as long in country and probably four to five times as many game drives might get us a kill.
In Masai Mara, we were out of luck, at least as far as a kill was concerned. But we did find a pride of lions with a carcass, albeit the very end of one. Finally some sort of gore!
It was difficult for us to determine what kind of animal that the lioness we watched was finishing off. It was definitely something with horns because you can see a pretty big one in the pictures below. Maybe it was a young African buffalo? I'm not sure it mattered. From the disposition of the majority of the pride (above) behind the almost skeleton when we came upon the scene, it appears most of the lions had eaten their fair share and it was down to the last female (with cub nearby) to get the last pieces of meat off the thing.
I always think lions are at their most impressive when they are doing something other than lying down, which they sometimes do up to 20 or more hours per day. The lioness we found with the ribcage and maybe some other appendages with a little carrion left that afternoon was the first time in the Reserve we had actually seen one on all four legs rather than with belly on ground. And she really tugged and pulled on that animal and got whatever last morsels of nutrition she could off the thing. These animals are powerful. It was a scene that was made less gory by the age of the remains and I dare say the late afternoon sunlight shining through the meat still clinging to the creature's ribs added some color to the pictures to almost make them beautiful. Strange thing to write about a cat eating raw meat but I believe that. I'm glad we found this.
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| Guarding the kill... |
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| and getting every last bite of meat off it. |
If you have been to Africa or if you're at least a little familiar with the history of people and that continent, you may be aware of what's known as the Big Five, a group of animals made up not of the biggest five animals on the continent but instead the most difficult animals to hunt on foot. I know, the list has a terrible origin. Anyway, the last time we were in Africa, we saw three of the Big Five, namely the elephant, the lion and the African buffalo. We were determined to check the other two boxes on this trip, meaning the leopard and the black rhino.
Leopards are just difficult to spot. Unlike lions and cheetahs, they are solitary, meaning it's generally more difficult to spot one cat than it is a whole group. They are also fairly shy, preferring to roam around and hunt in the cover of darkness (when we humans are NOT driving around the parks) and hang out in the leaf covered tops of trees during the day, sometimes with what they have killed on the branch next to them (I'm not kidding). The odds of spotting leopard are, quite frankly, just low.
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| Leopard on the move. Really our first good look at this animal. |
We got lucky. Really lucky. If the odds of finding a leopard roaming around the savannah are low, the odds of finding two in one afternoon are super low. But that's what happened.
Over the span of a little less than an hour and a half, we managed to get some incredible looks at two separate leopards. We'd find more later in the trip but no sightings equal to the quality of these first two on our first afternoon in Masai Mara. Maybe they were out early trying to find food as the sun went down or maybe they were just moving from one spot to the other, I don't know. And I really don't much care. All I know is that we saw two of these animals in a couple of hours which completely changed my impression of them.
When we visited Africa a couple of years ago, all I really wanted to see was big animals. Like the kind we don't find here at home. I mean hippos, elephants and rhinos. Huge vegetarians that are really scary just due to their size. "Might makes right" sort of stuff. And I got all that. But I also got a new appreciation of lions. Lions are so powerful. You can see it when they move. There's incredible strength in their bodies and despite being not so obviously large as hippos, elephants and rhinos, I knew I would never want to come face to face with a lion without some kind of legit protection. In my case, a car would do just fine.
If I was surprised by how impressed I was with lions in 2015, I was even more surprised by how I fell in love with leopards in 2018.
Other than the lions' power and capacity to cause some serious harm that I got out of our earlier trip, I still don't love those animals. Respect, yes. Love, no. I mean they are kind of unkempt, especially the males with the manes which are typically less than adequately groomed. In the worst cases, they are a little shaggy and mangy. I feel somewhat but maybe a little bit less so the same way about cheetahs but without the full respect factor. Cheetahs are a little bit more put together but I'd way rather fight off a cheetah than a lion, if it ever came to something like that.
After this trip, leopards are different.
First of all, they check the strength box in much the same way that lions do. Sure, they are not quite as big but they can carry something they killed which is twice their weight up a tree and store it for future consumption away from scavengers like hyenas and vultures. That's pretty freaking impressive.
Second, there's something pretty cool about the loner, right? The solitary animal that has to fend for itself. No family to depend on or provide for. Just a cat and his teeth to survive. OK, so maybe that's a little melodramatic.
But above all, these animals are absolutely gorgeous. The unkempt factor that dooms the lion and to a lesser extent the cheetah comes nowhere near the leopard. The fur on these creatures doesn't project a mangy appearance (like the lion) or a fluffy appearance (like the cheetah). These things are sleek and put together. The patterning is completely crisp and sharp in a way that the cheetah (too much fluff) or lion (no patterning at all) just don't have. They are now one of my most favorite animals of all time. I'm extremely privileged to have seen them this way in the wild.
We got some amazing pictures of these animals which I think demonstrate why we were so impressed with them. I'll have to throw a little credit (or maybe a lot) to our guide and driver, who may have shall we say "pushed the envelope" on what is considered a road in the Reserve. Some of these pics may have been shot on grass rather than road, although really I'm sure these guys were totally within the bounds of the rules. It's really just me that seemed like we (and everyone else by the way) were maybe a foot or two off the real path. I appreciate the fact that we had such awesome guides. One thing for sure they never ever got anywhere that would interfere with the animals, which is what's really important after all.
In what may seem like an anticlimax (considering I still have five Parks to blog about), I'll offer the opinion that Masai Mara was the best Park or Reserve of the six we visited in our two weeks in Africa. That's not to say that the rest were disappointing because they absolutely were not. But no place got us the quality of wildlife viewing in quite the same way as Masai Mara. What I'll take away from this place is the diversity of wildlife and the amazing looks we got at the predators, but particularly the leopards.
On our way to our next destination, our guide, Joe, told us we would be making our way through the park but anything we saw was on our own, which to me meant that we'd have to take it all in and snap pictures while we drove, rather than having the car stop to allow prolonged looks at wildlife.
It seems Masai Mara didn't want to let us go. Rather than stopping zero times as Joe had suggested, we stopped five times. For giraffe, two bull elephants, a herd of buffalo crossing the road, a pair of bachelor male lions and the same group of cheetahs we saw on our first afternoon in the park, although this time in the sun and looking yellow rather than grey.
What a great start to our trip. Masai Mara burned itself into my conscience in a way that few places have. It certainly matches our few days at Chobe National Park in Botswana in a way that was both extremely different and more and less intimate at the same time. We left southwest Kenya knowing that if we didn't see anything else the rest of our time in that country, we would have had an unforgettable two days in that country already. Fortunately for us, we'd see more and it would add to our African experience in a way that Masai Mara did not. On to Lake Nakuru.
I'll end this post with a picture of the cheetah we saw on the way out of the Reserve and a trio of lion cubs. Just because.
Over the span of a little less than an hour and a half, we managed to get some incredible looks at two separate leopards. We'd find more later in the trip but no sightings equal to the quality of these first two on our first afternoon in Masai Mara. Maybe they were out early trying to find food as the sun went down or maybe they were just moving from one spot to the other, I don't know. And I really don't much care. All I know is that we saw two of these animals in a couple of hours which completely changed my impression of them.
When we visited Africa a couple of years ago, all I really wanted to see was big animals. Like the kind we don't find here at home. I mean hippos, elephants and rhinos. Huge vegetarians that are really scary just due to their size. "Might makes right" sort of stuff. And I got all that. But I also got a new appreciation of lions. Lions are so powerful. You can see it when they move. There's incredible strength in their bodies and despite being not so obviously large as hippos, elephants and rhinos, I knew I would never want to come face to face with a lion without some kind of legit protection. In my case, a car would do just fine.
If I was surprised by how impressed I was with lions in 2015, I was even more surprised by how I fell in love with leopards in 2018.
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| Leopard number one. Sitting. |
After this trip, leopards are different.
First of all, they check the strength box in much the same way that lions do. Sure, they are not quite as big but they can carry something they killed which is twice their weight up a tree and store it for future consumption away from scavengers like hyenas and vultures. That's pretty freaking impressive.
Second, there's something pretty cool about the loner, right? The solitary animal that has to fend for itself. No family to depend on or provide for. Just a cat and his teeth to survive. OK, so maybe that's a little melodramatic.
But above all, these animals are absolutely gorgeous. The unkempt factor that dooms the lion and to a lesser extent the cheetah comes nowhere near the leopard. The fur on these creatures doesn't project a mangy appearance (like the lion) or a fluffy appearance (like the cheetah). These things are sleek and put together. The patterning is completely crisp and sharp in a way that the cheetah (too much fluff) or lion (no patterning at all) just don't have. They are now one of my most favorite animals of all time. I'm extremely privileged to have seen them this way in the wild.
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| Leopard number two. The sunlight hitting this animal highlights its gorgeous coloration. |
In what may seem like an anticlimax (considering I still have five Parks to blog about), I'll offer the opinion that Masai Mara was the best Park or Reserve of the six we visited in our two weeks in Africa. That's not to say that the rest were disappointing because they absolutely were not. But no place got us the quality of wildlife viewing in quite the same way as Masai Mara. What I'll take away from this place is the diversity of wildlife and the amazing looks we got at the predators, but particularly the leopards.
On our way to our next destination, our guide, Joe, told us we would be making our way through the park but anything we saw was on our own, which to me meant that we'd have to take it all in and snap pictures while we drove, rather than having the car stop to allow prolonged looks at wildlife.
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| Leopard number one. Showing some teeth. |
What a great start to our trip. Masai Mara burned itself into my conscience in a way that few places have. It certainly matches our few days at Chobe National Park in Botswana in a way that was both extremely different and more and less intimate at the same time. We left southwest Kenya knowing that if we didn't see anything else the rest of our time in that country, we would have had an unforgettable two days in that country already. Fortunately for us, we'd see more and it would add to our African experience in a way that Masai Mara did not. On to Lake Nakuru.
I'll end this post with a picture of the cheetah we saw on the way out of the Reserve and a trio of lion cubs. Just because.
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