Safari Adventure Part 2

My apologies for not posting the rest of the safari adventure over the weekend. It was due to the fact that I spent much of it playing with Sam and Steven so had little alone time to write. Now as I left off we'd just finished day one of my safari. On Sunday morning, day two, we awoke to a delicious breakfast made by our cook (again wish he lived at my house), then piled into the PSV for another day of adventure. As I mentioned on our first time out we got lucky and saw 3 of the Big 5 (lion, leopard, water buffalo) so today we wanted to find elephants and rhinos. I also was keen on seeing hippos. This day the plan was to travel from our camp all the way across Masai Mara to the Tanzania border where it officially becomes the Serengeti. The total day's drive was supposed to be around 160 kl which is a lot of driving when you consider we were on very bumpy dirt roads going on average 20 mph.

Within the first hour we were able to check off another Big 5 when we saw a herd of elephants wandering about. They look so much bigger when you see them in the wild and so much more beautiful. Just as we finished snapping pictures our driver got a call from another driver and off we sped at top speed for about 10 kl to find a cheetah lounging under a tree. What a site, the cat was so graceful and beautiful, and I kept imagining what it would look like if it was running at full speed (we were told they can run up to 80 MPH in a sprint). About 10 minutes after seeing the cheetah we came upon another pride of lions lounging by a stream taking their morning siesta (they do a lot of that).

After the lion siting nature called which in this case was a wee bit problematic since getting out of the vehicle in an area where there are lions and other wild animals wandering about can be dangerous. However I had no choice. Now the safari drivers have an interesting term for when one has to answer the call of nature, they call it "checking the tires". So off I went to "check the tires" with everyone on the lookout so I did not become some animal's morning snack!

We then continued our trek across the valley toward the Tanzanian border and periodically saw more gazelle, impala, ostrich, water buffalo, zebras and other assorted wildlife. By this time of day many of the animals, especially the big cats are in hiding since they tend to spend the hot daytime hours trying to stay cool. Around noon we made it to the border which really wasn't much of a border since all there was to mark it was a stone (see pictures). However I can now say I have officially been in Tanzania if only a few feet in. By this time we were all getting hungry and ready for a rest from all the jostling around in our PSV. We left Tanzania (no passport stamp required), and headed to an area along the Mara River. We had a picnic lunch surrounded by vevert monkeys and at one point I sat my banana down on the blanket right next to me and one of them swooped in and snatched it. They are not afraid of people and quite aggressive in their pursuit of bananas. Oh well I can now say I shared a lunch with a vevert monkey.

After lunch we headed to another area along the river where we got out and had a tour from one of the park rangers. The entire middle of the river near a sandbar was full of what looked to be large black rocks, but the "rocks' moved. We were in the land of the hippo and there were a lot of them all in the water trying to stay cool. Further down the bank of the river we spotted a huge crocodile. I sure wouldn't have wanted to slip off the bank at that point and fallen into the river.

It was now around 3:00 pm and we were all getting quite tired having been out since 8am in the morning. We started our drive back across the valley, stopped at one of the fancy lodges that is in the park for a refreshment then continued back out of the park. Prior to heading home we stopped by a Massai Village and were given at tour (to be continued in next blog post).

After our Massai Village stop we headed back to camp, got much needed showers and had a another delicious dinner and early lights out so we could begin again for day 3 at 6am.