Friday 27^th Jan 2017

We were woken up at 6.30am as Chris, Sue and Mike were going for a walk in the bush with Jesse and Kapen bringing up the rear.  Mum and I had elected to go for a game drive instead.

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Tamsin and Gills story.

Before even leaving, we saw a large adult male lion and some females strolling through the grass on the plains just in front of the camp.  We set off in hot pursuit, but they’d already gone to ground in some thick bush and we couldn’t see them.  However, not far behind were the two largest male cubs (about 8 months old) so we went to see them instead.  They were slowly following the mature lions as apparently their mother was amongst them.  As they meandered along, one of the young males mounted the other one - hormones rising already I assume!  Anyway, their mother came out to greet them and after some rubbing around and licks they came back towards us and passed right by the side and back of our vehicle – very thrilling!

We were then driven back to the leopard area and spent some time admiring a very beautiful scimitar bird on an acacia bush, a yellow throated longclaw and some dik dik on route.  The leopard was in exactly the same place as yesterday and didn’t appear to have moved.  Perching in a tree just above her was a beautiful grey headed kingfisher – I duly snapped away but just don’t seem to be able to take good king fisher photos as they don’t seem to focus on the bird sharply, which is rather frustrating.

We then started heading for the breakfast rendezvous where we were meeting up with Chris etc after their walk.  On the way, we spent some time watching a jackal which was apparently hunting and seemed very busy.  It flushed some francolin out of some rocks but was nowhere close to catching them.  We also saw a warthog family with some very small babies – I just love the way they run with their little tails held vertically in the air like little pennants.  I also spotted a little bee eater and took a huge number of photos, as again my camera wouldn’t focus on the bird.  In the end I managed to get 2 photos that were in focus.

David, our guide, spotted that some antelope were all looking in one direction which signifies a predator and somehow, in the middle of the vast plain of grass, he found a young female cheetah lying in the shade of an acacia tree.  She was a very beautiful cat and seemingly didn’t have a care in the world as she rolled around and played with some dried dung.  We later found out that she’s about 2 years old and did have a sister which was eaten by a crocodile as they crossed a river one day. 

We then drove a very short distance to our bush breakfast that was served under the shade of a large tree.  Chris and the others turned up about 15 minutes after we got there, so we were already sitting down with our 1^st cup of tea.  I spent the time very usefully though as managed to establish that the Masai guides who shepherded us around did wear shorts under their skirts – a modern development.  I also found out that their nickname for us was Illashumpa (silent “i”) which means “The Confined One” and refers to the European mode of wearing shorts or trousers.

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Chris’ story.

We walked out of camp after Jesse had given us our briefing. For the walks Jesse carries a M375 Magnum rifle. This should be enough to stop an Elephant. All guides consider themselves to have failed if they ever need to fire their gun in anger. The plan was to walk towards where some Lions had been heard over night and to then circle around the camp onto some hills before coming back to a wooded area before stopping for breakfast.

We walked towards the Lions safe in the knowledge that we were down wind of them. Sadly we spotted them walking away into an area that Jesse didn’t want us to go so, we continued to climb up the hill and spotted Jackals following the Lions. This is common in that Jackals will latch onto a predator hoping for some snacks. Stepping into a small clear area of the bush a Scrub Hare sprung up and ran off. Jesse mentioned that the difference between hares and rabbits is that hares apart from the bigger ears live above ground – I didn’t know that.

Kepan showed us how he had, with others, flushed lions out from hiding places using a simple leaf that can sound like a Lion call. We tried this and noticed that some Zebra nearby had taken off. We also tried the toothbrush tree and cleaned our teeth. Have to say it doesn’t taste that great. He and Jesse pointed out various animal tracks and explained how they judged how old they were – it’s mainly to do with definition of the print and if it’s been windy.

We approached what is normally a river, but now dry and saw a Hippo surfacing before submerging again in the few deep pools still available. I also saw a Malacite Kingfisher. We then moved out into a plain area. Jesse pointed out a Cheetah print in the dust and reckoned on it being less than 2 hours old as you could still see that claws defined. He hoped that we might see it soon as it would be lain up for the day as they only hunt early mornings and evenings. We headed towards some trees where we could see the trucks and breakfast in the bush!

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After a delicious breakfast, we went to look at the cheetah again who hadn’t moved and probably wouldn’t do for some hours as by this time, it was getting hot.  We started back to camp and admired a brightly coloured Ngama lizard on a dead branch, various antelopes on the plain including a baby Topi, a group of female giraffe munching on acacia trees and lots of little birds in a river bed.   We also saw a woolly stork and a black stork side by side on a dead tree – the black stork looked stunning with its so called black feathers shimmering with iridescent green and blue.

Just got back to camp and have an hour before lunch – enough time to write the blog and upload the photos from the camera to the laptop.

We chose not to go for an afternoon game drive and enjoyed some down time and caught up on some sleep.  After a cup of tea and some flapjack, we set off for a short game drive before having a dinner out in the bush.  We saw Frank, the large lion with the dark mane, lying in the grass and a few lionesses we went to check on the Leopard who was back in her tree eating the kill.  Whilst watching her, there was a crashing noise and the kill dropped out of the tree onto the ground.  She followed it in a trice and almost in an instance had pulled it back up the tree – her strength is amazing.

We drove to our bush rendezvous where we sat round a very welcome fire having some drinks before dinner.  This is a lovely time of the day as people chat about this and that and exchange stories.  I was depressed (but not surprised) to hear that only about 10% the vast amounts of money raised by safaris goes to the local community.  The rest is pocketed by a very wealthy government minister who lives a life of unbelievable grandeur.  In the North Mara conservancy there are 12 camps who pay about $155,000 a month rent to the Masai.  On top of that, just to apply for a concession costs $2 million which is renewable every 15 years.  So, that’s an awful lot of money coming in to the area, but the local community don’t benefit that much from it apart from the employment it generates.   From our perspective, the villages look poor, but we did notice that some of the mud huts had satellite dishes and nearly all the locals who work at the camp have the most modern mobile phones, so maybe the villages aren’t as poor as they look?

After dinner, we went on a short night drive.  We didn’t see a great deal but we did see an Aardwolf which quite rare, some bush babies and a few scrub hares plus a couple of lionesses starting to hunt for antelope.

Bliss -we’re having a lie in tomorrow and not getting our wake up call until 8am.  Actually, I woke up early anyway so have been catching upon this blog which has been a real indulgence.