Wednesday 25^th Jan 2017

Today is our transfer day to the Mara. After breakfast we headed to the airstrip that we’d had our sun-downer at the night before. The plane arrived with a few others on board. We said our goodbyes to Mungai and boarded. At the next stop the woman in front of me that I’d been chatting to got off with her friend. I turned to Tamsin and said that I thought it was Rula Lenska, the actress. Next minute, they got back on board as they realised that they had got off at the wrong airport and we teased them that they hadn’t got the correct visas for there. Turns out that there is another airport that the plane stopped at, some 6 mins flight away, that has a similar name. Here everyone bar us got off and two others joined us. The co-pilot informed us that the next stop was about 1.5 hours away.

We were met at the Mara North airstrip by David and Kapen and driven for just over an hour to the tented camp – Mara Offbeat. Along the way we stopped to look at part of a pride of lions chillin’. As we got closer to camp we went off road as they were looking a Leopard that had been spotted that morning complete with a kill. Sadly they couldn’t find it so we continued on to the camp to be met by the camp managers Jesse (male) and Chania (fem.).

After lunch and a rest we went out on our evening game drive. We started by looking at a huge male Eland with an enormous dewlap. David pointed out some of the local “Offbeat” pride of Lions way over on the horizon. As we moved round to get closer to them we came across some Elephants. We moved to investigate what a Giraffe was looking at and discovered a young Lion near some bushes on further investigation we noticed some more Lions in the grass. In the distance (about 300m) David and Kapen pointed out the female Lion was approaching. We moved to have a look at her as she veered away from the location of the cubs. David stated that she look quite thin and was calling for her cubs. She then set off in a completely different direction. A bit later all the cubs appeared as they’d heard her call before she’d headed in the wrong direction. There were 6 cubs. Two older, 3 younger and 1 small one. David said that the small one was a cub from another mother that didn’t have milk and a younger mother had adopted her cub as there’s a strong bond between all the females in a pride this was our introduction to Lucky.

We headed off towards where the Leopard had put its kill earlier that day. David and Kapen decided the best thing to do was park up and wait for the Leopard to come along whilst we had our sun-downer in the truck. We waited about 20 mins and she appeared. They think she has some cub’s close by as she has been known to be pregnant and is obviously not now. We watched as this magnificent beast leaped up the tree and began eating the Impala that she’d killed and stored there. We didn’t like the fact that in the falling light one of the guides in another truck shone a light on her.

We realised that in one day we had seen the “Big Five” which is a first for us having seen Rhino on the way to the airport at Lewa.