Dec. 28, 2021 - Day 2 in the Masai Mara
We met Caleb at the LandCruiser at exactly 6:15 a.m. and together we searched for a suitable location to watch the sunrise. The sunrises and sunsets in Africa are always very special, you should not miss them. The sky was only slightly cloudy this time, which allowed us to expect a wonderful luminous scene.
For the foreground served on our first morning again one of the lonely standing umbrella acacias so typical for the Masai Mara. By the way, these lonely standing trees are the eponym of the region: In the local Maa language “Masai Mara” means something like “dotted land”, where the trees represent the dots.
We prepared our photo equipment in the LandCruiser standing in front of the acacia and waited looking through the viewfinder for the appearance of the sun disk. Already before the actual sunrise a pair of crowned cranes flew along photogenically by the chosen tree and I caught them just in time:
Later, as planned, the sun rose directly on the horizon and made the grass glow golden orange in the backlight.
Later, a lady ostrich was strutting around in the backlight in the distance:
After sufficient appreciation and photographic documentation of the sunrise we started our further exploration tour. Quickly we discovered a pride of lions in beautiful morning light. A younger lion left the group to drink at a creek, which resulted in a nice mirror effect in the water.
Later a grim looking young lion joined them. He also had every reason to be in a bad mood: as he got closer, we saw that his right hind leg was broken - an open fracture. Caleb then informed the rangers by radio about it, they wanted to take care of it.
We observed the group for a good hour when another pride member joined us: a stately lioness who had apparently lost her left eye in a fight sometime earlier. However, this did not seem to hinder her much. She was obviously well fed. In tow she had 4 small cubs with her, the ladies of our tour group were immediately completely thrilled, lion cubs are also “so cute”!
Here is a first picture with at least three of the little ones:
We watched the group for a while and then temporarily said goodbye to the lions around 9:00am to look for a place for our bush breakfast. On the way there we had some photographic bycatch again. We first discovered an elephant family with a young one:
Also, on the way, a lilac breasted roller posed for us in beautiful light. These little birds really don’t miss any color of the spectrum in their plumage:
Finally, we found a lone acacia tree with no predators in the immediate vicinity. After Caleb had declared the area safe, we gathered for our first bush breakfast in the Masai Mara in the shade of the tree around the hood of our Toyota LandCruiser. For this purpose, it was covered in style with a Masai blanket:
After breakfast, we initially continued observing the lion group. However, as the heat increased, the leader of the pride finally decided that it was time for an extended siesta and he laid down.
Since there was no further action to be expected here in the near future, we decided to drive back to the camp and come back later in the afternoon. On the way back we spotted another secretary bird striding through the steppe as well as a Sacred Ibis on a river bank:
Back at the camp, we first had lunch, then we relaxed a bit in our tents until 4:00 pm. To be on the safe side, I have always redundantly copied all photos from the memory cards to the laptop and the external hard drive I brought along in the afternoons.
Afternoon gamedrive
Refreshed, we met again at 16:00 for the afternoon game drive. At first, however, it rained heavily and we saw only a few wet animals (zebras, for example). When the rain subsided a bit, we visited the lion pride again, which had apparently also recovered sufficiently in the meantime. We could extensively observe half-strong young lions scuffling around, which resulted in real action sequences:
We watched the lively hustle and bustle extensively. As it slowly got darker, Caleb received a radio message that a leopard had been spotted nearby, so we headed there. Leopards are my favorite cats. Unfortunately, this time the leopard was lying very inconveniently far away in a bush and it was already slowly getting dark, so it only sufficed for a documentation photo.
Since the leopard showed no signs of changing its position again, we finally headed back home as dusk fell and cloud cover increased. In the following days we would have several opportunities to find him again under better conditions.
On the return drive we experienced then in spite of the cloudiness a beautiful sunset again. First a safari vehicle passed the scene quite photogenically:
Afterwards, despite of the clouds, the sun’s disk still appeared briefly above the horizon:
Afterwards we went directly back to the camp. After securing the pictures and a shower, the usual evening ritual followed with a nice chat at the campfire having a Gin-Tonic, followed by the dinner.