Kenya 2021/2022

Dec. 29, 2021 - Masai Mara, Day 3

This day start­ed for us also still in the dark­ness already before sun­rise. Bran­don, our Tent Keep­er, brought us a hot cof­fee with some cook­ies at 5:30am again. This morn­ing, on Cale­b’s rec­om­men­da­tion, we left already around 6:00am. We met at the Land­Cruis­er and this time we want­ed to go a lit­tle fur­ther away from the camp to find a large group of lions with many cubs that had been spot­ted there, which we final­ly suc­ceed­ed with.

Here is a shot of the pride-lead­ing lion doing a tête-à-tête with a lioness in the first light of the ris­ing sun:

Short­ly after, the lion rose and was accom­pa­nied by a cub that looked up at him. This result­ed in a beau­ti­ful pic­ture, which I call “Dad­dy is the best”:

The pride was indeed very large, besides the hand­some male there were sev­er­al females with a lot of off­spring of dif­fer­ent ages. We observed the busy scene for quite some time.

Lat­er we found the one-eyed lioness with her 4 cubs run­ning through the area again. Caleb esti­mat­ed the cubs to be about 2 1/2 months old. We were able to fol­low the mov­ing lit­tle fam­i­ly around for a while with the car. Along the way, we man­aged to get some nice shots of the cubs:

Final­ly, the 5-mem­ber lion fam­i­ly gath­ered on a small ridge as if it were for a posed fam­i­ly pho­to, so that we man­aged to get some group shots. The ladies of the tour group were again very excit­ed - “the lit­tle ones are sooo cute!”

Short­ly after the above pic­ture, the 5 lions dis­ap­peared into a bush, so we resumed our dri­ve. On the fur­ther way some mixed pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ties arose - a jack­al, ele­phants and a big hip­po on a walk:

A short time lat­er we spot­ted anoth­er high­light of the day: 4 male chee­tahs roam­ing the savan­nah (appar­ent­ly look­ing for break­fast). Caleb explained to us that these are the 4 remain­ing mem­bers of the chee­tahs that used to hunt coop­er­a­tive­ly in the Masai Mara, for­mer­ly known as the “Fast Five” or also “Tano bora coala­tion”. We already had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to observe the famous group in 2017 and could at that time even expe­ri­ence a suc­cess­ful hunt.

The group had appar­ent­ly kicked out a mem­ber (named Olpadan) a few months ago, who was found dead in Jan­u­ary 2022, short­ly after our trip. A detailed report about the group can be found e.g. here.

Of course, we were not the only ones watch­ing the famous quar­tet. After many years in the Masai Mara, the four are well accus­tomed to cars and even use them for shade or camouflage.

But for some of the safari trav­el­ers we were appar­ent­ly more inter­est­ing than the chee­tahs (Prob­a­bly they see chee­tahs more often than pale human beings with big cameras 🙂 ).

Any­way, the four cats walked com­plete­ly unim­pressed between the safari vehi­cles and also came very close to us, so that I man­aged to get some close-ups of the mag­nif­i­cent animals:

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, how­ev­er, no hunt­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty arose for them, so that they final­ly laid down in the shade of an aca­cia in the increas­ing heat. Since Caleb was of the opin­ion that no fur­ther action was to be expect­ed here in the near future, we used the time for our bush break­fast under anoth­er shady aca­cia tree:

Well sat­u­rat­ed, we then drove back to the chee­tahs, which in the mean­time had start­ed again in search of prey. Here are some indi­vid­ual pho­tos of the cats:

We con­tin­ued to observe the group for some time. They fol­lowed some top­is in the dis­tance, but they were quick­ly noticed by them - part­ly cer­tain­ly because of the vehi­cle con­voy that accom­pa­nied the four. There­fore, there was no hunt­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for them this time. In addi­tion it became increas­ing­ly hot, so that because of the begin­ning heat flick­er no more rea­son­able pic­tures from the dis­tance were pos­si­ble. We there­fore start­ed the dri­ve back home to the camp. There, after lunch, we again secured the pic­tures and rest­ed a bit.

Afternoon tour

At 4:00 pm we met again at the car for the after­noon ride. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the sky had closed in the mean­time and it start­ed to rain. The weath­er often changes quick­ly in the Masai Mara. First we spot­ted a pair of crowned cranes:

Lat­er we observed a baboon group with some young animals.

Oth­er­wise, it rained increas­ing­ly. The ani­mals were also not very enthu­si­as­tic about the weath­er. Here anoth­er pic­ture of a very unhap­py look­ing wet young lion:

Since the weath­er con­tin­ued to dete­ri­o­rate, the sun­set pho­tos had to be omit­ted this time and we returned to the camp at dusk. There, the cozy get-togeth­er around the camp­fire also had to be can­celled due to the weather.

The oblig­a­tory Gin-Ton­ic was there­fore served in the com­fort­able bar tent this time. This was already a well-estab­lished rit­u­al. We no longer had to order the drinks. Collins (the bar­tender) already pre­pared them auto­mat­i­cal­ly when we arrived. Din­ner - this time in the restau­rant tent - was again very good, after­wards we fell into our beds very tired.

next page