Kenya 2021/2022

Jan. 1, 2022 - New Year - Flight to Amboseli National Park

After the very short night, we start­ed again ear­ly in the morn­ing on the first day of 2022 around 6:00. We met with Char­lie-Boy at the car. The weath­er had not improved much at first. Like the sun­set the day before, the sun­rise there­fore also failed pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly. But it was nev­er­the­less worth­while again to get up so early.

We first vis­it­ed the lion group again. This time we could get very close to the pride leader, a hand­some old­er lion. The light was slow­ly get­ting very nice as well. So I man­aged to take one of my favorite pic­tures of this trip, a half por­trait of the boss:

The lion was lying right next to a lioness and seemed very inter­est­ed in her. How­ev­er, she was obvi­ous­ly cur­rent­ly averse to his advances, which she also showed him quite clearly:

Final­ly, both moved away. Here are two more close-ups of both of them:

That morn­ing, by the way, the whole buf­fa­lo killed the day before was already gnawed down to the skele­ton - that’s real­ly effi­cient food uti­liza­tion. Slow­ly the weath­er got bet­ter. Light ground fog final­ly result­ed in a won­der­ful light atmos­phere. In the dis­tance a hot air bal­loon passed by:

Some more pic­tures of the morn­ing tour - a gray heron, a ground horn­bill and two baboons with flanged off­spring. Appar­ent­ly there are dif­fer­ent modes of trans­port for this (prob­a­bly down in the rain and up in the sunshine) 😂

Then we spot­ted a bird of prey in a tree. I could­n’t place it at first, but in the mean­time got the hint that it was appar­ent­ly a juve­nile bateleur. Adult bateleurs are almost black and have a notice­able red col­or­ing at the base of their bill. We wait­ed patient­ly with our cam­eras ready and final­ly man­aged to get some shots of the bird tak­ing off.

As I already men­tioned, I love the fast con­tin­u­ous shoot­ing mode of the Canon EOS R5:

The new year 2022 start­ed so far already very beau­ti­ful­ly. To fin­ish off our stay in the Masai Mara, our leop­ardess was sight­ed again. We drove there one last time and were able to watch her drink­ing from a small creek. Unfor­tu­nate­ly she was far away and it was already get­ting warmer, so the air tur­bu­lence did not allow a 100% sharp pic­ture. But it still result­ed in a last nice shot of the lady with water reflection:

We also observed some more gray birds that morn­ing (a gray kestrel, a gray-head­ed king­fish­er and a gray pied king­fish­er on a branch and in a dive).

And for my BIF - “Birds in flight” series I also got a a shot of a fly­ing tawny eagle:

Then we were already on our way back to the camp. Our domes­tic flight to Amboseli Nation­al Park with the region­al car­ri­er “Mom­basa Air” was sched­uled for 1:30 pm. After a last lunch at the Mara Bush Camp, Char­lie-Boy brought us to the “Masai Mara Inter­na­tion­al Air­port” 😉, the Olkiom­bo Airstrip, which is only about 1km away from the camp.

Here are some pic­tures of the run­way, the ter­mi­nal with wait­ing area, sales area and cus­toms con­trol and the san­i­tary facil­i­ties. The lev­el­ling roller is prob­a­bly used to clear the run­way of ele­phant excre­ment and oth­er debris:

It is grat­i­fy­ing to see that waste sep­a­ra­tion is also car­ried out in the Masai Mara (note the des­ig­na­tions “Glass” and “Plas­tic” on the trash cans). By the way, Kenya has declared war on plas­tic quite effec­tive­ly. The small plas­tic min­er­al water bot­tles that used to be every­where have been replaced by reusable drink­ing con­tain­ers, which are pro­vid­ed to tourists at the begin­ning of their trip. If nec­es­sary, they can be refilled at any time in the camp or from a large min­er­al water dis­penser car­ried in the car.

As there was ini­tial­ly a group of giraffes stand­ing near the run­way, two employ­ees moved out to chase them away. One of the two was heav­i­ly armed, but for­tu­nate­ly did not need the rifle. The giraffes took off even with­out shooting.

Then, with one hour delay, our plane arrived. My wife Simone was very skep­ti­cal when she saw the size of our plane for the first time.

It was very cramped in the plane. We sat tight­ly packed in rows of three behind each oth­er. Because of the weight of our cam­era equip­ment, we had pre­vi­ous­ly booked an addi­tion­al bag­gage seat. Here is a pic­ture of the trav­el group on the plane. How­ev­er, the cap­tain and co-pilot made a very pro­fes­sion­al impres­sion, so that we flew off with a good feeling.

As the weath­er had cleared up in the mean­time and the plane was fly­ing rel­a­tive­ly low (about 3.000m / 9.800ft accord­ing to my iPhone’s GPS), we had an excel­lent view through the large win­dows over the Great Rift Val­ley with Lake Natron in Tan­za­nia to the south and Lake Mag­a­di to the north, and final­ly also Mount Kil­i­man­jaro. The flight was worth it for that alone. Here are some shots from the plane:

The flight was over­all very nice and last­ed a lit­tle more than an hour. Even my wife found it after­wards after all ” all right ” 😊. We were already expect­ed by Caleb in Amboseli. He drove our Land­Cruis­er right next to the plane.

Every­thing was reloaded in the car after a few min­utes. The Amboseli Airstrip is locat­ed direct­ly in the nation­al park, so we could start the after­noon gamedrive imme­di­ate­ly in best weather.

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