3. 1. 2019
This time we left even earlier in the morning, because we wanted to go to the distant area again, where the rhino was sighted the day before. At 6:15am, still in the dark, we met Caleb at the Toyota LandCruiser. At dawn we saw a small family of giraffes that made a picturesque silhouette against the horizon:
In the area we drove to, the terrain became more hilly, which was also a nice scene:
Instead of the Rhino, however, we discovered only even larger animals, a group of elephants. A very large bull posed beautifully in front of a blue sky:
Later, Caleb discovered a large Martial Eagle sitting on a branch with its prey:
The Masai Mara in Kenya borders in the south to the Serengeti, which belongs to Tanzania. The border between the two countries is crossed several times a year by large herds of migrating wildebeests, zebras and antelopes and is therefore completely open. This time we drove up to the border, which is only marked by a stone:
The "T" on the left is for Tanzania, the "K" on the right is for… exactly: Kenya 😉
We then had the usual breakfast under an acacia tree. Afterwards Caleb received a radio message that another leopard had been sighted, whereupon we raced there at high speed again.
This time a mature leopard was lying in a tree. At first he apparently took a nap there and showed little activity. We arrived there quite late, the path in front of us was already blocked by a lot of safari vehicles, so that at first we could only watch the leopard from a distance. To complicate the situation, it was slowly getting warmer. This increased the heat shimmering in the air, and then sharp images with long focal lengths are no longer possible from a distance. But we took the very important safari rule to heart: in wildlife photography you need patience above all else.
We observed the scene for a good 1 1/2 hours in total. Since most of the other tourists in their vehicles did not have so much patience and drove away in the meantime, we could drive over the time with our vehicle closer and closer to the tree. This resulted in increasingly improving photo positions.
Photographically, the situation was still not easy because of the strong backlighting, but overall I am quite satisfied with the results:
At last the beautiful animal moved again, got up and climbed down the tree:
Afterwards the leopard disappeared in the bushes and we drove back to the camp for lunch.
On the ride we spotted a lilac breasted roller:
The time with the leopard compensated us completely for the fact that we had again not seen a rhino.
At 4:00pm we started again. The focus of safari trips is always on the "Big Five": elephant, rhino, lion, leopard and buffalo and of course especially the cats. Since I was able to take many nice pictures (except for the rhino), I wanted to take pictures of the remaining beautiful fauna which is often overseen, the antelopes. In nice light therefore some pictures of a hartebeest:
But then we immediately fell back into the usual prey scheme of the wildlife photographers, when we discovered a cheetah:
But it got even better on this day: While we were watching the cheetah, suddenly other vehicles drove away and stopped at a tree in about 200m distance. There my daughter discovered something in the branches when looking through the camera viewfinder: a leopard.
Simply unbelievable, it was actually the second leopard that day!
Due to safari rule 27: "Leopard beats cheetah" we also drove there. The cheetah was a bit offended because of the sudden disinterest, but that's life ;-). A young female leopard lay in the tree and posed very nicely for us again:
Finally the young leopard left the tree and walked around:
This did not go well for long, though. A hyena discovered the young animal and began to hunt it. Finally, the leopard fled up the same tree again:
Again we watched the scene for over an hour until it was finally time to drive back to camp. On the way there, we witnessed another fantastic sunset:
After a very exciting day we relaxed in the camp with the usual evening procedures. Apart from us, the camp now had only 3 other guests: a mother with her two daughters from Austria, but they always kept for themselves, so we had the campfire for us alone. Tomorrow is the last full day of our trip, the day after tomorrow we will already return home, then the camp will close for some time.
We will make one last attempt to find a rhino tomorrow, so we will start again at 6:15am.