We took a small plane to Masai Mara for our safari. The kind of small plane that people die on all the time. It was nerve racking, honestly. I don't have a problem with flying, but I know these planes are the ones that crash. I had faith but the take off and touch down for pretty scary. Especially since the landing strip was a dirt road. AND just as we were about to land Jaclyn leans forward and says, "this isn't our stop." Excuse me, what?! Are we just going to taxi down the road a bit to our stop then? Nope. The plane took off again! And landed again of course. I was very happy to make it out of there alive. It didn't even occur to me until the flight home, when we had two pilots, that the flight there was just the one pilot! No co-pilot! What if the guy had a stroke in the air?! If I ever fly in a small plane again I need to watch some YouTube videos about how to do an emergency landing.
Not very encouraging to have this broken down plane sitting off to the side of our actual plane at the airport.
Much happier with our setup in our safari vehicle.
We stayed at a 5-star resort, but it was still tents. 5-star tents, lol. With running water, but the hot water turned off at 8:30pm. The weather is perfect all the time. And there were not many mosquitoes (Karlee researched and learned that mosquitoes in the Mara don't carry Malaria so that's good because I got a few bites).
Jaclyn and I shared this tent. The patio overlooked the water and these were the giant hippos that lived there. We could here them splashing and snorting all night long.
Hippos pretty much stay in the water until nightfall. There are other predators that wander around at night too and could come into camp. So we are not allowed to go anywhere at camp unaccompanied in the dark. A guide walked us from our room to the dining area. When I needed to use the bathroom, that is only 50 yards away, he had to escort me. It rained both nights also so we had to use umbrellas too. Of course my tent had a bathroom too, but just at dinner I had to ask for an escort. It was funny because they carried a flashlight (that they call torch) and a stick, like a police baton. I'm like, what are you going to do with your little stick if something comes at us? I did ask him what he would do, and he said shine the torch in it's eyes. Doesn't really calm your worries, does it? It's hard to imagine these huge guys storming around through camp. I don't think it's common, but who knows. We were also instructed to keep our tents zipped tightly so the monkeys didn't get in and steal things. The monkeys didn't seem to bother us there (not the case in Diani).
This was the breakfast setup. The granola bars were really yummy and I enjoyed the yogurt and fruit even though it was not near as sweet as yogurt you get in the US.
We went on a little "game drive" between the airport and the resort. Then after lunch we went out and did an evening drive where we saw a cheetah calling for his brother (it sounded just like a little meow and it was so cute). Later we saw female lion and shortly after a male lion made his way down towards us too. The hoofed animals are cool and all, but the cats are better.
Hyena
Cheetah
Topi
Gazelle
Jackal
Female lion
Hippo out of the water, that's when you know you are out too late! We stayed out a little longer than we should have because we were watching the lion. But then we ran into the leopard and they are rare to see! It doesn't look that dark because my phone adjusts the lighting, but it was getting quite dark.
Leopard
We woke up early, with our breakfast packed for us, and headed out for a long day driving to the triangle where the great migration is and the small chance of seeing a water crossing. There were lots of hot air balloons in the sunrise.
Pumba (warthog)
Our guides were amazing at spotting the lions, and they knew where to look. We were just cruising down the road chatting away and he turned off and drove up into the brush and we saw this whole family of lions!!! There were like six of them. They were all sleeping but when we pulled up some of them lifted their tired eyes.
The guides told us that the cats don't recognize us as humans because they can't smell us over the smell of the gas from the vehicles. I don't know about that. They can see our eyes. I think they just don't care about the slow moving vehicles because they don't try to steal their food and they don't try to hurt them ever.
We were right next to this family taking pictures and talking when the adolescent male on the far right scooted up on his hind legs in a pouncing position. His eyes were focused on Jaclyn in the far back of the jeep. Then he let out a little half growl. We decided we had seen enough, they were clearly not happy we were there. Jaclyn felt a little uncomfortable too!
A few minutes later we drove past a large dead animal, maybe wildebeest, that was most likely what this family had killed and eaten in the night. The vultures were finishing it off..
We got to the river, and the first thing we see is a crocodile eating something. It was thrashing around and chomping it's jaw. I don't know what it was but it was gone. And these crocs are huge! I can see why the waters here are so dangerous. Apparently the crocs and the hippos tolerate each other. The hippos are too big and mean with tough skin so the crocs don't try to eat them. But we saw a dead and bloated hippo in the water and our guide said the crocs will wait for the skin to breakdown in the sun and then they will eat it.
Ostriches were super cute!
I am actually surprised that I never needed to use the bathroom while we were out driving. There's no real safe place to squat in privacy out there. So we got to the triangle and there was a little stop. I mean, I squat in the woods all the time so it's not a big deal to me, but it's definitely not ideal!
We crossed back and forth between Kenya and Tanzania on our drive, which is kind of interesting. What was weird was I got a bunch of texts pop up when we did go into Tanzania. They were all "green" texts. I had no problem sending texts to iphones, or looking online while in Kenya. But I couldn't get any "green messages" to go through (non iphone people). Not sure why they suddenly came through in Tanzania. Anyway, we set up breakfast, thought it was closer to lunchtime. I was so hungry I wanted to eat way more than I had ordered! Which is funny because I obviously wasn't working out since we were in the vehicle the majority of the day. And I don't usually get that hungry in the morning. But my stomach wasn't sure what time of day it was at that point.
We passed millions of wildebeests, I didn't even get any great pictures of them. Partly because they're pretty ugly but mostly just because they were everywhere so I guess I thought I did already. I didn't get a pic of the cape buffalo either but they were big and acted and sounded just like cows.
We saw elephants a few times but always from far away. There are times when they would drive off-road, but technically you need a special permit to do that and they didn't have one. Out here in the triangle the rules are more strict also so he wasn't going off road to get closer to them. But he kept promising me, we will get closer, we will get closer. I didn't know if I believed him...
We laughed at this lone zebra hanging out with the wildebeests. I said it was a zebra that identified as a wildebeest. I was sitting closest to the guides at that time and he was laughing, though I'm not sure how much he really understood of my jokes. I made a lot of jokes, though.
I love this picture. The "african trees" as we call them because they are the kind you always see in safari pictures (for good reason) and wildebeests spread out as far as the eye could see. Plus a vulture or something in the tree.
Out of nowhere, all of a sudden, there were two families of elephants walking straight toward the road right where we were!! I got so excited!!! They crossed the road right in front of us. I was dying. This big male stood right in front of us and looked us in the eyes. Then he did a threatening display, waving his trunk, shaking his head, and stomping his foot. I was sure our driver would back up, seeing that he was not happy. He didn't. I waited for the big guy to start toward us, but he didn't. He just stared for another minute and I guess he decided we weren't going to do anything and he just moved on. But it was something to see!
The babies were so cute!! One of them was rolling in the mud. They drank some water. The second family crossed the road behind us. We watched for a long time. It was the highlight of my whole trip.
Timon (meerkat). It's cute that Lion King named these guys the real African name (him and Pumba I mean).
I love giraffes too, so much. But we saw a lot of them.
The worst part of the safari was driving in the mud and water. It rained at night so in the morning there were huge tire tracks in the mud and we would slide around. The vehicle was perfectly capable but it was nerve racking for me. And then he just drove through a stream, with a big mud hill at the other side. I couldn't help wonder what we would do if we got stuck in the mud out there! But we never did, of course.
We did one last game drive in the morning before we packed up to leave. I figured we had seen all the things we needed to see. But I was wrong! We saw four young males feasting on a wildebeest. It was pretty cool. We were staying on the road because our driver doesn't have an off-road permit, like I mentioned, even though a bunch of other cars had pulled off the road and got closer. There was a ranger driving by giving out tickets, and when a car would pull away to try and get away from the ranger, he would chase them down! So I was just using my zoom lens and we were watching from a distance, when the ranger pulled up next to us and started talking to our guide in whatever language they speak (could've been Swahili, but they also have tribal languages they grew up speaking so I don't know). I guess he was telling our guide thank you for following the rules and he gave him permission to get closer, so we drove right up there too.
There was a hyena or two lurking not very far away just waiting for their opportunity to finish up the leftovers. It would've been really cool to watch them take down an animal, but that only really happens at night. We aren't allowed to be out at night, but we also wouldn't really be able to see anything anyway.
We headed back to the "airport" for our plane, lol. Luckily we only had to take off and land once this time! And there were two pilots. We didn't die. What a fantastic experience this whole safari was!!
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