To Kenya - Maasai Mara -2

Maasai Mara, Kenya  -  4 July
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Again we got up at 5:45am to take tea or coffee at 6am, and get in a morning game drive. (We made the kids try English style tea to help them along.) The goal for the morning was cheetahs. Francis had gotten some info about where they might be yesterday, but began listening in to the guide radio right away. He had mentioned that we could have to drive quite far to get in to see the cheetahs and rhinos. We passed the thickets where leopards tend to hide on the way out, and as we came up tpo a bridge where another van was parked, we saw a lady lion in the road. Then I noticed an older male lion just behind us on the right, so we backed the van up to get a better look. He eventually got up and stretched, and walked past us to scratch himself in some branches hanging to the ground of a nearby tree. He and three females soon moved off to the green shady culvert for what we imagined might be the heat of the day.

After that we took off again, speeding down the red dirt road towards where Francis heard cheetahs had been spotted. On the way he told us that he had not seen as many wildebeasts as we now saw on either side of us... 10,000s. Literally thousands and thousands of wildebeasts that Francis said were not here last week.

Within 100 meters of a team of minivans we saw 7 cheetahs. They looked sleepy, played with each other and chased the wildebeasts into groups, or just pushed them around. IT appeared that the group was a mother and her adult children. We watched them for over 30 minutes. Chasing and walking, lying sown and rolling around, hopping on each other's backs, only to "get serious" for a moment and chase after some wildebeasts for 15-25 seconds again.

We moved three or four times, following their movements, before we decided we had to leave to make breakfast by 10am. We made it back only by carreening our way in to arrive at 9:45. We found mostly slim pickings in the buffet, and limited pancakes that tasted really good. The omelette and sausages, were pretty good too.