Masaai Mara

We didn’t have internet access in Masaai Mara for the past 2 days, so I am now writing to you from our second location, Lake Naivasha.  We’ll get to the lake in the next post, but first let’s catch up on the Mara.

We arrived at the Mara Sopa lodge on Tuesday in time for lunch and some lounging by the pool before an afternoon game drive before dinner. Then yesterday we went on an all day game drive covering a chunk of this immense reserve, having lunch down by the Mara river. It was a pretty successful day.

Wildlife sightings included several lions—males, females, and later a group of 6+ younger ones napping--, lots of elephant, giraffe, 2 male cheetah, and all of the other common game including wildebeest, zebra, Grant’s and Thomson’s gazelle, impala, topi, hartebeest, and cape buffalo. Here are some photos:

 Male lion napping in the grass. He was completey hidden until our driver found him

 Group of younger lions

 Cheetah with a VERY full belly (look how big that thing is right now)

 Baboon piggy back ride

 Wildebeest grazing

zebra friends

Pretty successful outing, despite it being the low season. The migration does not start for another month and a half, so the 1 million wildebeest and 200,000 zebra that fill the park from Aug-Oct. are still south in Tanzania. The park looked pretty empty as a result. After passing the animals that hung out near our lodge, we drove many kilometers without seeing much until we reached the Mara river where we saw numerous crocs and hippos hanging out in the water. Come July, those crocs will be lying in wait to snatch wildebeest crossing the river at the narrow crossing sites. I’ll have to go back during the migration some day, but the park was much less crowded now, which made for a nice introduction for mom and dad.