My colleague Joshua, is an experienced Tour Guide/Driver and a Wildlife Conservationist gives an account of one of his several Safari trips to the beautiful and famous MAASAI MARA.
I drive a 4 wheel Toyota Land Cruiser. We have a fleet of ten. So I collected my American clients – 2 couples with their 2 teenage children from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport very early in the morning at 0700 AM (East African time). I took them to the Norfolk Hotel for breakfast, after which we drove for the Maasai Mara at about 0830 AM. We had to stop at the Scenic Eastern Escapement of the Great Rift Valley for viewing and picture taking of the breathtaking scenery. After half an hour, we departed going down the escapement and driving across the Great Rift Valley floor and climbed over the western Great Valley escapement and went through the Maasai land all the way to main gate of the Maasai Mara at Sekanani.
We arrived at the gate at about 11.30am. After clearing and paying the gate entrance fees and driving for a distance of about half a kilometer into the park, we started seeing so many animals of different kinds too. There were so many Wildebeest together with Zebra on both sides of the road, some grazing and some lying down. There were Warthogs too and a little further on, we saw so many Impala Antelope. As we drove on, we saw a group of about twenty Giraffes browsing as they moved on the nearby hill. To our right and about fifty meters away there were a big herd of Elephants of about 30 of them with 4 very young calves moving on majestically and protecting the young ones in their midst. We stopped for some minutes.
A short distance further on we found a very big herd of Buffaloes may be 2000 of them. The buffalo is one of the most dangerous animals to human being especially the rogue males. They can even ambush one. To our left there were Topis. Topis are of Hartebeest Antelope family. Only that the Top is dark brownish in colour and has grayish blue on the hind quarters as if it has put on a blue jeans. They have very good eyesight – actually they act as if they are the watchmen of the plains. You can see one of them stand on an old ant hill – a vantage point and watch. They will be the first to see the predator for example the Lion and alert other animals. But they have a poor memory. After seeing the Lion and may be turn aside for a moment it will forget the whole thing quickly. It is said that they are largest in numbers among all the antelopes in East Africa.
After about 7 kilometers form the Sekanani gate we come by a pride of Lion – about eight-five Lionesses 3 young curbs of about 8months old. They were all deeply asleep under the shade. No male was around; they always stay away off the main pride. And as we went on towards our lodge a black Rhino suddenly crossed the road about 50 meters in front of us. That was one of the rarest things to have happened. And can you imagine that we had seen all these Game in less than a distance of 11 Kilometers and a period of less than 45 minutes. Above all, we had seen 4 of the famous Big 5 which are the Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Rhino and the Buffalo all these before we had reached our Lodge (Keekorok Lodge) for checking in and having lunch.
Without forgetting the other so many varieties of Game we saw, like other Antelopes, Grants Gazelles, Thomsons Gazelles, Hurtebeests, Jackals and the Birdlife is very vibrant here too.
Our afternoon Game drive was also very pleasant because we saw more Elephant, more Lions and two Cheetahs. The following day ‘s early morning Game viewing was so great for we saw the last of the Big Five – the Leopard, the most elusive of the big five. In the afternoon, we capped it all when we saw the Cheetah hunt and kill a Thomsons Gazelle. Later, we found another pride of Lions with two big blackmaned males. And at the River Mara we saw Hippos and Crocodiles.
You can imagine how pleasant that 3 day Safari was. My clients were so overjoyed and because of this they have made tours back to Kenya four more times since then and they have pledged to travel to East Africa again.