Month: October 2013

After the long game drive to the Mara river, we continued with a Monday evening game drive, followed by Tuesday morning/evening drives and a Wednesday morning drive. We had seen pretty much everything but cheetahs and leopards.

No luck on Monday evening. But we did find a tree with a disturbing number of vultures (at least a dozen), plus ostriches, lions, and yet another amazing sunset.

Tuesday morning started with some coffee at the tent. We searched for cheetah again, but no luck. We’d shared three days of game drives with Mike and Lisa, and this was their last, so we felt bad that they’d missed the cheetah. We had one more day (two more drives). We did see some young jackals and a tower (group) of giraffes.

Monday morning’s drive again started at sunrise (6:30), but this time we packed a picnic breakfast to cover the extended drive to the Mara river. We were hoping to see a wildebeest crossing. They cross en masse – a few days earlier there was a crossing that lasted a little over an hour.

Warthogs aren’t the prettiest animals, and they’re very shy, but they’re just cute enough with three young ones to “make the cut” for blog inclusion.

We crossed paths with an antelope and a giraffe (among others) on the way to the river.

A cape buffalo was snacking on the bluff above the Mara river. And the Mara has plenty of hippos.

Hippos are excellent swimmers – note how they hardly move in the river despite the obvious current. And they’re noisy at times.

When we reached the river, our guide Daniel pointed out that the zebras on our side near the shore were wet. We’d just missed a zebra crossing. There were still a bit more than a dozen zebra on the opposite shore. The zebra on the far shore then made a crossing. Eight made it before the hippos started bellowing and scared off the remaining zebra.

Hey there, it’s us!