Safari Time!

The Maasai Mara (sometimes spelled Masai) is about 200km or 125 miles from Nairobi, located to the south west on the border of Kenya and Tanzania. You may have heard of the famous Serengeti. The Maasai Mara is the exact same ecosystem, but it's in Kenya, and it's called the Maasai Mara.  Mara is a Maa (the language of the Maasai) word for "spotted,"  a good description of the sparse, yet beautiful, landscape. 

So we set out on our way, and once we got out past Niavasha road, deeper into Maasai territory, the landscape took on the classic look of the African savannah. 

Here, a Maasai man rests under a tree.  

Once we got of the highway from Nairobi to Naivasha, we were off road for several hours,  driving (at outrageous speeds) on roads that looked like this. It was like getting a three-hour, deep body massage. Bonus.  

Eventually we arrived to the spot. Here, if you look closely, you can see a couple thousand wildebeests dot the landscape. We arrived in the middle of the great migration, a time when the more than 2 Million-strong wildebeest heard passes from the Serengeti up into Kenya during the annual move. There's much more about wildebeests below. 

The road leading up to our campsite. 

A classic Maasai housing structure. I don't know if this is a house or just a place for the animals or shepherds, but you can see the bush fence which keeps out all the wildlife. In these hills are all the animals you can find in the Mara itself. We drove through a herd of zebra and giraffes on our way up. 

If you ever find yourself on a safari in the Mara, go with Mara Siria outfitters. The camp's location is breathtaking; the staff was warm, friendly, and super courteous; the price was very, very reasonable; and did I mention the view is breathtaking?

Welcome to Mara Siria bush camp, here's our view of the Mara. 

Hello.  

In the foreground is the Mara rive. The Mara itself stretches back from where I'm standing some 30-40 miles or so to the border of Tanzania. The park itself is 583 square miles.

Did I mention the view? 

Here's the Mara spread out before us as we enter on our first safari run. 

We staid on the north side of the Mara, near the Oloololo Gate. 

These guys are ready to live out their Lion King fantasies.  

There are zebras everywhere. They are like, BFFs with the wildebeests. Some of the zebras are locals, but many travel with the migration. 

Wildebeests are not the smartest animals God ever made. In fact, they are noted for their relative stupidity. The zebras know this. They travel with the wildebeests, pretending to be their friends, when in fact they are thinking to themselves, "Man, those wildebeests are stupid, if we travel with them, a lion is much more likely to eat one of them than one of us." 

There are more than 2 million of these guys here. Their life is one of constant movement. They travel all year round, heading from Kenya to Tanzania and back. Our guide kept telling us how stupid they are, and they do look stupid. Research suggests they aren't as stupid as we think they are.

Here's a look at the Wildebeest migration pattern. Keep in mind the Serengeti is 12, 000 square miles or  1,500 square miles larger than the state of Maryland. These guys move all year, every year, their whole life. They follow the rains, and research suggests they follow certain grasses which have different nitrogen or phosphorus contents to match various needs (i.e., they need more phosphorus when they are nursing young). 

Maybe I was a bit hard on the zebras. While they do take advantage of the fact that crocodiles love the taste of wildebeests, and that when a big cat is chasing a wildebeest for more than five minuets, the wildebeest will forget that it's being chased....the zebra is probably a pretty good friend to the herd. I mean, shared hardship builds friendship, so maybe the zebra/wildebeest relationship is like Perfect Strangers, and the wildebeests are Balki. 

So here's one of the many safari trucks that ferries tourists around the Mara. More on the whole safari process below. 

Here's a water buffalo basking in the sun. These are actually one of the most dangerous animals for humans to come across in Kenya. They will charge you if they get scared, and you will not out run them. As he basks in the sun, I can't help but read his mind... "Feels good man." 

More of the heard, with their zebra BFFs in the back.  

Here's a Topi. They are pretty big deer like animals. 

Wikipedia describes them as "highly social." We just drove past them all day long.....ah the catch 22 of the modern safari. You get to see amazing things, but you do so from a vehicle...just driving by advanced animal social systems, staring for a few minuets, and then tearing off because word of leopard a few kliks away just came over the radio.

Our first elephant sighting! Everybody loves elephants, what more can I say? 

Ahhhh, a real treat about to unfold. Here, a male lion looks over at a female and cooly says, "Hey, how you doin?"

She's hooked and very interested in this cool cat.

She performs a rare and unusual display of flexibility and interest. 

Prepares herself mentally. 

Saunters over seductively. 

Awww yea...bow-chicka-wow wow.  

Close your eyes kids...

Can we look yet? NO!!!!

Annnnnnnnd, I love you.  

Who's your daddy? 

Like a boss....

What a life for the King of the Jungle Savannah.

The constant backdrop of thousands and thousands of wildebeests. As we drove around, looking for "the Big Five" (lions, leopards, elephants, rhinos, and buffalo (but no one really cares about buffalo)), you have this amazingly large wildebeest herd everywhere. It becomes a constant fixture in the park. 

The wildebeest is also called the "Gnu"...pronounced genew...which is supposed to mimic the noise they are constantly making. You can hear their symphony below.

I'm kinda bummed out I didn't get a better or more pictures of these warthogs. They were everywhere, so it's one of things where you are like, oh yeah, I'll get that later....and then you realize you forgot to get it. They kneel down like this when they are eating whatever it is they eat out of the ground. They also run around with their little tail sticking straight up in the air. Without telling a single joke, I found them to be very funny. 

More of the herd. Hear them below.

I wish I had some better microphone recording equipment. But here you can hear the gnu of the gnu. 

Here's our faithful steed. We whipped around in this thing for three days. It may look like a fam-van but it's actually a beast of a 4x4. 

Manning my post...on the look out for wildebeest....oh, there's one. And another. And another. And 2.2 million others. 

Everywhere you look, everywhere...millions of beests. 

We would drive through their herds as they milled about. They like to hang out in the road, but you just let them know you aint stopping, and they get right out of the way. Zebras too. 

One of the few shots I managed of a baby elephant. The moms always hide the babies when the safari truck rolls up. I don't blame them.  

Look at him. Millions of them. GNU!!!! (an egret hitches a ride in the background) 

You can't ride them, you can't eat them, you can't really make stuff out of them. They pretty much only exist as God's personal lawnmowers/fertilizers of the Serengeti/Maasai Mara. Also as crocodile bate, lion food, leopard chow, and vulture's delight when they die in the river. 

In the very few moments where we actually got to contemplate the nature in silence (again the nature of the modern safari does not lend itself to quite contemplation).....you look out at innumerable herd and think, listening to their constant gnus, and wonder in awe at the interconnectedness of nature and of complex ecosystems. These stupid animals, pretty much useless to humans, basically support an entire ecosystem simply by walking through it every year. The predators they feed, the scavengers they feed, the grass they trim and fertilize.....an entire network of life, perfectly balanced and self sustaining. You may think this just happened, to me it screams intelligent design. 

A view as we cruise through a herd. 

Although officially a member of "the Big Five," I get the feeling that not too many people are flying across the world to see this guy. I mean they are impressive, but it's usually like this, "Oh, look a buffalo...wow, I heard they are dangerous....yup....oh look that warthog has a funny tail..." At least that bird likes him. 

Personally, I really dig the giraffes. I long to create the perfect giraffe saddle, and then go through one of those long video montages where I break and train the giraffe in an almost spiritual experience where I bond with his animal essence. And then I ride my giraffe through the Savannah...man, that would be AWESOME!

The giraffes here, surprisingly, are called Maasai giraffes. Notice their unique markings. The other kind of giraffe has smooth lined shapes on their pattern. 

I called him Geoffrey. He didn't respond.  

Here's some vultures in a tree. Of course, just like some sinister scene from a Disney movie, they are chilling in the dead tree. They got all these other living trees to choose, but they choose the dead tree. What can I say, they eat dead animals... 

Here we met a pretty shy elephant male, who appeared to be separated from a group. They don't usually travel alone. He had tusk issues too. 

Don't ask him about the tusk...it's a long story. 

I hope he's not as sad as he looks. 

I wish I knew what he was thinking. All the elephants would be like, on the move, going from someplace to some other place with their family, and we roll up, and they would stop doing whatever it is they were doing. They would just stand there, doing nothing, and wait for us to leave. I have a feeling they like the modern safari industry as much as I do. 

So, more hippos, but this time, they are out of the water. These guys were enjoying some sun before their afternoon session of killing local fishermen. Hippos.  

I swear this one was particularly perturbed  by my presence. His mind is sure to be filled with thoughts of murder...hippos. 

These hippos are lazy...too tired from terrorizing local fishermen. 

Apparently hippos are very sensitive to sun burn, so they stay in the water all day. Bro, you need to reapply every hour. I wonder if hippos pay as much for sunscreen as us mzungus. 

So, we didn't see a leopard, but we came across mama cheetah and her cub in mid meal.

Mmmmmmmm, baby gazelle. 

But danger lurks, she might have her kill stolen. 

Mom's on the look out. Something is out there ready to steal her kill.

By none less than the KING. But we are on the move again...driving away from yet another one of the countless wilderness dramas that plays out each day in the Mara. I feel like David Attenborough. 

I feel like this guy is saying, leave us alone...

What can you say about elephants. They are just so cool. 

Again mama hides her baby. 

Although ma tried her best, if you look, you can see the baby wave good bye as we tear off in our safari van. 

We are tearing off to get to this river, the Mara river, because there are reports that the wildebeests are about to cross. You may have seen this before on NatGeo or the BBC. This is the famous river crossing where wildebeests jump in the river only to be eaten by a crocodile. Actually, more wildebeests die because they break a leg, or are trampled by other beests, or because they are too exhausted to make the climb out of the river. Here you can see, maybe 20-30 bodies floating in the river. The ones who didn't make it.

The carrion birds have a literal feast here. In the background a satisfied crocodile swims down the river. 

A closer look at the river scene with the birds feasting on the ones who failed to cross. You can see the beests cuing up in the background. 

The birds gather, awaiting a fresh batch of failed river crossers. The beests will cue like this, sometimes for many hours or a whole day until one brave gnu heads out to ford the river. 

This may look like a natural scene, but just to the right of that crossing, about 200 meters back, is this. Dozens and dozens of tourists with their safari vans. People will literally wait all day for a chance to view a crossing. To me, I see it as yet another disillusiment with travel and tourism. The kind of thing Don DeLilo writes about. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love to travel, and I am a tourist. But this whole safari experience was like this surreal detachment from nature, even though the whole thing was about nature. Nothing but rich Westerners in supped up 4x4s, tearing through the park looking for animals so they can take pictures of them and put them on their blog...

But I digress. The cue is long enough, the wildebeests (with their eager crowd of humans and meat eaters) are ready to risk their life to cross the river.  

Such an epic event. They cross this river twice a year, spending only a few months on the one side before going back over. We didn't see any of the high level drama of a BBC special. No, the crocs had already eaten their fill by this point. Just a bunch of terrified looking wildebeests jumping frantically in to swim across.  

We were pretty sure the whole troop made it across without a single casualty. It was a good day for the beests. 

Wildebeests live about 20 years. That means a full life will include about 40 crossings. 

I was thinking about the collective wisdom in the herd. I'm not exactly sure, but I was imagining that even the oldest beests in the herd have spent their whole life in the modern age of industrial tourism (Big Tourism). Their whole life, they cue up at this river, an event where so many things can go wrong and they could die a painful death, and lining the sides of the river are humans in huge trucks, staring at them with binoculars and expensive cameras. I wonder if gnus have existential crises. 

Come at me bro!

Here's a clip of a bunch of different carrion eaters going to town on who knows what (probably a gnu). I find it to be one of the most awful sounds I've ever heard. Being picked to death by birds pretty much tops my list of worst ways to die. 

But for all those hideous scavenger birds...true beauty can be still be found. 

A truly amazing specimen. I wish I knew its name. I like to think it's called a Rainbow Bird. 

A Rainbow Bird in flight. 

Oh, what's that popping its head up? Tough to spot at 50km an hour, but I have hawk eyes!

A hyena pup!

Yes, come out little guy...I've got left over chicken from lunch.

Soooo much cuter than their full grown counterparts. 

Hey bro...smile and laugh for us! 

Feels good man.  

These two again.....get a room. Don't know if it's the same pair but they were chilling at a spot not terrible far from where we saw them the first day. 

Hey mister lion, er, I mean Your Highness...I want to take your picture. Sit still. Naw, you got a dumb look on your face. Let me take another.  

Nope, you still look kinda retarded. 

How about the Mrs? Nope, you look dumb too. 

Closer, but the whole mouth open thing makes you look a bit silly. 

Derrrrrrr, if I only had an air conditioner. 

I could say that he let out an epic roar, but no, Simba was just yawning.  

These little mongoose dudes where pretty funny. Super vigilant. Like a Marine Corps fire team, they take turns popping up to cover each other as the group moved. Shoot, move and communicate!

Back to camp after our second day out in the Mara. I can't get over how amazing the view was. I mean, seriously, did I mention that Mara Siria has the best view possible? Call it Pride Rock. 

Here's me in the plunge pool after a long run. Seriously, this view....I'm telling you. 

On our last day, I woke up early to catch a sunrise over the Mara. 

Shooting a sunrise without a tripod is a bit challenging but also a lot of fun. 

Good morning Kenya!

This might be, like, the most African picture I've ever taken. Maasai herdsman, giraffes, zebras, even an elephant in the back. All that's missing is a woman carrying something extremely large and heavy on her head....and some other stereotypes I can't think of right now. 

You drive through these herds all day. Nothing but thousands and thousands of wildebeests.  

Here's one of the nicer roads in the Mara....and free from gnus! 

On our last day we left the park by driving from the north gate to the south (about 80km) and then from there back to Nairobi. When you get away from the Mara river, the landscape transforms to this sparce, but hauntingly beautiful place. The rolling hills make you feel like just over that next hill, there will be absolutely nothing...like you've arrived at the edge of the world. 

This was the more typical path through the park. 

A van similar to ours tearing through the savannah. 

Oh, look who it is...about 20kms from where we first saw them. Here's mama cheetah and her cub.

I wonder how it worked out with the lion. She seems much more relaxed now, so I am going to go ahead and assume here and baby cub were able to eat their fill of gazelle.  

La Dolce Vita.  

A classic landscape. 

Some more Topis. See, again, I could tell you these two were locked in a battle of epic proportion...winner takes control of the harem and the territory. But no, they were rolling around in the dirt, scratching themselves with their horns. Nature.... 

Another cheetah sighting. A bit far off, but wait, there's more. 

Turns out to be a three-cheetah hunting party. Good luck boys!

Another of my personal faves...The Black Backed Jackal....here put on this bandit hat.  

He's licking his lips and ready to find some left overs.  

More classic landscapes at the edge of the Earth. 

We've nearly come to the end of our trip through the Mara, just like the wildebeests, we have to cross over the Mara river once more.  

ORLY?

I do what I want....oh, there's like fifteen hippos just over there, my bad. 

Just a hippo waiting for a fishing boat to come by so that it can exact its murderous blood-lust.  Hungry, hungry hippos indeed. 

So we actually got to cross the border in to Tanzania, so that was cool. I know feel solidarity with illegal immigrants everywhere. 

Here's Tanzania. As this picture demonstrates, the Serengeti is much, much different than the Masai Mara.  

Happy Safari Campers!