TRIP10A

Willie said this group looked to him like a mother and three young adult cubs. They were frisky and playful this morning; two of the cubs loped off chasing each other for a short distance, then leaped in the air. We were able to get VERY close to them and really enjoyed the sighting!

People often want to know, "How close were you able to get?"
VERY close, as shown by this other vehicle. The animals usually ignored vehicles.

After about 15-20 minutes of picture-taking, we headed off toward a lone black dot in the distance. Soon it became apparent that the dot was a rhino. As we approached, Willie told us that this was a young female rhino - the only one on this side of the Mara river. (We later wondered if rhinos don't cross the river, and why not? There seemed to be plenty of shallow places.) He went on to inform us that there had been a mating pair in this area, and that this was their offspring. But poachers had taken both parents, leaving the smaller one to fend for herself. He told us there was some talk of bringing another male from the 35 (total, males and females) that reside across the river to join this one, perhaps forming another pair that could mate and reproduce. For now, though, she was all alone.

She's enjoying a leafy snack, and had obviously been rolling in some mud not long ago.

This shot shows how pretty the scenery was with the escarpment in the background. At right: we had
driven around her as she turned, and now can see the view in the other direction. Plains as far as the horizon!

A short distance away we found a fairly sizeable herd of Cape buffalo. We really liked the pictures we took with the escarpment in the background. That feature added a lot of depth and just good scenery to the shots.

In with this herd was a mother and a fairly small calf. As we snapped this picture we barely managed to avoid cutting off the mother's head! Great photographers!

"Come on, Junior. Those tourists are trying to take your picture. Hurry and get out of the shot!"

By now it was 8:40 and time to start back towards the camp. After all, they stopped serving breakfast at 9:30, and we weren't about to miss any meals on this trip! Ahead and to the left someone spotted what might have been "green ears," but they materialized as we drew closer into something that was moving. In our experience, termite mounds and bushes seldom moved very far, so this had to be an animal! It was a spotted hyena, allowing us a pretty good profile shot from a bit of a distance, then a really nice close-up, full face. This close-up was probably the best hyena picture we took the entire trip.

It's a bush! It's a termite mound! No, a spotted hyena! He allowed us to get really close before hustling away.

Most of the morning we had been working our way slowly Southeast, so now we were driving Northwest, towards the escarpment and the camp. Willie spotted and headed towards three ostriches off to one side, and we had time to grab a few quick shots before continuing on towards breakfast. These huge birds didn't cooperate as much as we would have liked. The male (the black one) kept putting his head down quickly to avoid being photographed. Or that's what it seemed. Actually I think he was preening to look good in front of the two females, but the result was one picture of a male ostrich with no head or neck! Then we managed a good shot of him, only to realize later (when we looked at the print) that we had a tree "growing" out of his head! More great photography!

The black one is the male. While his head is not exactly in the sand, it certainly isn't in the picture!

Here he popped his head up, right in front of that tree!

We made it back to the dining area at almost exactly 9:30, and there probably hadn’t been any real worry. It appeared that Sammy was waiting for us, and breakfast was most satisfying. Another typical English breakfast of porridge (optional), eggs to order, toast or rolls, several kinds of breakfast meats, lots of fruit and juices with coffee or tea.

Now it was 10:00 AM, and we had nothing scheduled (except lunch!) until our afternoon game drive at 3:30 PM. According to our notes, this morning we had seen waterbucks, lions, cheetahs, warthogs, buffalo, gazelles, eland, one rhino, 2 jackals, one hyena, giraffes and elephants at a distance. Among the birds we saw a tawny eagle, white-headed vulture, secretary bird, martial eagle, lilac-breasted roller, guineas, and spurfowl.

We "relaxed" for a bit, then soon realized that we were in Africa, and lying around a camp area reading was not how we had envisioned spending this precious time! Carol and I wandered over the grounds of the camp, looked at the swimming pool (luxury tent camp, remember?), and explored a building in which were displayed information and samples of insect life in the Mara. We had decided to eat lunch at the very end of the serving period, since we had just finished a huge breakfast, so we walked to the lobby and spent about an hour writing postcards. We read, I lay in the hammock outside our tent for about 20 minutes, and we chafed at the inactivity. Probably Linda chafed more than the rest of us.

The day had become mostly sunny and pleasantly warm, but definitely not hot. As the afternoon progressed, rain clouds moved in with very visible showers scattered around, and the sun disappeared. It actually became cool. By the end of the afternoon game drive (3:30 to about 6:30 PM) we had on long pants and jackets! We had to keep reminding ourselves we were only about 200 miles from the equator, at the Spring Equinox, yet the temperature was probably down in the 60s.

The afternoon game drive was not very productive. Willie was on full chui search mode, but no luck. We did see elephants, hartebeest, topi, some impala, warthogs, and lions. Bird sightings included yellow-breasted longclaw, widowbird, little bee-eater, white-browed coucal, lizard buzzard, and nightjar. Our afternoon pictures are below.

Typical afternoon view, rain showers in the area.

On our way to the camp we passed some of the "Kichwa Tembo pride" again.

We let Willie know that we would really like to spend more time tomorrow out looking for animals and less time "relaxing" (chafing!) around the camp. He told us he would arrange for a picnic breakfast and we'd stay out all morning until lunch time! We told him that was EXACTLY what we had in mind!

We arrived at the camp in time to clean up and have another huge evening meal (just what we needed!) and place our orders for the next morning's wake-up snack before heading back to our tents to write up notes of the afternoon.