Masai Mara Extension Nov 14—19, 2007
Posted by David Wolf
David Wolf
David Wolf is a senior member of the VENT staff and one of our most experienced tour leaders. After birding the U.S. and Mexico for over a decade, an interest in the mammal...Related Trips
The Masai Mara certainly lived up to its well-deserved reputation as the best big-game country in Kenya. As we flew into this sparsely-inhabited region, it was immediately obvious that the rains had not yet come—and that the mammals were concentrated along the western edge of the Mara where Kichwa Tembo Camp is located. Many thousands of milling wildebeest were littering the grasslands and would remain here for the next several days, with scattered zebras, gazelles, and eland amidst them.
Three days of idyllic game drives brought one stunning sight after another, including lazy lions with very full bellies, a beautiful serval still out in the early morning, elephants drinking from a stream only a few feet from our vehicles, a trio of young giraffes neck-wrestling in a synchronized ballet, and a wide array of antelope and other animals. Special birds here included the male Ostrich shading and guarding its chicks, a pair of stately Saddle-billed Storks, a huge Kori Bustard cautiously coming to a puddle to drink, colorful Schalow's and Ross's turacos and a male Narina's Trogon in the strips of evergreen forest, hideous gaggles of vultures feeding on the abundant carcasses, and strange-looking Southern Ground-Hornbills.
On our final day's game drive we pushed southward to the Tanzania border and found a beautiful female cheetah and three grown cubs lounging under the bushes, while a pair of normally elusive Coqui Francolins paraded around beside us. As the dark clouds of the impending rains built up, we turned around and started back, only to encounter yet another cheetah, this one feeding on a baby gazelle it had just killed. And then the rains broke, almost as if signaling us that it was time to leave. By the next morning many of the wildebeest had already left the region, headed back towards the Serengeti and the lush grass that would quickly sprout with the rains. We almost didn't leave, suffering through a long, frustrating, wet delay at the "airport" before planes finally appeared to get us back to Nairobi and our onward connections home, our memorable safari over with.