From the air strip to the camp we saw elephants and zebras in that short journey. The trips were one in the afternoon from 4pm to about 6 or 7pm ready for dinner. In the morning we were woken up at 6am in the pitch black to go out at 6.30 am for another safari, back in time for breakfast and then another safari after breakfast at 10.30am back for lunch.
I took over 800 photos and I’ve only photoshopped 80 or so at the moment so what I’m posting here is only a small selection of the photos we actually took out there!
From the air strip to the camp
While waiting for the first afternoon safari
We had monkeys outside our tent!
Afternoon Safari
The one thing that struck me was when we stopped the absolute peace, quiet and calmness of the plains of the Masai Mara. It’s so rare in the modern day to have absolute quiet.
Often we’d get so close the the animals that if you were to put your arm out the side of the jeep you could have touched them! They didn’t seem phased by the jeeps or people at all, but they did all seem to be keeping a close eye on other animals though. We even found a cheetah with a kill! Not sounds for the squeemish
Towards the end of the afternoon, on our way back to camp, we first went through a big ditch and almost got the jeep stuck but Peter managed to keep going through it, past some bushes at which point he decided to drive through these bushes, stopped and just to our right was a male lion fast asleep under a bush. There is no way Peter could have seen him from the track though!
As all the jeeps were connected by radio all of the other groups started heading to see this lion but seemed to have got stuck at this ditch from earlier. So we went to help out to see this jeep with one wheel high in the air, everyone outside it trying to get this jeep free again. I’m not so sure everyone would have been so keen to get out had they realised, as we did, that less than 100metres away was a male lion asleep under a bush!
Just enough time for a last giraffe before getting back to camp for the night
More photos from Safari can be viewed in my photo gallery at http://www.richardhyland.me.uk/collections/categories.php?cat_id=23
