2016-08-20: Lake Nakuru, Kenya
The majestic creature elegantly lifted its head. Its eyes seemed to be staring at something far away. Its glowing mane flowed gently with the little breeze, It was close to me, so close that if I reached my hand out I could touch it.
I was on a Kenyan Safari at the Lake Nakuru National Park. We first did a water Safari of Lake Naivasha, as we were on our way to the hotel.
When we drove from Nairobi, we came to a viewpoint of The Great Rift Valley. This valley was about 100 kilometers wide, and stretches from Isreal to almost the bottom of Africa! I was amazed at how far this stretched, and thought that it must’ve taken TRILLIONS of years for something so big to form.
The first thing we saw was a Pod of Hippos. Our captain and guide, Jimmy, said that the mom would hide male babies, and secretly raise the baby until it was big enough to fight his father to be the only male of the Pod. The mom would hide the baby male because if the father say the baby, he would kill it, for he doesn’t want any competition for sole male of the Pod.
Also at the Lake, we saw an island, this island was created when the nearby volcano that was about 20 kilometers away erupted. Then a movie called “Out of Africa” filmed parts there, they transported African animals to the island, and after they finished the film, they left the animals there. So, we headed there to see the animals. We saw Impalas, Giraffes, and Buffalo. The giraffe we saw looked like a huge dinosaur roaming the surreal plains. At first we thought that the Impalas were antelopes, but our guide said that they were Impalas. We later got closer to the Impalas during the safari.
It was also my first time I have ever seen an eagle, this was a Fish Eagle, and our guide also threw a fish out so we could see it swoop down and get the fish. Another bird I saw was a KingFisher, it was blue with white spots, it looked really cool when it hovered above the water and dove down to catch a fish.
After the safari we drove to our hotel, Flamingo Hills, located in the Lake Nakuru National Park. As we drove, we went from the buildings of Nakuru, to what felt like you had just jumped into National Geographic, or something like that. Our hotel was very interesting, our rooms were huge tents, with electricity and plumbing. We had lunch at our hotel, went to the pool, and went on an evening safari.
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As we drove I saw a group of cars up ahead that were stopped, I asked the guide what it was, there were female lions on a tree! There were 4 of them, two on each of the main branches. One lion seemed to want to come down, the one below it had to move, and after about 5 minutes of hesitation, the lion below fell down, we thought that they were going hunting, but the first lion that jumped down, made water. We then saw them each one by one jump down, and they all walked toward something. In 30 seconds, they had fully dissapeared in the tall grass.
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It was amazing to see herds of Impalas, Buffalo, and zebras casually grazing the plains. The Impalas were always in separate herds based on their gender, only one “Dominate Male” can go with the female herd. The Zebras were beautiful, and smaller than horses.
When were driving along, then all of a sudden we changed from driving in the plains, to driving in a deep, lush jungle. We saw some Baboons, the biggest ones were about 3 feet tall, and 1 ½ feet wide. Their butts were blue, and the babies were very nimble. We also came across black faced monkeys.
2016-08-21 Lake Nakuru to Masai Mara
The car bumped up and down so hard that we nearly flew out of our sets. Outside was the wild open plain,
“We are actually here,”
I thought.
I looked outside, the wilderbeast, gazelle, and topi were gently grazing the vast sea of brown grass. The animals all gathered under the rare shade of the tree, some lying down, others, standing. The gazelle seemed to be individual, and were usually found near a wilderbeast herd. The wilderbeast seemed to be resting from their travels, they were all lying down, and seemed very tired. The topi looked like gazelles, but had slightly different horns.
We were on the final stretch of rough road to our hotel, Mara River Camp, or MRC for short. When we were driving, the road was much more rough than what was expected, the road was so rough, that we were happy that we had seatbelts, for if we didn’t we’d be flying out of our seats.
When we were driving, many kids waved at us, I waved back, thinking that they liked seeing tourist, but later I found out that they wanted sweets. Later we bought some lollipops and gave to them.
We drove for about 7 hours, and most of it was rough terrain. When we entered, I started getting freaked out, there wasn’t any fence between us and the wild. We got a briefing of the rooms, and we found out that any wild animals can come in, but usually only zebras come in. If lions or predators come in, guards chase them off. Still, it gives me the chills to think that, ZEBRAS can be right outside our tent.
After the painful drive, it felt good to get on solid ground again.
When we had lunch at the outdoor hotel restaurant, we saw hippos in the water.
And for the first time ever, I saw an elephant in the wild, I was amazed at how big the elephant was, it looked like it could pick up my dad. I was excited to see them more clearly on the safari, for we only saw the nose and tail of the elephant.
After lunch, we entered our room, got ready and went to the pool for and evening swim. When I was in the pool, I saw a small fawn looking animal, and a group of monkeys, that looked like a pair of small, nimble, naughty, kids. I knew that now, we were in the center of Africa.
That night, we heard fighting hippos, and we knew that tonight was going to be a long night.
2016-08-22 Masai Mara
The magnificent cat looked out at the horizon, looking for a suitable prey. Its sharp yellow eyes could see almost 3 kilometers away at a small baby animal, perhaps a baby topi. The fierce and strong animals body moved in and out quickly as it breathed. The mammal looked hungry, ready to kill. This was a cheetah, with spotted dots on yellow fur, this animal is the fastest land animal in the world.
I am at the famed Masai Mara, with its vast diversity, it has lush waterholes to a vast open plain, with only a few trees in sight. The animals grazing here are the wilderbeast, gazelle, buffalo, impalas, and much more. Even at our camp hotel we saw something, it looked like a fawn, but was an adult, we found out that it was a Dikdik. We set off on a safari based on a river crossing of the great migration, but we never knew what more surprises we were going to see.
We started our safari with some gazelles, these gazelle were actually different kinds, but the same species! I thought that if there was a difference then it would be a different species, this, to me, was very irregular. The two types of gazelle were the Thompson gazelles, and the Grant gazelles. The Thompson gazelles had a stripe of black near their underbelly, had a white underbelly, and a fully black tail, they also seemed to be a more regular kind, the grants were very rare. The grants also had a black stripe, but that was only when they were young, later they would have fully brown sides, with a little brown on the underbelly. The grants also have a black tail with a little white on the top.
We then roamed the grounds for some time, passing through the plain filled with all sorts of slowly moving herds. We came across a group of elephants, they were near the river, where there was a nice quantity of green plants. We looked at the herds, and found that the only adult elephants of this herd were female! The fully grown male would live a solitary life, and only come when a female calls for mating, then the male meet up eith each other, and fight to be the mate. The elephant moved more quickly than what I had seen in the zoo. When we were checking out the elephants, we noticed that one of the baby elephants had a wound on the top part of the head, we could see dried up trickles of blood, it looked pretty sad.
We drove a few miles more, and found a pride of lions, unusually there were two males. There were three females, and all of the females seemed to be paying more attention to one male. Anthony, our guide, said that the other male, was probably the older one, and the females lost interest in him, but still let him hunt and eat with them. To my surprise, the females would hunt the food, call the males, let the males eat the tender meats, and then the females could eat. The only thing that males do is protect the territory.
We then drove some more, and found a beautiful cheetah! Its eyes were very fierce, and seemed to constantly be scanning the horizon. It was very beautiful, and we were very sympathetic when it when we found out that a female cheetah can’t protect its young, not even jackals.
We then drove to the main part of today, the crossing of the great migration. The animals that make up the great migration are zebras and wildebeest. The animals were all grouped up, no one wanting to be the lunch for the vultures, ibis, and crocs that were hanging out nearby. The animals would walk out onto a bank, looked at the water, and shriveled back in fear. We waited there for about an hour, in the meantime had our packed lunch. When we were going for a bushstop (restroom in the bushes) we saw people in the other vans jump up, we drove back as fast as we could, and managed to catch it.
The wildebeest didn’t run or walk into the water, they jumped, as if they wanted to go as far as possible out of the water. They went on for a while, and we saw some animals cross back to the other side, probably to encourage the babies to cross. Then a few hesitated, and the remaining group stopped. We had to wait again for one to bring up its courage. As we hung out, we saw a crocodile come and choose a piece of meat stuck between rocks. It ducked under water and appeared near a half eaten wildebeest. The crocodile eats rotten food and usually brings food underwater to bury it till it is rotten, but this crocodile floated downstream with the meat, until it came near a group of hippos, the male hippo stood up, and the crocodile, being smaller, let go its food, backed off, too scared to continue.
