Masai Mara

I






While it's still fresh, I need to note the highlights of an amazing day.  Some of the highlights were a family of lions with two young cubs, a couple of cheetahs, many elephants, gazelles, hippos, bat-earred fox; but Yata and I both really enjoyed the giraffes.  After a full day of driving the most spectular landscape;probably the furthest panorama ever, over rolling grasslands; we then visited a Masai village.  The young men did a welcome dance with song for us. They demonstrate some of their native skills and took us into a dung and stick home.  It was very dark and cramped. They say the whole village leaves and builds a new one every nine years because the termites cause their homes to fall down.  There are large termite mounds around, in fact one of the cheetahs was sunning himself on one this morning. We are doing the safari with an international group: Paul, Ukrainian world traveler (fifty countries so far), Slim and wife from Tunisia, Sam, a young British/Belgian here volunteering in an orphanage near Nairobi (he got mugged leaving his Nairobi lodging the morning we left and has a big knot on his forehead-he fell) and Leon a Sri Lankan from Dubai who has a professional cameras.  Everyone is getting great pictures.  It was an eleven hour tour.  We left at 7:30 am and by noon stopped at the Mara river for  lunch. This is the border with Tanzania.

We're sitting in camp now having a Tusker beer and waiting for dinner to  be served.  We get up for a six am game drive, come back for breakfast and then headed back to Nairobi.  Glad we made this trip.  At times it's challenging, lots of spine jolting and head snapping roads. But we've been taking Tylenol prophalactically and I think it's really helping..

We sleep in a fairly large canvas tent with a tin roof over it and a tiled bathroom attached to the back.  The camp is nicely wooded site, we have hot water in the shower and electriciy for about five hours a day so you have to strategize your phone and other battery charging.Of course the bed has a mosquito net. We even sleep under one of those at Ella & Ken's mainly because they don't really have screens on any windows here, just bars for security.
More on security in the next blog.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

With Love from W.I. To WI

Image
Trinidad I Yes, we are in the West Indies, Trinidad to be exact, having come from frosty Wisconsin (WI) we are lavishing in tropical warmth, barefoot. Sorry to incite any envy, but how else can I tell you what we are doing without mentioning this. The weather is one of the main reasons we leave WI in the winter. But the weather has been interesting here. It's supposed to be the beginning of the dry season but instead the rainy season is lingering into January. What that means is that its been raining a lot! A couple days this week it rained in sheets most of the day and all night. The ground is soggy and the air is humid to say the least. We tried to go for a walk but got rained on and came back to our sweet cottage. The cottage is situated on a four acre tropical garden in the center of the country, in the countryside. We have a deck off the kitchen which looks out towards the hilly grasslands and to the mountain range in the north. Trinidad is also a bird watcher's ...
Read more

Gettin' Kicked Around by Jenny

Image
Sailin’ past Kick ‘Em Jenny The swells were as big as a small house, with winds gusting to 28 knots….. I had downloaded Windfinder to my phone and it turned out to be perfectly accurate in its prediction of 25 knot winds (with gusts to 28) for Tues and Wed of our trip.  Yata and I being neophytes to this sort of sailing; we had only sailed on Lake Pepin and the Great Lakes a time or two; didn’t quite know what to expect. We sailed Sunday to Sunday, Jan 24 to 31st on the Chinook, a 42” mono-hull Bavaria yacht with three berths with Kay Hamilton, Dwight Jelle, Jeri and Dave Erickson.  Dwight was the captain and he and Kay have had a lot of experience including racing as well as weeklong trips through the British Virgin Islands and the Grenadines.  Dave and Jeri purchased Kay and Dwight’s Tartan sailboat and have it at the Pepin Marina. So they too have years of sailing experience.   We departed Sunday about 2pm after a couple hours of loading and instruc...
Read more

Re-entry (belated)

Image
Back to the Upper Midwest I've been meaning to write this follow up since the day we returned but for some reason, just kept it in my head instead of pressing the keys. Meanwhile my memories and thoughts are loosing their clarity. But one memory that will not die is that of the wonderful Midwestern 'can do it-ive-ness' we encountered the day we were flying home. We got to the Miami airport and realized that the car key we were going to need to get into our car and drive home in, was missing; probably back in Trinidad under the desk. So I got my cell phone charged up and called our son Nick who gave me phone numbers and suggestions. I then called our insurance company who gave us the VIN number so I could call Trail Dodge in Menomonie to get a new key made. Of course, making a key is no simple operation. The newer cars need special keys so the service department called and found the proper type and had it brought to Menomonie. Then they had our Jeep towed to ...
Read more