We have arrived at our fourth and final safari camp, Interpids Mara on the Masai Mara! As great as each place has been, I do think they saved the best for last.
The Masai refers to the people of the area. The Masai are recognizable from any stock photo, with their red plaid blankets and decorative dress. Other tribes believe their height, slenderness and beauty come from the tradition of bleeding their cows and mixing it with milk to drink. Regardless of the means, the Masai are a distinct tribe in a nation of more than 40 tribes.
Mara basically means plains or grasslands valleyed between mountains. The landscape is beautiful, and it makes game drives jaw-dropping regardless of animals spotted. It is easier to see across expanses, and the recent rainy season has made the grass tall and green. Samburu dust has been exchanged for some mud, but the Land Rover can more than handle it. Also, the roads are more suggestions than limitations—when wildlife is spotted up on a grassy hill, our guide just takes the Rover off-roading so we can get close to the animals, who never seem to care about the weird-wheeled beasts that hang around so much. (Shh. We found out on our last day that he would get a $100 ticket if caught by a park ranger, but there are few rangers and lots of land.)
Sunrises and sunsets over the Masai Mara. The sun kept getting photobombed by animals.
The camp itself is the Safari Camp Ideal. It is built around a river bend, where hippos submerge in the day, and graze around and bellow at night. Mongoose (mongeese? mongooses? A little help here, please!) travel in happy packs, looking like moving dirt piles and very frolicky ferrets. And our tent! We have two tents that are connected with a common living room, and it is perfect. The swimming pool has a small waterfall feature which makes Dwayne’s building fingers itch to create one himself. If you could go to only one safari location, make it Masai Mara, regardless of where you camp. (If you get to add a second, Ol Pejeta easily makes the cut.)
This was the only camp that did the sunrise drives. On the second morning, we* packed a boxed breakfast and stayed out for 6 hours, finally “catching” our leopard. We also finally got to see our cheetahs! The pack-that-used-to-be-5-but-is-now-3-even-though-cheetahs-are-usually-solitary showed up and we watched them cross the river where the water was shallow and fast enough to not be inhabited by crocs and hippos.
Even though we had seen several of these animals at other camps, we often saw them in larger herds and the vast grasslands produce different behavior than dry scrub.
These were a few of the animal highlights:
(1) By this point, we had seen lots of lions–males, females, and cubs. But this particular pride was dripping with cubs. They also had more than one male, but they don’t hang out with the women-folk and cubs. A particular hobby of males is killing cubs that aren’t theirs, so most days, lionesses play “hide the cubs”. A lioness will nurse any cub of her pride, which is handy when there are so many cubs. Can you count the lions in this video? I got 21.
(2) It is so wild to see a bloat of hippos in every stretch of the river! We caught them a few times out of water, but they spend the daytime mostly submerged.
(3) The non-devious hunting attempts and casual rubbing shoulders of predators and prey surprised me. They didn’t seem any less successful than the careful prowling and hunting of the lions, who we saw organize ambushes four times and never successfully.
(4) We witnessed the strict control of the male impala over his harem. At a whiff of danger, he gathers them close. But you know how long a male’s reign lasts? Truly, take a minute to guess. Because they must remain vigilant against predators, and keeping the ladies from going off to the bachelor group (where the boys go when they are butted out of the herd by the dominant male as soon as they sprout horns), they eat little and quickly lose the strength that won them the herd. They are dethroned and return to the bachelor pad in about two weeks. Only a small number of females can get pregnant in that short time, and so the herd eschews inbreeding. I am fascinated.
I have to add one more highlight of the Intrepids Camp. Chief ran an afternoon explorer camp for kids of all ages (seriously, if you are old enough to walk, you would love the afternoon activity). Kyla did Masai beading one afternoon and made me my favorite Kenyan souvenir. Kyla and Wes made bows and arrows and had a shooting contest, and the one that Piper loved, took plaster casts of animal prints found around camp, and then pressed them into the dirt to make their own trail. It was followed by a pretty great obstacle/parkour course. Chief also did evening talks with slideshows of the Great Migration (that goes right through the Mara in July and August, and I will never witness it in person because, for every million wildebeests, it sounds like there are a thousand humans), and the Big Five. He is also possibly one of the most personable people I have ever met. Even Piper liked him, if you need a personality testimony.
Thanks for joining me on our 11 day Kenyan Safari! Meet me in a few outside of Malindi, on Kenya’s white beaches?
*Truth: a 7-course boxed breakfast was packed for us by very attentive staff who also delivered hot water bottles and food to Wes, who stayed back because 1) he was having Terrible Tummy Trouble, 2) he gets bored easily if the animals aren’t Minecrafted, and 3) his mother hasn’t been able to sell him yet. Yes, the first one is reason enough but when a kid goes that long in a foreign country without eating fruits and veggies in spite of his parents’ entreaties, the heart hardens a bit.
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