Category: Mara

Magnificent Mara!

Magnificent Mara!

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Mark & Emily watch an amazing number of giraffe in the Mara!
John said it was “like a dream” – the best game drive he’d ever had. And he’s had quite a few in several African countries!

We spent a full day in the Mara, bucking tradition but also avoiding the rain!

There are so many hard myths so difficult to break about safari travel, and one of them is the game viewing routine. The fact of the matter is that there shouldn’t be a routine, because conditions change.

Right now is a cold time in Kenya, and in the Mara a time when every afternoon carries a magnificent thunderstorm. So the idea of going out on a dawn game drive, returning for breakfast and “relaxation” until the afternoon game drive, just doesn’t make sense.

We all slept in a bit, got tea and coffee served to us on our private verandahs overlooking the Mara River as the brilliant sun broke into a cloudless sky, then enjoyed a full breakfast before heading out for a day of game viewing.

We began our game viewing as practically everyone else was returning for breakfast! But with more time available, now, we were able to head down the main road all the way to the Tanzanian border.

After checking on our resident pride and seeing that their bellies were still too big for anything dramatic to occur, we meandered through some of the most lovely country in the Mara at its very southwest corner.

These are plains that in a month or two will be filled with wildebeest, but their beauty right now was breathtaking. Lemon green grasses, many beautiful wild flowers and blooming sausage and acacia trees. We made the requisite turn around the Tanzanian border stake before heading back to the Mara River.

I saw a young lion that looked distressed. We went over to him and he slouched away, I don’t think for fear of the vehicle, but almost as if we had discovered him doing something naughty.

Aha! He must have been told not to come with the hunt. Young males are never allowed to hunt with their mothers, even though the young females are. So sure enough a few hundred yards ahead and we saw three females stalking.

Unfortunately the ground was too wet for us to follow them around a hill, but as I said to the Cronans with me, this was a pride that had obviously had a number of failures up to now or they wouldn’t be hunting in the middle of the day. It was quite possible they had nothing in their sites, but were just sneaking around the hill with hope!

We found a beautiful sausage tree on a tiny hill with a grand view for lunch. About twenty elephant were to our north in a swamp and a huge herd of buffalo to our southwest on a hill.

After lunch we tooled up the Mara River, where the wildlife was thick. I think we past more than a thousand gazelle by the end of the day, and hundreds of topi. On the river we found some incredibly large crocs.

And after returning to the main road, the first thing we saw was a mother cheetah with three older cubs! They were perched on the top of an anthill, the mother surveying the veld, back and forth, back and forth. But the kids seemed disinterested and flopped back down asleep.

Later as we wound by the river, James noticed a gazelle snorting an alarm. Following the sight path from the Tommie all we could see in the tall grass was one buffalo. But patience prevailed, the Tommie kept snorting, and a beautiful male cheetah popped out of the grass. Sorry, buddy!

But perhaps the most astounding thing to me on this game drive came towards the end when we encountered nearly 50 giraffe. Giraffe aren’t social beasts. They do congregate from time to time, but rarely in numbers this large. It was truly magnificent.

So we headed home, it began to thunderstorm really badly, and as we slid back to tea and cakes around 430p we passed a number of poor travelers just coming out for their game drive!

Wing it to the Mara

Wing it to the Mara

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Glen's last breakfast at Kitich. Notice the chocolate cake.
Every good safari will have a significant travel day, but we were still able to get in several hours of game viewing in the afternoon.

The drive from the Mathews Mountains back to Nairobi, even with the great new Chinese road, would take about twelve hours according to the camp manager. I never contemplated it. We took a 35-minute charter to Nanyuki, then scheduled service into the Mara. We left camp at 7:15p and we were in the Mara at noon.

The incredible charter from Mathews to Nanyuki was made even more spectacular by our pilot, Rick of TropicAir, who flew a good ten minutes or more at about 50 feet above the Ewaso Nyiro, winding with it through the Northern Frontier.

It was incredibly spectacular as we saw all the animals and villages outside the park. But on the other hand I got an incredible impression of how terrible the March flood was. Whole sections of the river embankment had dropped away, in some places causing lots of little streamlets and pools. Doum palms were down everywhere.

Then we fly high and got magnificent views of Mt. Kenya, which was completely out, before landing at Nanyuki. Time just enough for a coffee before our Safarilink flight whisked us over Lake Nakuru into the Mara.

James and Sammy were waiting for us, having made the 18-hour journey from Saruni in two days. We took a short game drive past lots of topi, waterbuck, impala and gazelle before checking into lovely Olonana Camp.

After lunch the first game drive was a winner. Out hardly an hour when we came upon a very content pride of lion, including Big Daddy and a number of cubs that were playing around. The presence of hyaena and jackal suggested a kill nearby, but their bloated bellies confirmed it!

Wound all over the area near Olololo gate, and especially near its many swamps where there were all sorts of birds, including wooly storks. That unusual stork has only recently been confirmed to breed in the Mara.

All in all, a great first afternoon in the Mara!

Lions going extinct? Or Maasai?

Lions going extinct? Or Maasai?

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Maasai cow laced with poison kills entire lion pride.
Richard Leakey’s excellent wildlife consortium, Wildlife Direct, said today that “Kenya’s lions are on the brink of extinction.” Exaggeration or real warning?

Probably both.

The organization’s warning followed an incident in late April where three lions were poisoned in Lemek, a private wildlife conservancy north of Kenya’s famed Maasai Mara game reserve.

Wildlife officials arrested the alleged killer, a Maasai herder, who admitted the poisoning and showed wildlife officials the powder he used. He explained that the lion had been killing his cattle.

Lion have been killing Maasai stock for aeons. And in the old days Maasai morani would spear the lion to death and that usually did the trick. Today, pesticides have replaced spears. In this case, pending chemical analysis, wildlife officials believe the poison was carbofuran – widely available in Kenya because it’s used in the cut-flower industry.

Unlike spearing the marauding lion, pesticides laid out for the intruder end up killing the whole pride, and that’s what seems to have happened in this case. In the old days, the speared (usually) male lion traumatized the pride enough that they left the area. Now, there are no lions left to leave.

Killing wildlife in Lemek is a violation of two laws: a federal law against killing lions (that allowed federal officials, the KWS, to become involved) and a business contract with tourist camps in the area.

So the alleged culprit was arrested and arraigned, but later released. Not on bail, but because “a local politician intervened on his behalf,” according to Wildlife Direct.

Don’t get too angry.

Wildlife/human conflicts are on the rise throughout Africa and I don’t believe they are being properly handled. In Kenya a number of initiatives are underway, including KWS programs to educate herders and farmers on the importance of wildlife; in Tanzania more aggressive actions are being funded by organizations like AWF to actually fence portions of farms against intruders as large as elephant.

But as human populations develop and their needs become greater, and particularly during an economic downturn and following a drought, these initiatives can actually exacerbate not solve the problem.

Lemek is an excellent example. This is too far away from the real wilderness of the Maasai Mara, an extension of a “private reserve” because of presumed tourist interests. Many of Africa’s best camps are in private reserves, but I think these private reserves have become too far out.

This is really an area that should be left to stock grazing, and what the Kenyan government and wildlife officials should realize is that trying to expand it for tourism is a bad idea. It should be developed for agriculture.

Lions should not be protected in this area. They should be confined to areas further towards and actually inside the reserve, and if motivated to move out into these areas, they should be picked up or shot by wildlife officials before such messy and uncontrollable acts of poisoning grow widespread.

Protecting them in areas like these just increases the problem.

Mara Muddle

Mara Muddle

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If the Mara conservancies don’t get their act together, visitors might be paying $400 in daily fees!

One of the world’s most fabulous wild reserve is really a very small area that’s being cut apart into even smaller pieces that are squabbling with one another.

In a worst case scenario that I just can’t imagine happening anywhere in the universe except in Kenya, a guest at the Mara’s eastern-most lodge, Keekorok, who wanted to spend the day exploring the whole reserve with a picnic lunch traveling as far as Serena Lodge in the west, would incur reserve fees of $400 per person!

Until last week the three main sections of the Mara reserve (Sekanini, the furthest east third; Musiara, the main central part; and the Mara Triangle, the area west of the Mara River), all respected each other’s fee receipts as adequate to entering their own area. This core area of the Mara is only about 590 sq. miles. It really is possible on a single long day’s game drive to go through the entire area, easily going in and out of all three parts.

The visitor never knew they were technically moving from one reserve into another or back, again. And surrounding the Mara are a number of private reserves acting similarly.

But last week the Mara Triangle indicated it may stop accepting Musiara and Sekanini fee receipts. That would mean if you crossed the Mara River, you’d have to pay, again. And oh by the way, the three Mara conservancies now charge the highest of any reserve in Africa: $80 per person per day.

The remaining two portions are now threatening to do the same in retaliation. If this happens and you were a traveler staying at Mara Serena Lodge (in the Triangle), traveling on the new road from Nairobi via Narok, you would have to pay $240 just to get to the lodge! To get to the lodge you have to drive through the other two parts of the sanctuary.

This is getting ridiculous. It was, in fact, ridiculous before now. The very idea that a small wilderness reserve would be cut into separately managed sections is absurd.

Each section charges and accounts for its own fees, of course, but also trains and deploys its own set of rangers, and tries to enforce its own sets of rules and regulations. It’s patently absurd, and the reason it’s this way is because the Maasai politicians always refused to allow the federal Kenyan government to manage the area.

So such important things as wildlife management, wildlife research, visitor management and the like are often different every ten miles as your drive through the reserve. There’s no coherent marketing or planning of any sort. Mara.com, Maasaimara.com and even Masaimara.org are all privately owned websites exploited by local Kenyan business interests!

When Richard Leakey was head of the wonderfully managed Kenyan Wildlife Service (KWS) he tried to force the Maasai to relinquish control of the reserves to KWS, as numerous other ethnic groups had done to produce such wonderfully managed reserves as Samburu and Tsavo. In response, someone bombed his plane while he was flying and he lost his legs.

So for years and years, the Amboseli and Mara (Maasai reserves) have been administered by their own (incredibly corrupt) county councils. And now, they are fighting among themselves!

Balloon safaris will have a particularly difficult time as the three parts bureaucratically separate. The balloons (of which there are now 16 rising daily in the Mara) pay a “launching and landing fee.” If they bump down in an area other than from which they launched, they’ll be double taxed.

Not to mention the intrepid traveler who is trying to follow the wildebeest migration. Imagine being stopped dead at some signpost and being told to go over there to where the million wildebeest are will cost you another $80!

It gets worse. As the steam of anger boils over, the three fiefdoms are considering a rule that is used to my great consternation in neighboring Tanzania. The “one-time entry rule” means that if you leave one reserve for another, you have to pay again to re-enter the first reserve.

That means wherever you’re lodging and paying the daily $80 per person fee, that if you go out, then come back, you have to pay twice that same day!

THAT MEANS if you transected the Mara on a good long day’s drive, you could theoretically have to pay $400 PER PERSON!

Why oh why is all of this happening?

Money.

Tourism is way down. The government and community institutions controlling these marvelous parcels of wilderness got used to a certain revenue stream that they don’t have, now. And frankly, I don’t think they’ll ever have, again.

But if there’s anything that will totally destroy the little that’s left, it’s this current nonsense going on in the Mara. Please, folks, let’s not discharge our responsibilities with the same acumen as a warthog!

Misery in the Mau

Misery in the Mau

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Photo by Joseph Kiheri of Nairobi's Daily Nation
Photo by Joseph Kiheri of Nairobi's Daily Nation

Today a stream of now homeless farmers began leaving Kenya’s Mau Forest for fear they would be killed by security forces.

The Mau Forest story is one of the most heart-wrenching in Africa.  It has parallels to development stories throughout the world, including America’s Dust Bowl of 1930-39, and it is as somber and seemingly irreconcilable as any Grapes of Wrath saga.

But as with all modern phenomenon in Africa, everything is sped up in the time warp of development.  It took a decade or more to discourage then displace the American southern plains farmer in the thirties, and moving at that speed even the American government was able to gear up to provide work through the WPA and useful advice on how to better use the land.

In the end only about a quarter of the southern plains farmers couldn’t make it through.

But in Kenya the drama is all but three years total.  In the end there won’t be one remaining of the 40,000 families who last year were farming the Mau.

And not a cent of the promised government compensation of just under a million shillings per displaced family (about $120,000) has been seen.

And if they aren’t successfully evicted, it is likely that within a decade there won’t be a drop of water for Nairobi.

The Mau Forest is considerably west of the Aberdare and other highland mountain catchments that feed Nairobi’s three reservoirs, but it’s now understood that they are all intricately linked.  The Mau directly feeds the Great Rift lake system of the central province (Naivasha and Nakuru) as well as the Mara River.

These areas provide the irrigation for huge agricultural areas as well as the country’s extremely important flower export business.  Without the Mau’s water, the Rift agriculture would start to die quickly.

And as this became apparent, the agricultural interests would begin long-distance siphoning, or would actually move further east towards the Aberdare which is the water catchment area for more than 7 million people in and around Nairobi.

There isn’t enough water to do all this.

Too many things are happening too quickly in Kenya.  Progress fighting aids and other mortal diseases like malaria have buoyed population growth.  GDP growth averaging twice that of America is creating a middle class that wants better cars and longer showers.

But the land of Kenya is one of the most stressed on earth.  Only 14% of the country is arable; the rest near desert useful only in some sections for stock farming.  It is mineral poor.  And only the few highland areas, like the Mau and Aberdare, catch water for the 40 million people.

The drought of the last three years (breaking now at last) focused into stark relief to Kenyan leaders the looming disaster.  And despite the enormous media attention given to the drought, it was mild when compared with  droughts of the past.

Global warming actually makes the equatorial regions of the world wetter than they would otherwise be.  But the lust for water for development is just too great.

In 1996 after the last more serious drought the then dictator Daniel Moi began handing out choice parcels of the Mau forest, mostly to his fellow Kalenjin tribes people.

Bigwigs were actually given deeds.  Many others were given little “resident cards” and thousands others simply followed their kinsmen from the dry lands of the kalenjin onto this fertile ground.

No one knows for sure how many people ended up first clearing the forests to sell the timber, then farm this critical ecological zone.  The government says 40,000 families, and the average size of a farming family in Kenya is between 6 and 7.  So that could be about a quarter million people.

I’ve seen the beautiful little homesteads in the Mau.  The many log houses are tidy, with little vegetable and flower gardens, and often a cow or two in a tiny fenced area.  There are small fields of corn, millet, potatoes, beans and even wheat in some places.  Any random scene in a farming village in the Mau would likely depict a near idyllic scene for a developing African country.

Schools wre built and the government supplied teachers.  Dispensaries and some of the best small hospitals in Kenya were built here.  A sheep industry developed, and many residents wore heavy sweaters and woolen coats self-made as protection against the highland climate.

A typical Mau Forest farming family looks pretty well off.

It was not a surprise this would happen.  But last year into the 2nd year of the country wide drought, Nairobi water reserves began to be rationed.  Crops failed lower down the forests, even though the Mau and other highland areas were still getting reasonable rainfall.

Sixty Minutes from America produced a television story on the great wildebeest migration, and showed the declining level of the Mara River, and wondered if this were “the end of the migration.”

Actually, it was the start.

The government decided last year the Mau had to be cleared of farmers.  A security contingent swept in, burned homes, released livestock and randomly shot farmers who resisted.

The scandal erupted into huge Parliamentary fights and became – as so much in Kenya does – tribal.  The evictions were halted, but ultimately, they had to be restarted.  More carefully, with more notice, and with a better management of the idiot politicians trying to earn kudos with the controversy, the evictions have started for real.

And they will continue until not a man is left in the Mau.  And only a fence and heavily armed security forces surround the 16,000 sq. miles.

It seems like a pretty small area for a population approaching 40 million.  But that’s Africa, today.  Every little bit counts.

Best Camps in the Mara?

Best Camps in the Mara?

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From MotherGoose335@

Q.    We’re planning our safari right now for next summer and we’re going to be ending in the Masai Mara in Kenya.  When I went online to see available places to stay, I was absolutely overwhelmed, there are so many.  Do you have any recommendations?

A.    I know exactly how you feel!  There are around 6400 bed nights in the Maasai Mara and surrounding private reserves, more than 100 different properties and camps.  Before I tell you my favorites, here are some guide lines for deciding.

First, about half of these are actually inside the reserve, with the other half outside in private reserves.  This is very much a southern African model.  Consider the great Kruger National Park in South Africa.  Most of the lodging is actually outside the park in private reserves like Sabi Sands.

But this model doesn’t work as well in Kenya as it does in South Africa.  The game viewing in the Mara is absolutely better inside the reserve than outside.  But it is also much more crowded inside the reserve than outside.  So for better game viewing: inside the reserve.  For a more exclusive or boutique experience: outside the reserve.

The time of year matters.  If you are traveling to the Mara when the wildebeest herds have normally arrived from the Serengeti (late June – October), then your best bet is to stay as far north in the reserve, or as far south outside the reserve, as possible.  (Except for when they just arrive and just leave.)   For the rest of the year (November – May) it really doesn’t matter, as the game viewing throughout the areas is about the same.

Budget is very important.  Right now there are three main budget levels: $200-300 per day per person; $300-400 per day per person; and more than $400 per day per person.  (These are gross averages.  During the lowest seasons, these could be reduced by 50%; during the highest seasons, like the December holidays, they are doubled.  There are discounts available in all sorts of ways at all times of the year, and your final costs will also have to at least include transport and park fees.)

The lowest budget level really restricts you to the larger lodges, and there is often nothing wrong with these other than that they’re larger.  There are a few camps at this level, but none that I would recommend.  So at this first level, I like Mara Sarova Lodge.  Also at this level, I like the Mara Serena Lodge but its location is good only seasonally, from July – October, and the company is very directed to large suppliers rather than individual bookings.

Most of the properties are in the mid range, and of these my recommendation is solidly Governor’s Camp.  Governor’s actually owns and operates a family of camps in the Mara, and it is Main Governor’s that falls in this range.

At the top end I like Sala’s Camp and Olonana Camp.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I hope it gives you a start.  And note one thing: they are all inside the reserve.  For me, game viewing is the most important thing!

Maasai Rebellion?!

Maasai Rebellion?!

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A continuing struggle in the private game reserves of the Mara/Serengeti border area has been exacerbated by the drought and economic downturn and may turn violent.

A number of private reserves in the Loliondo area, which lies on the eastern border of the Serengeti and southern border of the Mara, risk growing civil disruption by the local Maasai as well as rapidly increased poaching.

This is a beautiful area that is normally big game rich, although it is quite seasonal. It includes &Beyond’s prestigious Klein’s Camp, as well as a number of less upmarket camps. Until recently it was a model for Community Based Tourism (CBT) projects.

But the Tanzanian government’s decision to forcibly evict thousands of Maasai from the area has provoked several violent encounters between rangers and Maasai. Moreover, the drought which is worse just over the border in Kenya, has motivated thousands more Kenyan Maasai to migrate into the Tanzanian area with their herds. And finally, the economic downturn has led to a serious increase in poaching in the area.

The area is a tinderbox. Maasai are legendary for their personal bravery, but as communities they are not wont to organize. But this time it might be different.

A coalition of 25 prestigious local Tanzanian organizations, including the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) and Lawyers’ Environmental Action Team delivered a letter on August 27 to the Tanzanian government, demanding that the forced evictions stop. Then on September 10 the coalition demanded a number of legislative and policy changes that would begin to remove some of the foreign businesses from the area.

The government’s response was brutal.

The Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Ms Shamsa Mwangunga, released a statement on September 14 slamming the coalition, threatening harsh sanctions against them, and almost as an aside, promising that the government would keep the area safe for tourists.

My take is that this is not going to get better, soon.

* * *

A decade ago Tanzania was in the forefront of CBT development and it was here in Loliondo that the model was working best. There were some truly outstanding individuals, such as Hoopoe Safaris’ Peter Lindstrom, who worked tirelessly not only to protect these wilderness areas from rampant development, but to fashion them into productive businesses for the Maasai who owned the land.

The idea was pretty simple and has been successful all over the world. Rather than farm wheat or grow cattle, camps and lodges would be built that would attract tourists who wanted to experience the natural, wild area.

The benefits to the Maasai ten years ago were substantial. Hoopoe’s small 8-tent camp at Olipiri generated as much as $35,000 annually for the otherwise impoverished local community. In the successful decade that followed a number of village Maasai became Hoopoe employees, were educated in the cities by Hoopoe, then started their own businesses.

In 2004 Conde Nast awarded Hoopoe the prestigious “Best EcoTourism Company in the World” award, in part for their efforts here.

Several other companies also became involved. &Beyond (formerly CCAfrica), and Dorobo Safaris all undertook similar arrangements to Hoopoe’s. Klein’s Camp (&Beyond) became one of the most prestigious camps in Tanzania.

But as I think back to those days, I suppose we should have known things would go awry. To begin with, there was an odd apple in the box: the OBC corporation. This United Emirates’ company was squeezed between the Klein’s and Hoopoe concessions. And guess what, they were hunters.

And not just your ordinary everyday quarter-million dollar tourist hunter. This is a corporation of the royal family of the Emirates. They don’t like commercial flights, so they built an airstrip on the concession that could take jumbo jets. And when they arrived each July and August to decimate the area game, they erected little cities. I remember when I would drive into Hoopoe’s camp, my cell phone would welcome me to “United Arab Emirates CellTel Company.”

Clearly most everything that OBC did was beyond the rules the government had set for CBT programs. Start with air waves and then add air routes. Everyone at the time knew that there was more involved than relationships with the Maasai. Royal money was exchanging hands.

From time to time guests at Klein’s would complain they would see zebra shot. But it was very infrequent and in the main the Arabs did their best to stay under the cover of their air waves. They were also there only two months every year.

But they were also weird bed fellows to the good souls like Hoopoe and Dorobo who were truly trying to build a sustainable Maasai project.

Enter drought and world economic decline.

Poaching has increased everywhere, of course, and serious local battles such as the one that left 30 people dead not far from the tourist camps in Kenya’s Samburu two weeks ago are much more serious right this moment than what is happening in Loliondo. But Loliondo’s history is more convoluted and may take much more than just the predicted rains to recover.

Mara Magic

Mara Magic

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Our three days in the Maasai Mara enjoyed incredible game viewing that amazed even me, and proved that the Mara – despite its congestion – is a phenomenal way to end a safari.

Except for the much shorter December holidays, this is the end of the heaviest booked season in the Mara. American families had already left, but our Governor’s Camp was still full with many Europeans and Americans without school-age children.

The veld was crowded compared to our Tanzanian experience. I couldn’t help but thinking of the Gary Larson Far Side cartoon of the “migration” : minibuses in a line jumping into the Mara river!

But I hasten to add that it didn’t seem to matter all that much, especially because our safari had experienced in Ndutu and Tarangire a vast wilderness that at times we had all to ourselves.

There are things magical about the Mara. Its grassland plains are more hilly than further south in the Serengeti, so there is more definition to the landscape under the big, endless skies. The river was up, near normal, (and so radically different from my safaris just 6 weeks ago), and it is beautiful river filled with wildlife and wrapped in thick forests.

And there was no drought. It was dry, probably dryer than normal, but not terribly so. When it’s normal, the Mara is the wettest place on the East African circuit. This is the reason there are so many animals, so densely packed, and one of the reasons that off-road driving is still allowed despite such heavy use. The wetness provides a foundation for relatively quick topographical regeneration that a normally dry Amboseli or seasonal Serengeti lacks.

The highlight of our time here for a few of us was a migration river crossing at what Governor’s staff call “the main crossing point.” It’s not far from camp, down river within view of Serena Lodge on the opposite side.

Gene Antonacci got an incredible series of photographs, including the labored take-down of a full grown wilde, and its near successful struggle to free itself from 3 or 4 crocs that ultimately won the battle. We also watched two easy take-downs of yearlings. It was interesting to note that the yearling take-downs, which happened first, didn’t slow the race across the river at all.

Whenever the line of wilde was interrupted by crocs’ open jaws, they simply jumped over them. The crocs didn’t seem to be very good at the hunt, actually. Several times it seemed that wilde were actually trampling a croc underwater.

The crossing had gone on for about 12-15 minutes when the full grown wilde was taken. Just a few moments later, the crossing stopped as the wilde hesitated then retreated. I can only think it had to do with the vocalization of the full-grown wilde in its struggle to free itself, something that didn’t happen with the quick take-down of the younger ones.

In addition to Gene’s fabulous series, video master Dave Koncal got it all, adding to his remarkable earlier scenes of the lion jumping into the air capturing a vulture, the big tusker that poked its way through crater hippo, the several great elephant encounters in Tarangire, and also in the Mara, the unrequited battle between the marsh lion pride and a large family of buffalo.

That to-and-fro between the lions and the buffalo was great fun to watch! Irritated by a young male lion that dared challenge them, the buffalo charged the lion pride, and the pride retreated. When the buf stopped the assault, the lions turned around and charged them back, and then the buffalo retreated for a short time, before regrouping and recharging the lions! The comic to-and-fro ended when the lion pride ran onto the slightly dry marsh – enough to support them but a sure trap the buffalo understood and had to avoid.

There was so much to the Mara: elephants with really small ones, and warthogs with day-old piglets running all over the place! We saw hyaena that had just robbed an abashed cheetah of its gazelle, and beautiful eland up close. Zoo director, Steve Taylor, estimated that we saw more than 35 lion in our three days, here, and his wife, Sarah, told the group it was the best game viewing she had ever had (on her ten safaris).

Yes, in the season the Mara is crowded. But as you get drawn into these remarkable wildlife encounters that just don’t seem to be effected by the tourists watching, it doesn’t seem to matter at all. So ending here was the icing on the cake of a fabulous safari! (Yes, it was Jeannie Antonacci’s birthday our last night!)

Mara Family

Mara Family

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Family safaris usually occur at a difficult time for optimum game viewing. But the Mara won that game for us!

Understandably, most family safaris are scheduled for the summer school holiday. Spring break is often too short, and there are often kids in the same family with different spring breaks. And with U.S. schools starting earlier and earlier, especially the sports programs, the family safari usually takes place from the first of June through the end of July.

That’s not at the optimum time for game viewing. I still maintain that the game viewing in East Africa at any time of the year is better in East Africa than at any time of the year elsewhere, like in southern Africa. So for game viewing, in a sense it doesn’t matter.

The optimum game viewing in East Africa occurs in March and April (in the Serengeti) or in September and October (in the Mara). Variances in weather can extend or contract these windows. Our safari – like many family safaris – is happening in early July.

Quite apart from the anomalous drought that is happening, this is a tough time for experiencing the big herds East Africa is known for. No problem with elephants, but wildebeest, zebra, and the many other ungulates and antelope are widely dispersed as they navigate the end of a rainy season searching for better grasslands.

The best place to end a safari at this time is in the Mara. We ended it by exclusively occupying a wonderful luxury semi-permanent camp right on the Sand River. I’ve only been going to Sala’s Camp for several years, but it’s quickly becoming my favorite family safari camp for this time of the year.

Consider this. On our way from the Keekorok airstrip at around 430p, Monday, we managed to have a lovely tea stop on a hill overlooking vast stretches of the Mara, find six lions posing for photographs, plus find three cheetah on a recent Tomie kill beautifully framed by a dramatic sunset.

The cheetah kill was particularly fascinating. There were at least 150 vultures which had dropped out of the sky and were menacing the poor cheetah. Vultures hunt by sight, and this was their last opportunity before dark.

Cara Hopcraft, the camp host, was ready with a special welcome of hot towels, fresh lime juice, and hot water for showers! The camp is mildly lighted by solar, so as dark as it was, the tent was warm and welcoming.

Each tent is beautifully furnished and includes flush toilets. I especially like the little touches which I feel might not be so expensive or difficult to arrange, but indicate a care that so many camps lack. There was a little vase of local wild flowers on the vanity counter, the water bottles were beautifully beaded, and the clothes organizer was a simple drop-down canvas box considerably more useful than a huge chest. Flashlights, bug spray, and three kinds of shampoo and conditioner! Most importantly, for those of us who shave, the mirror was perfectly placed under the solar light to avoid before dawn lacerations!

“I really didn’t expect this,” young Dillon said, truly on behalf of everyone. But as I explained to everyone, “camping” in East Africa has morphed into something else. Part of the reason are the extraordinary fees that the park authorities demand for the right to camp in any fashion. So once that expense is incurred, the upmarket becomes the only reasonable demographic.

We stayed in the Mara for three days and nights. The first two mornings we had an early breakfast and then took a long 6-7 hour game drive. Our location right on the Sand River couldn’t be more beautiful, but it is somewhat compromised for optimum game viewing in the Mara. So the longer drives were necessary.

At this time of the year in the Mara, it is very cold. Ari and Hayley wrapped themselves in several Maasai blankets. The gloves that are on our preparation list, appeared at last.

We had fabulous game viewing. For one thing, the migration was arriving. Two weeks ago I greeted the first wave at the Sand River, and now more was on the way. It’s still very much the beginning, and the herds won’t concentrate until August, but everyone was very impressed. “I never expected this!” Leo told me waving his Tolstoy hat at a line of running wilde.

I was especially surprised and overjoyed to find rhino! Yes, authorities have been trying to reintroduce rhino to the Mara for years and years. We found a mother and calve who were very leery of us and disappeared after a few minutes in deep brush. We also found the tracks of another single rhino. This is impressive and certainly a highlight of this southeast area.

Add to the rhino a bevy of lion, cheetah, and for Carl and me, some very impressive birding. We definitely (I stand by it, fellow birders) found the black coucal and banded snake eagle, two extraordinary finds.

But probably for the family, as successful as was our game viewing, the volleyball games with the camp staff on the Sand River, and the trampoline antics in the afternoon were just as memorable. I sat one afternoon with Grandma Marian on the cliff above the river watching the kids (and their parents) having extraordinary fun. But we all stopped short of insisting that Conor perform his famous break-dancing; he was, after all, a few years out of shape having joined his folks on safari from the boondocks of Guinea where he is a Peace Corps volunteer.

It was hard ending the safari. Everything seemed to have worked so well, and the two families who didn’t know one another before the trip had now become very close. As a last hurrah and fabulous surprise, Irene had carved out of the river sand two remarkably realistic crocodiles! We’d seen them on the Mara. At first glance it was kind of scary!

A good vacation anywhere broadens beyond its theme into memories that could be created anywhere in the world. A good family safari must have the wonderful game viewing we accomplished, but it doesn’t have to be the best game viewing of the year. Good lodges and camps, memorable occasions like sundowners and relaxing conversations around an isolated camp fire, and the warmth of new friendships might occur anywhere in the world. But when it happens in East Africa, ending at a place like Sala’s Camp in the Mara, it ranks right up there with the best family vacation possible anywhere!

Migration Arrives!

Migration Arrives!

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Tour operators and property owners await the wildebeest migration into Kenya’s Mara from the Serengeti like most Kenyans await the rains. Well, it’s arrived!

Kenya’s Maasai Mara at any time of the year is a fabulous place to game view. The gently rolling grasslands, numerous watercourses and occasional tall hill provide all the conditions for outstanding animal viewing. But it is the fact that the Mara is the wettest place of all East African protected wildernesses that seals the deal.

Last year I was privileged to be in the Mara on June 16 when the first several thousand wildebeest straggled across the Sand River towards Keekorok Lodge. The privilege continued this year with my first family safari of the season when ten or twenty times as many surged into the entire bottom southeast of the Mara on June 23.

Whitney, the grandfather, had been on one of my Serengeti migration safaris before, and he so wanted his family to experience something similar. I knew this, and he knew that a June safari anywhere in either Tanzania or Kenya is iffy with regards to the migration. This is because the migration is triggered by rains and no-rains, and predicting the weather – especially in this erratic period of climate change – is very difficult.

Whitney and Ada had experienced the optimum, so we all knew we couldn’t achieve that. Almost all the wildebeest herd is found in the southern Serengeti in March and April. In the best of years, less than half that number reach Kenya later on. But like so many family safaris, the schedule has to be determined by the children’s school year and summer schedules. So, we crossed our fingers.

As I’ve written many times recently, East Africa is in the second year of a dry spell, which in some places is a true drought. The Serengeti has experienced a similar patchwork of rains and no-rains, with the large majority of the area much drier than usual.

But the Mara is as wet as ever. Now an important word of caution. Many of the Mara’s river, including the Mara itself, are fed in the escarpments and hills west and north of the park where it’s been miserably dry. So the rivers are very low. I really must admit that I’ve never seen the Mara River so low, and this will likely have a number of significant effects.

But rain over the grasslands has not stopped. The grass in the southern part of the park is nearly four feet high. The Sand River, which is fed by run-off of the rains, is actually more than its usual trickle. That’s all the wildebeest needed to know.

I saw huge lines of wilde down the main Lobo road with my binoculars on June 24, so we decided to alter our program and take our morning game drive on June 25 towards the Sand River gate. This is the southeast most part of the Mara.

What a brilliant idea, even if I do say so myself! The massive herds – much larger than last year – were surging across the river into Kenya. We arrived around 7:30a, and I expect the surge began sometime the night before, because hyaena were having a heyday. I saw a jackal and a hyaena eating side-by-side! That’s ridiculous, and it meant there was so much food available that their normal enmity had been overcome.

There were rib cages, legs, feet, hides of wildebeest all over the place. This area of the Mara doesn’t usually have this high density of hyaena, but they knew, just as they know when birthing is about to begin.

This is an area of beautifully defined rolling grasslands that are separated by deep valleys. Most of the area was filled with wildebeest, “little black dots” as Ezra would explain. But yes, thousands and thousands of little black dots.

Getting close was so much fun. The wildebeest sonorous and quite varied speech is called “blarting” and is so enticing I’ve never had a customer who hasn’t tried to blart back!

We obtained permission to go through the gate towards Tanzania. Hardly 50m from the gate we encountered three lion, sated to the extreme, in the high grass. What was so comical was that there were several hundred wilde about 20 feet away from them! They couldn’t move, they were so full.

Later we’d see a beautiful male lion casually dining on a less than fully butchered wilde. His mane was among the best I’ve ever seen.

We drove up to the old, scratched cement sign which towers above the road and says, “You are now entering the Serengeti National Park. Welcome to Tanzania.”

That brought waves of nostalgia for the days before 1978 when we could proceed into the locus of the herds, which was undoubtedly between Balanganjwe and Lobo. But no longer. Since then, you can’t cross between the two countries at this point. So we turned back, yet euphoric at the wonderful experience we’d been having that morning.

Even had the migration not arrived, the Mara would have pleased us all. We found leopard, so wonderfully in the open during the morning, that you couldn’t have wished for better. We saw collections of animals – topi, impala, hartebeest, wildebeest, zebra, giraffe – framed by the little hazy mountains of a distant horizon that the Mara is so famous for.

But true, even in this economic downturn, the Mara seemed crowded. Much less than in year’s past, but infinitely more than during my migration safaris in March and April when we seem to have thousands of square miles to ourselves.

As the day ended on Lookout Hill above our camp on the Sand River, everyone paused to watch a spectacular sunset. A sun, hidden moments before by thick clouds, appeared just above the horizon as a deep red-orange orb that flared the sky with pastel blues and mauve and streaks of red. “We couldn’t have asked for better,” Whitney said.

I agree.