17th – Safari, muthatruckers!

Was awoken at sunrise by a loud, scouse exclamation from Layla in the tent next door. We got quickly ready, had breakfast and were off into the mara by about 07:30.

At first, there was hardly a trace of wildlife to view, but we were just happy stand, peering out of the top of the cruiser, feeling like we were on a roller coaster. Every now and then, George would get a radio call and step on it, refusing to tell us what he’d heard because of the high chance of our hopes being dashed, and they were. He apparently kept hearing about a leopard and cubs and then hearing that they’d retreated into an inaccessible area.

Throughout the day we saw millions of wildebeest and zebras migrating as far as the eye could see. We saw elephants and elephant babies, giraffe, hippos, vultures, quite a few lionesses and playful cubs (but no males :( ) and after quite a long time of tracking her, a cheetah. We were the second vehicle there, so we got lots of great photos of her before the army of tour vans began to respond to the radio report, we could see them all headed our way from miles around in every direction.

We had lunch at one point in the worst possible place. It was a parking area near the hippo territory of the river, so the whole place smelt of death from where the hippos had killed everything dumb enough to go near them, leaving rotting corpses for the vultures to feast on, flies everywhere, spawning forth from the maggots infesting said animal remains and also thieving bastard little simians in the trees surrounding the park up.

On the way back to the camp, we stopped at a traditional Masai tribal village. The chief’s son gave us a full tour and told us about their culture, but not before involving us in a celebratory dance at the village entrance. The girls got some horribly embarrassing footage of me doing the males side of the dance and having to jump as high as I could. That should end up on Youtube soon. Brilliant. After the tour of the grounds and houses came the pestering attempts to get us to buy stuff, which I have grown sick of during my time in Kenya. Although I pride myself on haggling ability, I don’t like having to do it all the time. Besides, the lion claws and teeth and ivory jewelry they had on sale were fake, judging by the cost. If they were real I probably wouldn’t want to buy them for that reason.

After dinner, back at our camp, the masai warriors that run the place put on a campfire dance for us, one of them being the wedding dance which they performed with the girls, discussing how many cows in dowry they were worth before we went to pack for the morning and went to sleep.