Now we get to an absolute highlight of the trip, that I'd recommend everybody to do when visiting Kenya! It's one of mother nature's great wonders: the Maasai Mara. It's basically the Kenyan part of the more famous Serengeti as it is called in nearby Tanzania.
The Maasai Mara is very sparsely populated by the indigenous Maasai people and is a savanna full of animals. That's why this part three is the bombastic finale of our animal series.
[Author's note: Since this was such a beautiful part of our trip, this post is gonna contain a lot of pics. I'm already getting prepared to the mental challenge not to throw the iPad out of the window when dealing with blogger.com's retarded picture upload. 😵]
Flight
The most efficient way to get there is by flight with a small plane – in our case from Nairobi. On our way there we landed four times on small airfields in the Mara and delivered or picked up passengers. Luckily the weather was good, so we could already enjoy the great view.
Enkewa Camp
Now I have to circle back a bit. How did we end up going there? Well my auntie Beatrix visited there a few years ago and a Spanish pal of her's runs a place in the Mara called Enkewa Camp so she kindly recommended it to us. :)
The Camp is situated in the middle of the wilderness and consists of very luxurious tents – #GlampingDeluxe
The whole staff consists of Maasai people: cooks, spotters and drivers for the safari as well as the guards. Yes, the whole perimeter of the Camp was guarded day and night, as it was not fenced!
The quality of the camp experience is incredible – it's basically a five star hotel experience in tends. Everything super professional and the food was really good!
Safari
Every day at 6.30 in the morning the safari starts. From then on our very own tank (you cannot seriously call those Toyota Landcruisers cars) with driver and spotter was waiting for us.
At first we did the early morning safari including beautiful sunrises which I unfortunately never managed to catch properly on camera. At around 9.00 we had breakfast in the wild.
Then we saw of course shitloads of animals! Strangely enough they aren't afraid of neither humans nor tanks. So you have the possibility to experience them from super nearby and get quite good pics even if your only tool is a phone. But next time I'll nevertheless bring a proper camera!
We saw zebras (yes there were wildebeests in their way, damnit!), ...
...giraffes, ...
...antelopes, ...
...gazelles, ...
...water buffaloes...
...and some warthogs.
Oh then there were also elephants, ...
...lazy hippos, ...
...these colorful lizards...
...and these things I can't remember the name of – let's just call them "darker antelopes".
Now to the carnivores. It's there where things were just super impressive!
Say hello to this lion – he was just one meter away from our completely open tank!
And there were more lionesses – doing their morning prowl, spreading out for the hunt. Seems like only the females are doing the hard work here, eh?
Later we spotted the leopard.
Ok not really spotted – half the tourists cruising around in the Mara beat us to it, we just followed the tribe. 😉
Now let's get to the highlights of the experience!
I loved the lion's breakfast. At first, the pack-leader licks the carcass of the wildebeest in order to soften it up. Then feeding starts around the eye and several holes are ripped into the skin, in order to make the meat more accessible to the cubs.
Later as it got too hot in the mid-day sun, the lioness just pulled the carcass towards the tree shades.
Most famous and even declared one of the seven wonders of the natural world is the Great Migration of the Wildebeests. About 1.5 million of these creatures migrate from the Serengeti in Tanzania towards the Maasai Mara in Kenya during the months of July and August.
Wildebeests are actually quite retarded and I wonder how they could be so successful from a evolutionary perspective. Always when the first animal starts to turn around somewhere, the whole herd turns around and runs back. This is particularly stupid when doing a river crossing. They always run back and forth, one time it's a bird that scares one, another time it's a small rodent. Like that they trample around in the river so many times before crossing that they surely alerted even the last crocodile of their passing. 🤦♂️
Another thing I just loved is the landscape in general and the gorgeous savanna trees in particular.
Sven is channelling his love for the Sausage Tree.
Since there were so many pics, I put the last part of the article into a separate blog post.
If you wanna look at more (and better) pics or have a similar magical experience, here are Enkewa's contact details.
Instagram: @enkewacamp
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