Our Kenyan Adventure, Part Two. The Masai Mara...
Discussion
On to part 2 of our little adventure in Kenya!
After 5 nights at Laikipia we flew from Nanyuki to Ol Kiombo airstrip in the Masai Mara and set off for Kicheche Bush Camp, in the Olare Orok Conservancy on the northern edge of the Mara Game Reserve. Why there? Because the conservancy only has 3 camps and no one staying in the Mara can visit the conservancy, while we could visit the Mara. It meant that we could have very private game drives in the conservancy and not have the worry of hordes of other vehicles filled the grockles descending upon us when we found something interesting. Kicheche Bush Camp is set on the edge of an acacia forest on a low hill above a small stream with commanding views to the north and south. It also only has 6 tents, and again they were very nice too.
Here we had the option of a morning game drive and back for lunch and then out again at 4:00ish or a full day out so we could get down to the crossings on the Mara & Talek Rivers (more of that in Part 3 lucky reader!). We were lucky in that we had a guide and vehicle all to ourselves on 3 of the 5 days we were there, so we felt we were getting very personal attention!
We went to the Mara to see the annual migration of the wildebeasties but more of that in Part 3...
So we just did “general” game viewing on the plains and along the rivers and stuff.
Here’s a view of our tent.
During the day there were often zebras and wildebeest wandering through the camp, and at night you could hear them munching on the fresh grass around our tent. Often you could hear lions roaring and hephalumps trumpeting at night, and the camp manageress had 2 lions kill a young wildebeest right outside her tent one night. So it’s all wild and exciting!
The scenery was much more open that at Laikipia, with wide expanses of grassland dissected by wooded river valleys. Made for some nice landscapes...
I can imagine a Monty Pythonesque cartoon hand coming poking out of the hole in the clouds in this picture. Dinsdale!
Mr (or possibly Mrs) Happypottymouth bumbling down to his stream
The joys of a super long lens!
A hippo marking its territory by s
tting on the river bank while cartwheeling its tail and spraying st all over the place. Noice!
A nice herd of hephalumps hephalumping across the plain
Matriach reminding us who is boss...
Wait for me Mummy!
Cute baby eli!
To keep the elephlumps out of the camp would, you may think, be quite hard, due to their size and potential dangerousness. But they have a simple solution...
Crossing a river
You have terrible fleas dear. Hmmmm.... delicious!
A topi on look out for predators
A couple of baby hyenas. Even as babies they’re not that cute and as adults there’s something nasty and sinister about them, despite the good job they do at clearing up dead animals.
One morning we were bumbling along and stopped to look at a river when this snake came slithering along. It must have registered the heat source from the engine because it suddenly charged towards us at a huge rate of knots, and we had to back away fast and carry on down the track. It’s a black throated cobra or summat like that. :shudder:
A pretty agama lizard by our tent.
There are lions all over the shop in the Mara, but our best encounters were in the conservancy, away from the hordes.
Mrs Lion off to hunt in the late afternoon. (She missed!)
Back off, buddy
I’m far too important to go hunting. Bring me back some dinner, would you love?
A family relaxing in the shade during the heat of the day.
Little cub and mum
A couple of young common (Masai) giraffes
Adult and juvenile bateleur eagles perched in a tree
A juvenile Marshall Eagle (I think!)
A pair of bee-eaters
A beautiful woodland kingfisher
Mummy ostrich with babies
Boiled egg anyone? (Don’t worry, it had been abandoned a while apparently!)
While we had seen cheetahs in Laikipia, we had not seen them in their classic pose on an anthill, and one day on the way to the crossings we encountered the three brothers relaxing in the sun.
Two of them then got up and wandered off, leaving their sibling relaxing on the anthill.
They headed towards a mixed herd of zebra, topi and wildebeest
and started chasing them
We missed the actual kill, but they brought down a small zebra which they then feasted on, their bother having joined them. Two would keep guard while the other feasted, as hyenas and lions are known to scare cheetahs off their kill to save them the bother of killing themselves!
On 19 Sept Jo and I took a private vehicle and headed all thwe way to the southern borders of the Mara, about 3km from Tanzania in the hiope of seeing a mother cheetah with SIX cubs. She is in fact the mother of the three brothers mentioned above. It was a 3 hours journey and luckily we bumped into the brother in law of our guide who worked as a park ranger and he gave us permission to go off road and look for them in a wild and desolate area that few people visited.
En route we also saw a mother and daughter pair of cheetahs with a kill.
After about an hour of searching we found them walking across a scruffy bit of grass, with their mother in the lead!
Mum then left them in a bundle and headed off to kill a baby reedbuck, though the kill happened round the bend of a small stream, and so we missed that.
The cheetahlets all wandered across the river and waited for her patiently.
After about 10 minutes they started calling for her with a squeaky cheeping noise, and she then called them and they all gambolled over to where she was, she having dragged the baby reedbuck into some bushes. We sat and watched them play killing the reedbuck and having some quality time with their mum before we quietly left them in peace and headed off for breakfast!
After breakfast we were heading back to the main drag when we bumped into the three brothers sitting on an anthill. So we saw 12 cheetahs in one day, which is pretty good going!
You get two of them cos they’re pretty
On the way back to our camp David, our guide, had a call from a mate who said they were parked by a stream with a leopard in a tree. We had spent many mornings and evening searching up and down river banks looking for the darned elusive leopard to no avail, so we jumped at the opportunity, especially as they were not that far away. When we arrived we were informed the leopard had jumped down from the tree 5 mins earlier and headed across the stream to the woods on the other bank. We rushed along our side of the stream for about 2km until we could cross and then moved slowly back to where they had been, but on the opposite bank. As we were ambling along I spotted the leopard in a tree about 10 yards from us. We stopped, I snapped 3 piccies and he jumped down and headed back into the woods! But we had seen a leopard, albeit for about 30 seconds!
On Monday 20 September I had arranged for a private vehicle (even though we had by luck had one for the last 2 days!) for the day, as it was the last full day we had. We got up late (well, 7:00am!) and had breakfast in camp and then went out for the day. Our first port of call was an incredible wildebeest crossing on the Talek River (see part 3 when it arrives, for full details!) and then we went off along the river to find a leopard. We heard over the grapevine that one had been spotted sleeping at the base of a tree further downstream (or was it upstream, I can’t remember!). It was easy to find as there were about 10 vehicles on our side of the bank, all neatly spaced along the river. The leopard was on the opposite bank. We parked up and eventually pinpointed it. It was easy to see. Not!
A couple of the vehicles had Americans in. Of course, as most people know, leopards are VERY shy so it seems logical for our Septic friends from across the pond to shout at the top of their voices “I CAN'T SEE IT, WHERE IS IT?” Shhhhhhh! It’s there, under the tree, where the trunk splits. “WHERE?” Oh FFS, be quiet or you’ll scare it away. “BUT I CAN’T SEE IT!”
Anyway, as luck would have it, most got bored, including the vocal Yanks, and they pushed off. So it left us and two other vehicles. We had been sitting there for about 45 minutes when all of a sudden, the leopard got up and started walking through the bushes. As luck would have it, we were ideally placed to watch it walk past a gap in the bushes;
it then stopped behind another and stood there, thus, its tail quivering!
As luck would have it, it then marched out of the bushes and sat down on the bank of the river about 25 yards away from us, with us in the best position on the opposite bank.
It sat there for about 3 minutes, looking at us, snarling gently to itself.
It then about faced and marched back into the bushes, and sat down in the gap that it walked past, as above.
Of course WE were lined up perfectly for it, and the others were in the wrong place. Oh shame!!!!!!!!
It then climbed back into its tree and went to sleep.
We then bumbled about a bit, saw the lovely kingfisher above, some hippos, some nice hornbills and various other things. We then headed off north back towards camp and for almost 2 hours drove slowly up into the hills.
Eventually at 1:45pm we arrived at our destination, a large hill about 20 minutes north of our camp where there were the most incredible views of the entire Masai Mara, with Tanzania and the Serengeti to the south and the Siria escarpment to the West.
David said “OK, we may as well have lunch here!” (He was in on my little surprise!) So he and I carried the tables and chairs and coolers across to a flat rocky area and set up lunch while Jo remained at the vehicle (I told her to stay!!!)
To set the scene, the first time I ever cooked dinner for her I did a silly starter which was a piece of toast with “I love you” written on it in alphabetti spaghetti. I had brought a tin of the aforementioned comestible with me from the UK, wrapped in bubble wrap and brown paper so she could not tell what it was (despite having seen it in our bag, fondled it and asked if it was a present for her!)
The camp had provided me with 2 plates and some toast and I proceeded to open the tin and spread the letters all over the place. An E, we’ll need one of them, and an M, a Y, a P etc etc... Ye gads! There was only one R in the entire tin! We rummaged and rummaged but to no avail! So, being the resourceful chap what I am, I got a B and snipped off the bottom right hand corner! We had another R!!!
The letters were laid out on the toast on the clean plate and hidden back in the cooler. The leftover letters were wrapped in tin foil and stuffed in a bag.
Give me 10 minutes, I said to David as we walked back to the vehicle to get Jo. He remained and I took her by the hand and walked her back to where lunch had been set out. Except lunch hadn’t been set out! The table was up, with a cloth on it, and the chairs opened up. No food or anything like that! “Where’s the food?” Jo asked. “That can wait”, I replied.
So I sat her down, whispered various sweet nothings to her (they’re not for you to know!
), hoiked the plate out of the cool box, got down on bended knee and plonked it on her lap!
I then whisked out the ring I had been keeping secure in the camp safes for the last 10 days and she said “Yes”
I asked her at 2:00pm Kenyan time on 20 September 2010 to marry me. In the UK it was 12:00pm, and we had met exactly 1 year before, to the minute!
I then pulled a bottle of champagne out of the cool box and we sat drinking it and having lunch with fabulous views across the Masai Mara.
The perfect way to end the best holiday of my life!
PS Part 3 is about death and chaos!
After 5 nights at Laikipia we flew from Nanyuki to Ol Kiombo airstrip in the Masai Mara and set off for Kicheche Bush Camp, in the Olare Orok Conservancy on the northern edge of the Mara Game Reserve. Why there? Because the conservancy only has 3 camps and no one staying in the Mara can visit the conservancy, while we could visit the Mara. It meant that we could have very private game drives in the conservancy and not have the worry of hordes of other vehicles filled the grockles descending upon us when we found something interesting. Kicheche Bush Camp is set on the edge of an acacia forest on a low hill above a small stream with commanding views to the north and south. It also only has 6 tents, and again they were very nice too.
Here we had the option of a morning game drive and back for lunch and then out again at 4:00ish or a full day out so we could get down to the crossings on the Mara & Talek Rivers (more of that in Part 3 lucky reader!). We were lucky in that we had a guide and vehicle all to ourselves on 3 of the 5 days we were there, so we felt we were getting very personal attention!
We went to the Mara to see the annual migration of the wildebeasties but more of that in Part 3...
So we just did “general” game viewing on the plains and along the rivers and stuff.
Here’s a view of our tent.
During the day there were often zebras and wildebeest wandering through the camp, and at night you could hear them munching on the fresh grass around our tent. Often you could hear lions roaring and hephalumps trumpeting at night, and the camp manageress had 2 lions kill a young wildebeest right outside her tent one night. So it’s all wild and exciting!
The scenery was much more open that at Laikipia, with wide expanses of grassland dissected by wooded river valleys. Made for some nice landscapes...
I can imagine a Monty Pythonesque cartoon hand coming poking out of the hole in the clouds in this picture. Dinsdale!
Mr (or possibly Mrs) Happypottymouth bumbling down to his stream
The joys of a super long lens!
A hippo marking its territory by s
tting on the river bank while cartwheeling its tail and spraying st all over the place. Noice!A nice herd of hephalumps hephalumping across the plain
Matriach reminding us who is boss...
Wait for me Mummy!
Cute baby eli!
To keep the elephlumps out of the camp would, you may think, be quite hard, due to their size and potential dangerousness. But they have a simple solution...
Crossing a river
You have terrible fleas dear. Hmmmm.... delicious!
A topi on look out for predators
A couple of baby hyenas. Even as babies they’re not that cute and as adults there’s something nasty and sinister about them, despite the good job they do at clearing up dead animals.
One morning we were bumbling along and stopped to look at a river when this snake came slithering along. It must have registered the heat source from the engine because it suddenly charged towards us at a huge rate of knots, and we had to back away fast and carry on down the track. It’s a black throated cobra or summat like that. :shudder:
A pretty agama lizard by our tent.
There are lions all over the shop in the Mara, but our best encounters were in the conservancy, away from the hordes.
Mrs Lion off to hunt in the late afternoon. (She missed!)
Back off, buddy
I’m far too important to go hunting. Bring me back some dinner, would you love?
A family relaxing in the shade during the heat of the day.
Little cub and mum
A couple of young common (Masai) giraffes
Adult and juvenile bateleur eagles perched in a tree
A juvenile Marshall Eagle (I think!)
A pair of bee-eaters
A beautiful woodland kingfisher
Mummy ostrich with babies
Boiled egg anyone? (Don’t worry, it had been abandoned a while apparently!)
While we had seen cheetahs in Laikipia, we had not seen them in their classic pose on an anthill, and one day on the way to the crossings we encountered the three brothers relaxing in the sun.
Two of them then got up and wandered off, leaving their sibling relaxing on the anthill.
They headed towards a mixed herd of zebra, topi and wildebeest
and started chasing them
We missed the actual kill, but they brought down a small zebra which they then feasted on, their bother having joined them. Two would keep guard while the other feasted, as hyenas and lions are known to scare cheetahs off their kill to save them the bother of killing themselves!
On 19 Sept Jo and I took a private vehicle and headed all thwe way to the southern borders of the Mara, about 3km from Tanzania in the hiope of seeing a mother cheetah with SIX cubs. She is in fact the mother of the three brothers mentioned above. It was a 3 hours journey and luckily we bumped into the brother in law of our guide who worked as a park ranger and he gave us permission to go off road and look for them in a wild and desolate area that few people visited.
En route we also saw a mother and daughter pair of cheetahs with a kill.
After about an hour of searching we found them walking across a scruffy bit of grass, with their mother in the lead!
Mum then left them in a bundle and headed off to kill a baby reedbuck, though the kill happened round the bend of a small stream, and so we missed that.
The cheetahlets all wandered across the river and waited for her patiently.
After about 10 minutes they started calling for her with a squeaky cheeping noise, and she then called them and they all gambolled over to where she was, she having dragged the baby reedbuck into some bushes. We sat and watched them play killing the reedbuck and having some quality time with their mum before we quietly left them in peace and headed off for breakfast!
After breakfast we were heading back to the main drag when we bumped into the three brothers sitting on an anthill. So we saw 12 cheetahs in one day, which is pretty good going!
You get two of them cos they’re pretty
On the way back to our camp David, our guide, had a call from a mate who said they were parked by a stream with a leopard in a tree. We had spent many mornings and evening searching up and down river banks looking for the darned elusive leopard to no avail, so we jumped at the opportunity, especially as they were not that far away. When we arrived we were informed the leopard had jumped down from the tree 5 mins earlier and headed across the stream to the woods on the other bank. We rushed along our side of the stream for about 2km until we could cross and then moved slowly back to where they had been, but on the opposite bank. As we were ambling along I spotted the leopard in a tree about 10 yards from us. We stopped, I snapped 3 piccies and he jumped down and headed back into the woods! But we had seen a leopard, albeit for about 30 seconds!
On Monday 20 September I had arranged for a private vehicle (even though we had by luck had one for the last 2 days!) for the day, as it was the last full day we had. We got up late (well, 7:00am!) and had breakfast in camp and then went out for the day. Our first port of call was an incredible wildebeest crossing on the Talek River (see part 3 when it arrives, for full details!) and then we went off along the river to find a leopard. We heard over the grapevine that one had been spotted sleeping at the base of a tree further downstream (or was it upstream, I can’t remember!). It was easy to find as there were about 10 vehicles on our side of the bank, all neatly spaced along the river. The leopard was on the opposite bank. We parked up and eventually pinpointed it. It was easy to see. Not!
A couple of the vehicles had Americans in. Of course, as most people know, leopards are VERY shy so it seems logical for our Septic friends from across the pond to shout at the top of their voices “I CAN'T SEE IT, WHERE IS IT?” Shhhhhhh! It’s there, under the tree, where the trunk splits. “WHERE?” Oh FFS, be quiet or you’ll scare it away. “BUT I CAN’T SEE IT!”
Anyway, as luck would have it, most got bored, including the vocal Yanks, and they pushed off. So it left us and two other vehicles. We had been sitting there for about 45 minutes when all of a sudden, the leopard got up and started walking through the bushes. As luck would have it, we were ideally placed to watch it walk past a gap in the bushes;
it then stopped behind another and stood there, thus, its tail quivering!
As luck would have it, it then marched out of the bushes and sat down on the bank of the river about 25 yards away from us, with us in the best position on the opposite bank.
It sat there for about 3 minutes, looking at us, snarling gently to itself.
It then about faced and marched back into the bushes, and sat down in the gap that it walked past, as above.
Of course WE were lined up perfectly for it, and the others were in the wrong place. Oh shame!!!!!!!!
It then climbed back into its tree and went to sleep.
We then bumbled about a bit, saw the lovely kingfisher above, some hippos, some nice hornbills and various other things. We then headed off north back towards camp and for almost 2 hours drove slowly up into the hills.
Eventually at 1:45pm we arrived at our destination, a large hill about 20 minutes north of our camp where there were the most incredible views of the entire Masai Mara, with Tanzania and the Serengeti to the south and the Siria escarpment to the West.
David said “OK, we may as well have lunch here!” (He was in on my little surprise!) So he and I carried the tables and chairs and coolers across to a flat rocky area and set up lunch while Jo remained at the vehicle (I told her to stay!!!)
To set the scene, the first time I ever cooked dinner for her I did a silly starter which was a piece of toast with “I love you” written on it in alphabetti spaghetti. I had brought a tin of the aforementioned comestible with me from the UK, wrapped in bubble wrap and brown paper so she could not tell what it was (despite having seen it in our bag, fondled it and asked if it was a present for her!)
The camp had provided me with 2 plates and some toast and I proceeded to open the tin and spread the letters all over the place. An E, we’ll need one of them, and an M, a Y, a P etc etc... Ye gads! There was only one R in the entire tin! We rummaged and rummaged but to no avail! So, being the resourceful chap what I am, I got a B and snipped off the bottom right hand corner! We had another R!!!
The letters were laid out on the toast on the clean plate and hidden back in the cooler. The leftover letters were wrapped in tin foil and stuffed in a bag.
Give me 10 minutes, I said to David as we walked back to the vehicle to get Jo. He remained and I took her by the hand and walked her back to where lunch had been set out. Except lunch hadn’t been set out! The table was up, with a cloth on it, and the chairs opened up. No food or anything like that! “Where’s the food?” Jo asked. “That can wait”, I replied.
So I sat her down, whispered various sweet nothings to her (they’re not for you to know!
), hoiked the plate out of the cool box, got down on bended knee and plonked it on her lap!I then whisked out the ring I had been keeping secure in the camp safes for the last 10 days and she said “Yes”
I asked her at 2:00pm Kenyan time on 20 September 2010 to marry me. In the UK it was 12:00pm, and we had met exactly 1 year before, to the minute!
I then pulled a bottle of champagne out of the cool box and we sat drinking it and having lunch with fabulous views across the Masai Mara.
The perfect way to end the best holiday of my life!
PS Part 3 is about death and chaos!
Edited by Fezant Pluckah on Thursday 30th September 11:47
Fezant Pluckah said:
Dogsey said:
If I didn't know better I'd suspect that you're just a great big softie at heart! 
Love the photo's of the cheetah cubs, I'll have to show them to my little'un as she has a bit of a soft spot (pun intended) for cheetahs.
I can fight like 10 truckers, I can. Grrrrr.... Love the photo's of the cheetah cubs, I'll have to show them to my little'un as she has a bit of a soft spot (pun intended) for cheetahs.
(But can you fight like one Towman?
)
Fantastic post and congratulations, I want to go to Kenya now. Although I did think of this: http://www.weebls-stuff.com/songs/kenya/ when reading this post
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