Safari

We had the pleasure of our first family company here in Kenya! Tim’s brother Alan, and his wife Tricia, came from South Carolina to spend a week with us. Last weekend we drove to the Maasai Mara on a safari. August is the peak season for the Mara’s Great Migration.Every year 1.3 million wildebeest move in a clockwise direction from the Serengeti to the Mara in search of water and fresh grass. They quite literally eat their way across the plains. The cycle began in the 1960s when the numbers of wildebeests swelled to over a million.
We viewed the tail end of this year’s Migration. We saw great long lines of wildebeests, gazelle, and zebra, walking in a slow march and leaving the land behind them looking dry, trampled, barren.And anytime you have a million herbivore strolling by, you have carnivores looking for a easy meal. We saw 28 lions, 3 cheetahs, 3 hyenas, and 1 leopard hanging around.
The most intriguing thing about these ferocious animals was that we saw them in very natural moments: a lioness nursing her cubs, a family of lions strolling across the plain carrying the runt of the litter, a leopard napping in a tree, a young male lion drinking from a stream, another lion cleaning its face just like a domestic cat, two brother lions resting after a full meal of wildebeest.There were also giraffe, elephants, hippos, and ostrich looking for some green grass in the parched land. Spectacular sunsets, delicious food, and luxury tents completed this once-in-a-lifetime trip. Although a second trip to the Mara is not out of the question…..