The Maasai Mara National Reserve was our second safari stop. It was very different from Amboseli. The Mara was more green, there were larger herds of grazing animals and most importantly, there were lots more cats.
The lions were the stars of the show in the Mara. They are great for safaris. They rest and sleep for 20 hours each day so they are fairly easy to find and they don't run away when you get close to them. They're also very photogenic.
On our first day in the Mara, we saw a mother lion with four cubs.
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| Mom and cubs (note - fourth cub is behind mom) |
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| Mom |
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| Cubs play-fighting |
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| Looking cute |
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| Chewing on a twig |
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| Why can't we get our cat Ginger to pose this nicely? |
We saw them again on the second day sleeping in the mid-day sun.
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| Hakuna matata - no worries |
We saw them again on our third day. This time it was early in the morning but they were doing the same thing - nothing. Mom was resting after a night of hunting. The cubs are too young to hunt.
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| Mom and cub |
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| One last cute cub photo |
Dad wasn't with mom and the cubs but he was in the neighbourhood. Dad is a really old male - about 12-14 years old which is as old as they get in the wild.
Males don't usually hunt (the females do that) but they do have to defend their territory from other males which puts lots of wear and tear on their bodies. You could see the tough years on this male - some teeth were broken and he walked with a limp.
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| Yawning not roaring |
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| Having a drink |
In another part of the park, we found two juvenile lions who were about 2 years old.
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| Sister and brother having a rest (she's on the left) |
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| Sister |
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| Brother - note the mane on his neck starting to grow |
In addition to lions, there are also cheetah and leopards in the Mara. Unlike the lions, it was harder to find these cats and once we found them it was hard to get good photos.
We found a female cheetah and her juvenile offspring. She was trying to hunt but her kid only wanted to play and kept giving away their position to antelope in the area.
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| Mom |
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| Mom and kid |
We saw a couple leopards but didn't get any photos worth sharing. Stay tuned for future safari blogs as Vanessa got some really good photos later in our trip.
There are large numbers of cats in the Mara because there is lots of prey. Here's what's on the menu for cats.
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| Wildebeest |
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| Topi |
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| Thomson's Gazelle |
If you prefer dogs over cats, here are a few photos for you. We watched two jackals fight over the remains of a gazelle.
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| Before the scrap |
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| Round 1 |
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| Round 2 |
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| The winner gets the food and the girl (she's behind him) |
Here are a few more photos from the Mara.
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| Giraffe having lunch |
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| Mom and her son |
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| Giraffe walking off their lunch |
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| Male ostrich - neck, legs and other parts turn pink when they're ready to mate |
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| Hippos play-fighting |
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| Male cape buffalo |
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| Hyena |
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| Warthog - they use their nose to dig up grass and roots they like to eat |
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| Banded mongoose |
Like Amboseli, most of our time on safari in the Mara was spent on the ground in a safari truck.
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| Our ride |
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| With our guide Moses |
We did a balloon ride one morning to get a different view of things. It was cold and rainy the night before so the animals weren't active while we were ballooning but the flight was still a great experience and the landing was a real adventure. The pilot had difficulty keeping the balloon on the correct flight path because the winds were very light. He couldn't get our balloon to the designated landing spot and rushed into a landing just before we ran out of fuel. The landing was very hard and then the balloon began to collapse - we had run out of fuel. We jumped out of the basket to avoid the balloon and watched as the deflating balloon almost went into the trees.
While the crew rescued the balloon, we hopped in a truck for a long ride - the landing spot was 30 minutes from where we were supposed to land for a bush breakfast. We had a great time at breakfast as we enjoyed the tasty food and hassled the pilot about his landing and navigation skills.
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| Filling the balloon early in the morning |
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| Floating over the Mara |
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| Captain abandons ship after the landing (he's on the right) |
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| Another deluxe bush breakfast |
We stayed in another tent camp in the Mara but this one was different from Amboseli in one important way. There was no fence around the camp which meant that animals could (and did) roam through at night. Hippos were a regular visitor - we'd hear them chewing on grass and grunting outside our tent in the middle of the night.
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| Inside our tent |
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| The bathroom - definitely not roughing it |
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| Lunch spot for people during the day - lunch spot for hippos at night |
After three days in Amboseli and three days in the Mara, we headed across the border into Tanzania for our last two safari stops.
Vanessa and Blake
