Our man for the whole of our Kenya trip is William. He is a great guide, and seems to know the obligatory mountain of information required for these safaris. You can tell when they are just winging an answer – they begin with “well, it depends”.
We start this afternoon’s safari around 4pm, and enter the gates of the Masai Mara National Park, which is right next to our lodge. Before long, we see a group of at least 20 giraffes spread across the open plain, right near a Balonite tree. William tells us it is unusual to see such a large group of giraffes and thinks we are in for a lucky safari.
Fergus is yearning for a lion sighting, and I come up with our first lioness very soon after the giraffes. With just a head popping up over the long grass, she is hard to see well.
We move on and see more new animals for our visit to Africa: wildebeest, gazelles, ostriches in the wild – both male (black) and female (grey), hyena and new antelope species we haven’t seen before.
The countryside here is so very different to the Chobe area we went to in Botswana. It is open, with few trees. The name “Masai Mara” means dotted plains. The dots being the Balonite trees that stand alone across the vast open land.
We see a group of other safari vehicles gathered near some trees and join them to see what it is they are all watching. Well OMG, OMG – it’s a lion devouring a zebra. Wow, wow, wow. Every person watching this was in awe of the spectacle. The lion was so exhausted after feasting on the zebra, it was puffing. Check out the pics below. None of us will ever forget this afternoon.
William said we were VERY lucky to see this!
We meandered back through the park, and saw large groups of wildebeest, zebra, impala, gazelle and several buffalo and elephants. It’s quite surreal to see all these wild animals quietly cohabiting the countryside.
Then we found the lioness. She had reappeared from the site we had first spotted her, and was downwind of her prey. She was watching zebra in the distance. But alas, we had to exit the park gates by 6.30pm, so left her to hunt in peace. More tomorrow!
Here are some of our memories for today:

This is one of my favourite giraffe photos. And I have many!

Just half a dozen of the many giraffes we saw on the plain.

OKay, so the giraffe photo tally might start to rival the elephant photo tally.

Kissing giraffes!

And time for a neck rub.

A male ostrich and a muscly antelope (can’t remember their name right now)

A typical view of the plains, with some zebra.

Impala, zebra and elephant – all in one!

And here’s the majestic lion tucking into a zebra. He didn’t care that there were about 15 vehicles surrounding him.

You can even see the black and white stripes on the leg of the zebra.

Then he went looking for privacy.

He was a gnarly old thing, with lots of scars and old war wounds.

He sat down right here for a while, puffed out from his feasting.

The lioness looking for dinner.

The lioness was really hard to spot, and can’t be seen at all if she sits down.

A female ostrich.

Haven’t had a bad sunset yet!