The Llion King... I mean the Maasai Mara

Helllo friends I haven't updated you in a while and my mum started complaining so I thought I would try to find a plug out in the middle of knowhere in Nguruman to try n charge my phone to send a blog to jalesh. Hahaha. So ya I had to wait two days to charge my phone but I'm good to go. Since I last blogged about Mbita and bird island I have travelled to THREE other places. We are moving fast and I have beeen on some absolutely beautiful drives accross the country.

I've been to the maasai mara which is likw the new york city of the animal world. In terms of highlites of the mara (bcuz I saw soooo much):
- I saw two lionesses playing with her four cubs. Simba and nala were present and they were playong hide and seek.
- I saw a mama cheetah feeding her babies
- six elephants walked past our campsite meters away from us
- a super rare leopard laying lazily in a tree. It was soooo closeeee n I got crazy pics! Ppl never see leopards cuz they are sneaky!
- lots of buffalo n gazelles and zebras. All that typical african stuff
- a lion eating a dead buffalo

we were really close to the animals (hi steven and brandon)

Elephant bums

Elephant noses

nom nom nnom

class at our campsite in the mara

BUFFALO

the kitchen... and a monkey trying to raid the kitchen

helllo leopard

mufasa

But the highlight of the mara was when my group was driving back from visiting a maasai village and we saw a lion getting ready to hunt a "topi" at the top of a hill, and there was an incredible orangy sun set in the background. The sunset was absolutely beautiful. We stopped the truck to watch the lion for a few mins and I thought in my head :  THIS IS AFRICA. The most depressing thing was that I didn't hv a camera with me sooooo I had to take the whole thing is as a mental picture....

that is... until 2.5 weeks later.....


Luckily, Bluth had her CAMERA and is an amazing photographer and i did steal this shot of the sunset we saw from her:

Now doesnt this look like the very first picture i posted on my blog but like during sunset??? Hoooooollyyy crap.

Our days in the mara were packed becuase we started our second session courses and went on game drives at six thrity in the morning and then again at five pm till the sun set. I know its a little lame to read about safaris becuase you can really only understand the excitement of seeing your first wild animals when you are living it!

Our campsite was IN the mara sooo we heard lions at night and monkeys freak out about what ever animal was around.The mara was such a beautiful place but it is totally riddled with issues of land conflict between the parks n the maasai and the conflict between animals n the pastoralist way of life of the maasai. See how much I'm learning??

Elephant viewing right from the comfort of our very own campsite.

Also. This was the campiest place so far. I am proud to say that I am an exceller user of a drop toilet and not afriad to pee in bushes anymore. My bug fear has substantially lessoned and food always tastes better after a long day of hard work.

Photo by Melanie MacDonald

More updates soon about naivasha and nguruman.