Safari Day 5

The next morning we went down to the lake with Emily and Alan and saw a hippo grazing, much closer and better viewed than the one we saw grazing while we were on the boat. Then, at 8 am we left Navasha to head to the Masai Mara National Reserve. It was another long, bumpy, dusty ride.

We went to the Masia village before going to the game park. They had traditional tribal dress on and did some dancing and singing for us. When we were in Somburu we had seen a tribal dance, and this was similar yet different. In Somburu they had made me get up and dance with them, which was pretty embarrassing, and during one of the Masai dances they take turns jumping as high as they can and John joined in for that dance.

They took us into one of their houses. The houses are made of cow dung which is dried in the sun. They have parents, children (around 6 per family), and grandparents all living in a tiny one bedroom hut. There are 2 sleeping areas in teh main bit, each between a single and double size. In the same space, in the middle, is a cooking area which hardly has room to sit around a small fire with an earthen pot for cooking. The fire is on all the time, and the hut was very, very hot because of it. The parents' bedroom was off the main room. It was very dark in the whole house. No windows or lighting.

They showed us how they make fire with sticks and straw. Then they took us to the 'market' which had loads of tourist stuff to buy, like what we had seen everywhere. They followed us around while we looked, and we were completely surrounded by many tribesmen who were very overbearing. We did end up buying a couple of little animal masks, more out of the pressure than anything. I'm so glad I don't live where you have to barter all the time because I'm completely rubbish at negotiating and walking away when it's not working!

We were told by our friends who had been to Kenya to take pens because the locals love them. So I had brought a couple of packs and we handed some out before we left the village. The kids went crazy for them. I don't know what they do with them, but it's true that the poorer Kenyans love their pens! We even had people a few days earlier come up to the windows of the van and ask for pens, and at the end of the trip we used them as tips a couple of times when we were low on money.

We got to the Masai Mara and went on our game drive. We saw a pride of lions, who had a sweet little cub and several older youngsters. One of them was starting to sprout a mane. He had the likeness of a teenager who has started to get some fuzz oon his upper lip.

There were loads and loads of carcasses and bones throughout the game park. Everwhere we looked there were more carcasses. The Masai Mara has less of the variety of Somburu, but much more quantity of the animals it does have, which means there is more prey to eat and more predators to eat them. Because it was the time of the wildebeast migration from Tanzania into Kenya, there were hundreds of wildebeast and other prey. We were told that the lions just start to get greedy and kill even when they aren't very hungry, just because the prey is there. Then they don't eat it all.

In addition to the lions and lots and lots of wildebeasts, we saw elephants, Masai giraffes, zebras (including a 'zebra crossing' where about 5 crossed in front of our van), impala, water bucks, birds of prey, etc. The lions were the main (mane) attraction of this particular drive.

At dinner there was a bat flying around. That undid the winding down the two glasses of wine had done, but was kind of funny.