My weekend started by waking up at 5:30AM on Saturday in
preparation for our safari!! We had an evening game drive planned and it takes
most of the day to travel, so we wanted to leave by 6 to get there in time
(which of course, in Kenyan time meant we left at 7). For whatever reason, we
took the long way to get to the reserve so including our stop for lunch we
arrived at around 2:30 at the Maasai Hippo Lodge where we were staying. We
quickly dropped our stuff and got ready to leave at 3:45 so we could get there
by 4:00. Evening and morning game drives are ideal because not only do you get
a great sunset and sunrise, but it’s the time when hunting and other activity
most frequently occurs. Getting there by 4:00 didn’t give us a ton of time
since the sun sets around 6:45 every night, but given that we only had about
two and a half hours and we only stayed near the park entrance, we saw a ton of
stuff on our first day. Aside from the animals, Maasai Mara itself is
breathtaking. Again, I wish the pictures did it justice, but it may be the most
beautiful place I’ve ever been in my life. Besides the mountains that line the
park, you can see the plains for miles. Everything is so natural and pure and
has the crispest, freshest smell; needless to say we were all loving the change
from the crowded and polluted town of Migori.
Our lodging!
For the safari, we drove around in our usual Medics to
Africa vans, which seat 9-10 people. The hood on the vans pops up which is not
only great for air flow, but gave us all an incredible view as we drove around
(and also gave us some incredible bruises since the drive was so bumpy). Within the first few minutes of entering the
park we saw zebras, which we learned are pretty common and look more like fake
horses, dicdics, and impala, which are both types of gazelles. All of the vans
in the park have walkie-talkie radios in them, so if one van sees something
they can easily radio the rest of the vans to let them know what and where it
is. Our first call came a short time into our nighttime drive, but for us, the
English-speaking passengers, we had no idea what the drivers were saying since
they spoke to each other in Swahili. Our driver, Martin, would instead hear a
lot of excitement on the radio and start speeding like a madman to wherever the
animal was, leaving us confused, excited, and bumping into everything and each
other as we stood on the lookout. When we got to the location of the call, we
sat with at least 7 other vans and saw our very first lion! It was a female,
who we learned sleeps for 18 out of 24 hours in the day and spends the rest of
the time hunting or caring for her cubs. At first, the lion was just wandering,
but then she sighted a few impala in the distance and for a while, we thought
there was going to be a kill. Unfortunately, she took too long and the impala
were too aware of her location so she lost interest and so did we.
Just the fam hangin out at Pride Rock
Half of our gang in the van
The rest of the night we saw a herd of elephants (herd? What
are multiple elephants?), a family of lions including mamas and a few cubs, and
then a male lion. We learned that male lions are actually super lazy and are
only awake for 23 hours of the day, not even to hunt but to eat whatever their
female counterpart could find. Obviously my car full of girls took an immediate
dislike to their lifestyle. By the time we saw everything, it was getting
pretty dark so we headed back to the lodge, looking forward to warm showers,
good food, and a comfortable bed. Back in Migori, we really don’t have it too
bad in comparison to what it could be. We at least have running water, even if
it’s not always hot and definitely not sanitary. Our food at first when we were
in the hotel was pretty bad, “carbs on carbs on carbs” as we like to say; lots
of fries, rice, potatoes, and hardly edible meat. At the house, it’s considerably
better (still carbs on carbs) where we have beans, actually edible meat, and
fresh fruit with every meal. Even so, it’s considerably different from what
we’re all used to so we’re always talking about food and what we’re craving
from home. Our beds in Migori could be worse too, but they’re definitely less
than comfortable. So knowing all this, even though in America our hotel is not
one I probably would have picked to stay in, we treated it like it was a five
star resort. The first night, my roommate and I came back and had the most
perfect, warm shower then headed off to dinner which had edible meat, pasta
(real pasta!), and a new variety of veggies. The bed was the most comfortable
I’ve been in since we arrived here in Kenya, so needless to say we all thought
we had died and gone to heaven. We were all asleep by 9:30 half because we had
such a long day, but also probably half because we were so excited to sleep on
something that didn’t have imprints from where people in the past had slept.
We woke up the next morning in the best mood, happy from our
night’s sleep and looking forward to our safari and visit to the Maasai village
that day. Breakfast again was incredible; we had omelets instead of fried eggs
and actual crepes so we filled up expecting our picnic lunch to be not so exciting.
We were meant to start our day on our safari then later go to the Maasai
village, but since we were still waiting for our card to pay for the park
entrance fee to get reloaded, we decided to visit the village first. The Maasai
is a tribe specific to the Maasai Mara area in Africa and they are the typical
tribe you would expect to see with traditional robes, long earlobes, and shaved
heads. Our visit to the village included an introduction, including their
traditional dances, a visit to their schoolhouse, and a tour of the village.
They have a ton of livestock in the area, so I guess since it’s an easy
resource, their huts are made of mud and cow dung and most of the ground is
completely covered with poop. Thank god we all wore our sneakers. They of
course also have their own traditions, which as Americans we were all a little
shocked over. For example, at sixteen years of age, males are circumcised in
the center of town but are not allowed to show any sign of pain or emotion; it
is only then that they are considered men and are able to grow their hair out
and become warriors. At 21, the men marry and shave off of their long hair but
women are typically younger, sometimes only 16 or 17. Also, the villagers main
diet is rice, meat, and animal blood (I was real worried they were going to
offer us some to try, I think I probably would have passed out).
Maasai tribe dance
Huts made of cow dung and mud
After our little intro to the village, we were split into
groups and brought into a Maasai man’s home (made of cow dung). The Maasai
tribe do practice polygamy, so saying the men only have one home would be
incorrect. Each wife of a warrior gets her own home, and then the husband
alternates between the houses. Anyway, the house we saw only had two rooms and
of course had no lighting, so it was very dark, and there was a small fire in
the middle, so it was ungodly hot. The warrior, his wife, and children all
sleep in one of the beds in the main room, and then the second room is made up
of beds for the goats and cows. We got to meet our Maasai man’s children and
talk about the village, and then it very quickly transitioned to trying to sell
stuff to us. As a grand finale for our visit, all of the families in the
village have a stand in their marketplace of sorts, and aggressively try to sell
bracelets, blankets, wooden figurines, etc. It was seriously the most
overwhelming and frustrating experience of our lives – and other people agree
with me, it’s not just me being uptight. People grabbed us, pulling us toward
their stands, trying to force jewelry on us and following us around the entire
marketplace trying to bargain with us. Of course there are no set prices so
they majorly tried to rip us off thinking that since we’re white, we have lots
of money to spend on them. At some points, we were stuck in a huge circle of
people putting bracelets on us, pulling us, or yelling, asking us to buy
anything they could pawn off on us. It was frustrating for most of us because
we all knew this was a great and cheap place to get souvenirs, but the way we
were treated made us all want to leave immediately. We were all pretty upset
afterwards, so we were happy we had the safari to look forward to. Even though
it was incredibly frustrating, I got a really nice Maasai blanket that the
Maasais wear and the pattern on it distinguishes what family you’re a part of,
so in the end it was kind of worth it (but only kind of).
The terrifying village marketplace
We headed out of the Maasai village all cursing how much we
got ripped off and headed over to the Maasai Mara reserve for our second day on
the safari. We had ours to spend, from about 9:30AM to 7 at night, so we were
able to cover a lot more than we had the night before. The reserve itself is
1800 square kilometers (roughly 1080 square miles) so even if we tried, I would
think it’s near impossible to hit every part, not that it’s necessary since
most of the animals hang out very close to the entrance of the park. Maasai
Mara also extends into Tanzania and becomes the Serengeti, which is easily
twice the size of the Kenyan side of the park. We saw lots of zebras again
along with water buffalo, some hyenas, impalas, dicdics, the usual. Our first
call on the radio led us over to another pack of lions (maybe the same ones
from the night before? Who knows), two mamas and lots of cubs, who were resting
in the grass. They were super cute, but not too exciting since they were
sleeping the whole time. We drove around a bit more, passed some giraffes, and
then got another call on the radio so we sped over to whatever was awaiting us.
Turned out it was a leopard, which are really hard to find since they hang out
in trees and mostly out of view. Even though we could hardly see it, it was
really exciting for us because at this point we had almost found all of the big
5! The Big 5 here are considered the five most deadly animals in Maasai Mara:
lions, leopards, elephants, water buffalo, and rhinos. We only had rhinos left
to go, but we didn’t expect to see one because they are super rare with only 15
total in the entire park.
Elephants!
See the leopard? Yeah, me neither.
Since we couldn’t see the leopard very well, we left and
headed over to a massive pack of 16 giraffes, who were all walking around our
van; it was incredible! I think giraffes are my favorite of all of the animals
we saw just because they’re awesome and look really cool when they walk (ostriches
are my least favorite, in case you were wondering. Their knees bend backwards
and it’s real freaky). After our multiple giraffe spotting, we had a pretty
long lull in seeing animals as we headed south into the park. We got to the
border of Kenya and Tanzania, which is marked by a rock, so I got to stand in
two countries at once! It was basically like A Walk to Remember, besides the love story since the only man in my
life is my dog. We took a precious family photo with everyone from our group,
then moved on about five minutes down the road (and by road I mean the dirt) to
have lunch near the Mara River. Lunch was not so filling, but we got to hang
out with the monkeys that hung around the area and sometimes stole our bananas.
After lunch we took a walk to see the hippos in the Mara
River and finally stretched our legs a little. We stood for mostly the whole
ride on Saturday and got banged around a lot so by part way through the day our
legs were sore and we had some bruises forming. There were tons and tons of
hippos and they were way bigger than I expected. I can definitely understand
why they are so dangerous since on top of their size they can run really fast.
Although they can hold their breath for 7 minutes at a time, generally I wasn’t
too impressed by them since they must get pretty bored spending their entire
lives under water. After our hippo adventure, we had another pretty long lull
while driving back closer to the gate. We did see a pack of zebras
mid-migration, which was pretty cool, and later on we saw a family of elephants
including a baby, so obviously all of the girls freaked out since it’s so darn
cute. We were on our way out of the park when Martin got another call on the
radio and immediately started speeding away, being followed by another set of
like seven cars. We knew it had to be big. Martin was driving so fast (and dare
I say it, recklessly) that we were all flying around the van, running into each
other and into the sides of the van. When we eventually got there, we saw…. A
BLACK RHINO!!!! Well, only kind of saw. The rhino was apparently shy so she was
speeding away from all of our vans, but Martin was not having it. We were the
only van to aggressively (stress on aggressively) follow the rhino around, but
as a result we got a great view and some great pictures. I personally only got
one picture of a rhino butt because I got either a thorn or small branch stuck
in my eye, so I spent half of the ride being thrown around the van and crying –
don’t feel bad, it was pretty hilarious at the time. So even though I was
clawing at my eye for half of the chase, we completed the big five!!!
Allegedly, only 3 or 4 other groups in the history of Medics to Africa (ten
years of the program) have seen all five, so basically we’re famous… and incredibly
lucky.
Black rhino butt
After the excitement of the rhino, we got yet another call
and sped off again, only to find an awake male lion walking towards his pack of
females and cubs! It was incredible, I kid you not when I say the lion was
three feet from our van. The cubs also got smaller and so much cuter and were
purring and making adorable noises as they ran towards their mamas. With the
sun setting behind the entire scene, it was nothing short of perfect. Shout out
to Martin, who we deemed “Young Lion”, for being an awesome driver and helping
us see the big five! After a really exciting afternoon, we went back to the
lodge again, had a delicious dinner but not so warm shower (we had some water
issues) and headed to bed, excited for our sunrise safari.
We left our lodge at 6:45 this morning expecting to see the
sunrise, but thanks to the clouds we didn’t have too much luck. The mornings
are the time for animals to eat what they killed the night before so we were
expecting some excitement but unfortunately there wasn’t too much. In our hour
and a half drive we saw one group of lion cubs all alone running around so even
though we didn’t see a lot, the cuteness of it was enough to satisfy me for the
morning. All of us really wanted to take one home with us since they’re so
adorable (it would have been the perfect time since the mom lions weren’t
around) but obviously that’s not too logical or likely. We’d never get that cub
through customs.
We ended our trip with another delicious breakfast and
packing up for the morning to head off on our 4 hour drive back to Migori. This
time we took the backroads through the reserve, so we had an incredible view
for the entire drive and got to see some more zebras, giraffes, and elephants
as we went. On the other hand, almost the entire drive, probably 3 and a half
of the four hours, was on dirt roads so it was insanely bumpy and lots of us
ended up smacking against windows and whatnot. During the whole ride, I kept
thinking about what time it was at home since today (Monday) is the first day of camp at
Sandy Hill and I’m so sad I’m missing it! Thinking that two-week lunch is going
on while I’m writing this makes me so camp-sick and I can’t wait to get back,
even though I’m definitely not ready to leave Africa yet. If anyone at camp is
reading this good luck with your first week!! Hope everything in the med center
world is going well too :).
After sitting for so long the past few days, we all were pretty sure pressure
ulcers were forming, so we were thrilled to finally arrive back in Migori and
stretch our legs a little bit. We spent the rest of the day literally laying
around, we’re all so exhausted from our weekend that even playing cards seems
to require too much energy. I can’t believe my safari is finished already and
it has definitely been the highlight of my time here. Even though I felt like I
was in Disney World Animal Kingdom the whole time and couldn’t believe it was a
real experience, it was one of the most incredible weekends ever. Although I’m
sad it’s over, looking forward to starting back at the hospital tomorrow! Check
back for updates and look forward to the 73 pictures I post of every animal on
facebook – sorry in advance to anyone whose newsfeed I show up on.
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