And so Justin and I decided to make a break for the Masai Mara and take in all the spoils of a safari. Our journey started by easy coach to Nairobi. Easy Coach is a bus line; their motto is experience dignity, their seats are not so comfortable. When picking an easy coach seat the rules are i) seats at the back of the bus are way to bumpy ii) seats at the front of the bus are very noisy from the roar of the engine. And if anyone tries to recline their seats the result is no legroom.
After a long bus ride we settled into the familiar comforts of Upper Hill Campsite, but not for too long, because that night we went to the restraint aptly titled Carnivore. At Carnivore there is only one type of food, meat. Every kind of it. Camel, ostrich, alligator were the more exotic selections while some more familiar selections like lamb, pork, liver, beef and chicken were also rolled out to us as we feasted like literal king. The meat was cooked over large pit fires in the front of the restaurant, and then brought out on swords where they cut it with knives, and to show that we were done we had to remove a little flag from the top of the carousel. Having well gorged ourselves we returned to the campsite.
The next morning we awoke from our meat comas in preparation for our taxi at 7:00. When 7:00 rolled around we called to find when they would be there, they told us they’d show up at 8:30, it was 8:00 when they arrived. Kenya is so reliably unpredictable.
We met up with the Safari vehicle in Nairobi. It was a matatu with a roof that popped up. Taking the journey with us was a young Russian couple and an older east Indian man. For maximum enjoyment of our roadtrip Justin and I spent the start of it watching Jurassic Park, which is still an awesome movie. By the time we started getting nearer to the Mara it was really something to see how much the landscape had changed. Gone were the green, fertile field of Kimnini where the maize was much taller than myself, we had entered a semi arid zone of sad looking stalks of maize.
The road also got really bad, giant potholes made for giant bumps, sometimes roads are best unpaved, and our driver did as much searching for offroad track as he spent driving on the road. Along the way there were also many tourist shops. We would sometimes take rest stops at the odd one, and when we went in we had a lot of fun trying to bargin with the merchants who were selling their wares at much higher prices than anyone in Nairobi or Kisumu could even dream of asking.
Arriving on day one we dropped off our bags and had an afternoon game drive. Just at the entrance of the park, and a few kilometres in. There is a lot of wildlife just inside the park, many wildebeests and zebras, the highlight though was definitely some lazy lions just hanging out. We circled them, along with many other safari vehicles and took our pictures. The difference was our driver was one of the ones everyone in the other vehicles hates and after having left the lions we circled back and got right in close for up close lions. We also watched the sunset got some great pictures.
The next day was full safari. We got in the park and just drove around, we took many pictures, and saw zebras, elephants, water buffaloes, wildebeests, impalas and whatever else shows up in the pictures that I haven’t mentioned. The pictures probably explain in best. We went to the river to see river crossings from the Serenghetti to the Mara, but they didn’t happen where we were that day. Instead we saw some really cool hippos and crocodiles. We ate our lunch overlooking a group of hippos as they lazed around. As we drove back there were giraffe and elephant sightings, and some nice landscapes as well. After the drive we took a tour of a traditional Masai village. The Masai are pastoralists, who still live by traditional means. Their villages are built so that they are centered around the area where they keep their cows at night, and they well known for their Masai robes.
The next morning Justin and I got our own private game drive as the Russian couple joined another group, and the old man decided not to wake up. On this drive we saw a pack of vultures go absolutely crazy over a fresh carcass. Justin best likened it to zombies encircling a victim. We watched too many zombie movies this trip. After the morning drive the safari was over and we were back to Nairobi.
