Massai Mara - Thursday 14 th Jan

Thursday 14th Jan

 We woke to a beautiful morning and a very leisurely breakfast after our first night under canvas. The camp ground is next to the Talek river and has permanent tents as well as lots of shaded campsites. We have an Aussie 30 second tent which is marvellous to set up as the name suggests.

The Talek river does have a resident croc and there is a pride of lions that live on the other side of the bank so no swimming. The amenities block is very clean and hot water is heated buy fire in a drum out the back. The photo is of the local Masi guy keeping it stoked for hot showers.

We headed back into the park with Amanda and Jan in the lead for some more game driving. Much to our delight we came across a Cheetah and her two cubs stalking through the grass.

Most times  you can see we are anywhere between 30 and 50 metres away from the animals. Shot below is looking at a couple of elephants

 Then more driving followed by a lunch break at the local light aircraft airport and souvenir sellers where Jo brought a Massai red cotton blanket . Amanda and Jan left us to our own devices where we headed to the Massaii River to look at the hippos .This is the location of the Wilderbeast crossing ( one of the seven wonders of the world) for the great migration from the Serengeti National Park to Massai Mara.

The river was full of Hippos but as they stay semi submurged during the day all we saw was a few heads , twitching ears and the odd yawn. Hippos are the most dangerous animal with more people dying from being crushed by one of the beasts than anything else.

You have to take a guided tour with a armed ranger to view the hippos so after agreeing the price Ranger David took us around to the various viewing sites .

  We then headed back for the 2 hour drive to camp and on the way spotted  a very large tower of giraffes and a cheetah perched up on a hill. 

Unfortunately we didn't have a camp fire as it had started to rain but maybe this wasn't a bad thing as one of the locals let us know there had been a leopard wandering through the campground. Amanda prepared an excellent meal of eye fillet and salad which we devoured over a couple beers and bottles of white then slipped off to bed