Masai Mara
We flew from Samburu to the Keekerok airstrip (via Nairobi, Kichwa Tembo, and Little Governors) where we were met by Timothy in a 7-seater Landcruiser. During the five minute drive to Keekerok, Timothy explained that the lodge is not fenced and it is very important to be on alert for animals and to not leave the grounds.
We were assigned to room #25, which was very close to the main lodge and had no neighbors on one side. The room was small compared to our room at the Samburu Serena, but otherwise generally the same (desk, closet, mosquito netting). At night the light on the porch REALLY attracted bugs – to the point that we could not open the door without complete infestation so we unscrewed the light and used a flashlight when necessary. The lodge has a swimming pool for passing time between game drives. There was also a hippo pool that was reached by a series of elevated walkways. This area was also crawling with colobus monkeys and there were also reedbuck on the hillside.
The lodge had Maasai men to escort you to your room at night – we thought that this was for ambience until we woke up in the middle of the night to a strange noise and there was a hippo munching on the shrubbery right outside our window !
One of the reasons we like the Mara is because we’ve always had good luck spotting lions. This trip was no different – every game drive was a lion-fest ! We found one group with three lionesses and nine 4-week-old cubs. We found them on two different drives, but the best experience was when it was lightly raining because there were no other vehicles around and the cubs were very active because it wasn’t hot. Excuse the shaky video, but I figured I’d post it anyway because the little cubs are just so cute!
There had been a lot of rain so some of the tracks were quite muddy so we were glad to have Timothy as our guide. We actually wound up rescuing a few other vehicles who were stuck in the mud.
On election day, during the 7 hours between our game drives he packed the Land Rover with fifteen men to drive hours to his home village to vote. He proudly showed us his ink-stained finger and explained the Kenyan voting system to us. The next day when he waited with us at the airstrip, he anxiously awaited text messages from friends with access news – little did anyone know the chaos that would erupt in the next few days.
Next stop – Zanzibar
