Cheetah Kill

Day 15-18

 Hakuna Matata (No worries) as we all know from The Lion King. However I’ve fallen in love with the saying Hakuna Matete (pronouced ma tea tea) meaning Nice Tits!

While relaxing in Nairobi for a couple days I was able to catch up on posting to the blog and getting the first proper laundry finished. While here we visited an elephant orphanage to see up close a couple dozen baby elephants being cared and rehabilitated to eventually be freed into the wild. Not overly exciting however pretty neat experience

We dropped off a few passengers at the end of their trip and picked up 14 new people to max out our truck with 24 passengers. Things are going to be different from this point forward with a full truck. I’m still learning everyone’s name and finding out about their backgrounds. While there is a core group of 10 having traveled together for a couple weeks thus far it looks like the new additions are going to fit in with us quite well.

We made it to Masai Mara National Park and stayed at a wonderful permanent tent camp made up of dorm size tents permanently setup with cots, toilets, and showers inside. A nice change to sleep in a bed for a couple nights. Masai Mara is a game park in a valley on the Kenya/Tanzania border. On the Kenya side the park is Masai Mara and the Tanzania side is known as Serengeti.

We spent the past two days game driving in the park searching for as much wildlife possible. Think national geographic safari. We were standing in minivans with no tops to get good close up views of all the animals as we get within a foot or less of most animals.

As we head out our first afternoon at the gate to our camp is an enormous elephant grazing on local plants a mere 15 feet away. Less than 50 yards further we come across a pack of baboons and we are still a few miles away from the park entrance. There are several Masai tribes people dressed in a traditional red rob/blanket type apparel herding cows through the trees in search of grass for their heard.

Entering the park we immediately come across herds of elephants, gazelles, impalas, buffalo, zebras water buck, and dozens of giraffe only an arm reach away from our vehicle. It’s exceptionally dusty in the arid environment driving across dirt paths with dozens of similar vehicles toting around tourist to get up close and personal views of the wondrous creatures. There is nonstop chatter on the CB radio between all the drivers in Swahili telling each other where game is located so our driver can make it to where the best sightings are. It’s shocking, a dozen or more vehicles show up where a leopard

has recently killed and eaten a zebra. It lays in the tree snoozing like none of the dozen or more vehicles are there surrounding the tree. This makes it official, I’ve seen the big 5 and it’s only the second day of game driving on this trip. Yeahhh hawwww!

Our next full day of game driving proves to be spectacular. We start out with a very similar experience seeing an enormous amount of wildlife. I can’t wait to be able to share the incredible shots. Mid morning driving across dried yellow grassy plains we happen upon two cheetahs sitting in the open. We’re not sure if they are mother and cub or male and female. They sit serenely looking almost regale as dozens of vans line up to view them. It’s obvious we are oblivious to them and they could care less. They are on a hunting mission for one of the gazelles several hundred yards away. For a half hour they lazily and sneakily make there way closer towards the gazelles. They’ll lay down for a bit blending in with the surrounding grass, get up and slowing walk closer, then lay back down or turn around and walk further away to turn back and lolly gag toward them again. The gazelles notice them on a couple occasions and move farther away maintaining the distance they have gained. I’m shocked they know to move away and don’t just high tail it as far as they can. A baby gazelle oblivious to the cheetahs comes bouncing along 75 yards away and the cheetahs attention immediately changes. The smaller cheetah leaps to speed capable of running at over 60 mph in less than 4 seconds for up to a couple minutes. The fastest land animal in the world is in action before our eyes. Goose bumps run down my arms and legs. The scene is exhilarating as the the gazelle scampers in a zig zag stop and go pattern which slows the cheetah down as it can only run full bore in a straight line. For approximately 30 seconds the cheetah cuts in and out slowing gaining ground while it appears this young one is getting away. The cheetah all of a sudden stops having exerted all its energy and with synchronous harmony the larger cheetah which had stayed back bolts to warp speed in a straight line for it’s target. A few seconds later it has lunch hanging from its mouth by the neck. They cheetahs pull up under a shade tree chest heaving from the exertion. I think I’m exhausted as they are from just watching. What an incredible site to experience. We find the driver who works in the park daily hasn’t seen a kill in 3 years. Only one in every 2-300,000 visitors is fortunate enough to experience a kill.

The rest of the day seems anticlimactic as we’ve all witnessed a bone chilling sight of the survival of the fittest. Later in the day we come across a pod of a hundred or more hippos grunting and snorting. We get to see the tail end of the the great migration of wildebeest making their way across the plains. A dozen or more lions snoozing trees next to a small creek. All amazing sights in themselves yet they seem to be less due to our incredible earlier sighting.