Safari in the Masai Mara

After a full week of hard work we went on safari in the Masai Mara and it was a lot of fun and amazing experience to see the animals in the wild.

You could do a 360 look and see nothing for miles and miles. No buildings, no power lines, nothing. The Mara was absolutely beautiful.
Luckily for us this year they have been working on the roads on the way to the Masai Mara and usually they are full of potholes and they said it used to take them 5-6 hours to get there, but this time we got there in 4!

We stopped at the Great Rift Valley lookout

the great rift valley

pollycup's van

We also stopped at a gas station to pick up snacks/sodas and samosa's that were delicious and ruth decided on the corn puffs. well, when you buy things in africa it doesn't taste nearly the same as the states and these were no exception. We think they were packaging peanuts that they tried to flavor (they had weird flavors too, this one was "tomato ketchup") We just couldn't eat them, they were horrible. Throughout the rest of the trip ruth and i had a mission of hiding them in eachothers bags, rooms, luggage when the other wasnt looking. this went on throughout the rest of the trip.
who won you might ask?
depends on if ruth unpacked her service bag yet... :)

Being at the Sarova Mara was luxerious. We had showers and toilets that actually worked! a nice comfortable bed and pillow that wasn't lumpy, and this tend even had wood floors.
Dad, when we go camping let's bring this tent ok?

i love these Acacia trees

i love the elephants

just chillin' in the mara like lion king

the whole group on safari

the point of safari is to see animals right?
we got extremely lucky on this safari to be able to see the big 5
(water buffalo, leopard, rhino, elephant, and lion) as well as an added bonus of cheetahs.

water buffalo


on our first mini safari outing on a saturday night we got extremely lucky. we saw a leopard!
and he climbed down the tree, posed and went back up the tree probably just for a good picture. thank you leopard you were beautiful.
They thought he had a kill up the tree, but i didn't see itisn't it lovely?

When it was time for our long day safari we had already seen 4 of the big 5! incredible.
half of the group was confident we would see a rhino, the other half not so sure. Rhinos are becoming very rare and endangered so they are hard to see, but like i said we were so lucky and saw one on our way to the hippos.
It was so awesome! too bad it didn't run at us...

we then saw a bunch of lions.
there was 2 males, one looked older than the other and about 5 cubs and a couple lioness's i love the coat on this lioness, it has some subtle spots going on


this guy was huge!they are such pretty animals


we saw cheetahs the second day as well and they were stalking some impala across the way.
there was a mom teaching three younger cheetahs probably how to hunt.
they just sit and watch their prey for hours and hours before the attack waiting to the perfect moment and studying which ones to get.
i love how the three are watching the older cheetah.


we made it to where the hippos sleep and layout during the day.
we also met Renaldo who took us on a tour to see the hippos and had his gun for safety just in case one decided to attack. Apparently hippos are the only animals that will kill humans just for fun.at the hippo pool with ritch

impala

zebra

this is the border of Kenya and Tanzania.
My right foot in Kenya, my left in Tanzania
i was in two places at once


one thing on my safari wish list was to see a good sunset while i was there.
luckily pollycup needed to go pick up some letters from a lady that lived on a Masai village so he let a few of us tag along and we would see a sunset.
it was beautiful and we got the acacia trees in the background :) i was a happy girlpollycup and i after he gave me my sunset!


The next morning anyone that wanted to went on a morning safari for the sunrise and to try and find some lions feeding.the beautiful sunrise on the Masai Mara


it was an amazing adventure on safari! i was so grateful for all the animals i got to see in the wild. it was so surreal.one of my favorite pictures of the acacia trees and the Mara sky