MASAI MARA PHOTOGRAPHIC SAFARI

I love this landscape of rolling hills, big plains dotted with lonely trees, an escarpment in the background, rivers like green snakes winding through, and crossing these rivers, especially one big river called the Mara, is the wildebeest migration, and that’s what we are here for.

Our camp is lovely, situated on the bank of the Mara River at a bend, so maybe if we’re lucky we’ll get a private crossing right in front of camp. Check out the webpage : www.entim-mara.com. Before we leave for our first gamedrive a dazzle of zebra gather on the little flat plain just across camp. Will they cross ? Good thing we didn’t wait, they told us the next morning they crossed at 03:30, would have been a long wait !

Game drive nr.1 was great. It is incredible but whichever way you turn your head there is game.

We find a big pride of lions at a kill. about 19 of them in all sizes and shapes, no males around, but the 3 cubs are my favourites anyway, we’ll find some big ones later. We even found a leopard on the way back from there, but he was lying on a rock facing away and not in a sociable mood.

Next day Dominik  races south. Now I know from previous game drives if these guys start racing something good is coming up. It wasn’t good, it was great ! A pride of I don’t know how many lions with 13!!!!! cubs, this is my lucky day. As we arrive there are two big black maned males chasing off a cheetah family of three, a few female lions show up from different angles. The females start moving in the opposite direction, they are going to their cubs says Dominik, well so are we. It is splendid, they come running, all 13 of them, greet mum, follow her along, bite a few tails in the meantime and play around.

From there we drive a short time and meet up with the cheetah family, the oldest female here called Malaika, with two almost grown cubs. We hope for them to get on a termite mound and pose, but they keep moving. We get so many shots in the end we start experimenting with panning shots again. A medium sized herd of wildebeest in an endless single file is another panning opportunity before we meet up with the others for breakfast.

We sit and eat under a big lonely acazia, this is “out of Africa” as good as it gets.

A visit to the Masai village. Boy, I love photographing people and these are so beautiful, colorful, photogenic. We were greeted with dancing and singing, a jumping show which was incredible and then shown through the village. Costs you 30U$ a person, but I’ll pay anything  for this. Boy, this is my personal heaven, could have stayed all day. Hope the pics turn out well, we certainly had enough opportunities !

Bought myself a Masai necklace, and am jingling all the way back to camp, where we arrive just in time for lunch. Oh, no, eat again… but it is always so yummy !

 

The following day we see even more incredible numbers of wildebeest, the herds we saw yesterday near the Masai village moved 10-12 km over night and are getting close to the Mara river, maybe tomorrow or the day after we will get our crossing. We practised on a little crossing, actually it was more like a ditch with a puddle at the bottom, but still !

We got a lot of wildebeest racing through, we practised on our panning again, and are very exited to finally see the real thing, we are getting in the mood !

Next day we start with the lionpride with the 13 cubs, which is always a pleasure, this time they were on a termite mound. Suddenly Dom urged us we had to go, a black rhino had been spotted near where we were, very near, and he was out on the plains in full sight, beautiful !

The lioness left the cubs behind and stalked a buffalo herd just behind the little ridge, they attacked, three of them hanging on to the buffalos back end, but he managed to throw one off, then the rest of the buffalo herd re-grouped and returned in V-formation. They attacked the lions which quickly let go of their prey, the buffalos kept coming, and the poor lions had to retreat without getting any lunch.

 

Now we got the message Malaika the cheetah, and her 2 youngsters were in hunting mood, so that’s where we went next.

A big group of wildebeest walked right towards them, she attacked, the youngsters were in the middle of it, running around and didn’t know what to do. The wildebeest got away, we stayed but no chance of another hunt, not with two youngsters and 35 jeeps and minivans at your tail. A super leopard sighting ends off the day. I fall asleep to the sound of bellowing hippos and laughing hyenas, it is so wonderful here. Lala salama, sleep well.

 

The next day Lilla, Lance, Jürg and me get to drive with Jonathan Scott. The Jonathan Scott ! Mr Mara himself.

He’s really nice and has the answer to just about any question you can come up with. He is very easy to talk to, a great person and so friendly, normal and modest, once you start talking, it is as if we’d lived just round the corner from him and have know him for ages. You would certainly not believe that he’s a celebrity and we‘d just met yesterday at lunch ! As expected he’s very passionate about the Mara.

We head south towards the sand river, we stop in awe, again and again, to watch the millions of wildebeest marching through, in groups or sometimes in single file. The lines reaches until the horizon, and when we reach the horizon the line still reaches the horizon, there are so many ! We photograph these endless lines with just a short a break where we do eland, a herd of 60-80, incredible ! The only problem is they turn their backs as soon as you reposition the car…

 

The afternoon turned out a little different than expected….Barely out of camp it started raining, we tried to get the settings right so we would see the raindrops on the big lonely eland. It rained harder, we closed the roof and one side of the vehicle, we were still okay. Suddenly it started to pour, gusts of wind made the car rock, the rain crashed down on us, we quickly closed all the other “windows”, and just stayed put. Didn’t dare to drive on. We did of course make sure we had quite a good angle at a herd of wildebeest which were standing there in the rain and getting seriously wet. The girls car did, in the end, get the best “wildlife in the rain” pics, and that without a pro to guide us ( must admit we had Leonie).

It got worse and worse, sight was down to 20m, streams were running down on every side of the car, and it started dripping in from the roof. We found one last tusker which saved our lives….

The girls jeep is back on the road the next morning at 06:00, luckily the rains have stopped. We stop for a wildebeest sunrise, a Dom short cut gets us to the Sand River before anyone else. Its funny, there are no animals anywhere, dead empty, are we going in the right direction ? The scenery is amazing here, much greener, higher hills and at last …. animals.  We drive straight up to two cheetahs, Armani and her male cub, we decide to call him Hugo, a very fresh kill site. We have them all to our own, beautiful !

After breakfast there is not much more to see, we head back to camp. The crossing of three wildebeest through a puddle doesnt really count as a crossing ! The most amazing experience to me is, when we drive over the plains and in between the wildebeest, when we see them scattered across the landscape, or see the endless lines reaching to the horizon and the zick zack lines on the slopes, they are just everywhere and only move away when the jeep is one metre away, this is so beautiful !

After a herd of elephants with a tiny baby and a cerval sighting, a whole lot of cars on a hilltop draw our attention, turns out to be the coalition of five male cheetahs which we’ve being looking for all week. Okay this another example of fat flat cats. Five of them allright but 30 jeeps around it all trying to get into the best spot  is not my idea of a great sighting, but still it is impressive to see five of them together. As the sun sets we head back to camp and are greeted by Jake and his two warriors under a big tree close to camp. Champagne in the bush ! I like this ! After that back to camp and off to dinner.

Rise and shine, our last gamedrive lies head.

We drive and do a beautiful sunrise with wildebeest in the foreground, what else would you expect. We drive to the Mara river, it is wide and flowing fast after all the rain we’ve had. A medium size herd is gathering on the opposite shore, will they cross ? A whole bunch of hyenas mess up our plans for a sensational crossing right in front of us. They get a wildebeest calf but the poor thing manages to get away, it goes over the edge, looses its footing and ends up in the river. Now there are some mighty crocs a little downstream, so that’s probably the end of that one. They go for another one, the jeeps waiting on the other side rush in hoping to get some action, damn, we can forget about a crossing now !

One poor calf ends up right at the waterline, two hyena follow it down and it ends in a stand off, the hyena not daring to go further down, the little wildebeest even mock charges them. Good on you little fellow !

We get a message from another Entim car, a little crossing just a few hundred metres furter on, we race there, Jackson is like a true race driver, was speeding through the mud and sent it flying up high….so high it ended on the back seat with Jürg and Lance who were not quite so excited. But then, a crossing, right in front of us, beautiful morning light and just 4 cars, this is the topping on the cake, the only wish we had open on our bucketlist.

Thank you to C4 for organising yet another sensational trip. Check out their webpage : www.c4photosafaris.com

What a sensational ending to a spectacular Mara week !

For our best photos: Go to gallery

 

Copyright story and photo: Astrid & Juerg Bluemel for bluemelphoto.ch