Air, Landier, and Sea

Our Kenya trip was in full swing from the moment we left president Kagame’s office.

From the meeting, we were taken straight to the airport (with a police escort from the president which was really cool) and boarded the jet.

When we arrived in Kenya, we were immediately placed on puddle jumper planes to get to the Mara, where our safari would begin.

We found out just before we left Rwanda that the Great Migration had just started 3 weeks ago. If typically starts in June, so we hit prime time to see the most animals.

The Great Migration is when certain herd animals (wildebeest, zebra, topi, impala,etc) follow the rains and migrate from Tanzania to Kenya and then back. It typically starts in June and ends in October.

There’s a little over 50 people on our jet, so we all couldn’t fit on one plane, so 11 had to go in the smaller prop plane and the remainder were in the larger one.

Guess who were in that lucky 11?

That’s right! Yours truly! While I wasn’t initially thrilled to be in a tiny plane flying over lions and other wild animals, we were fortunate that our pilots could take us closer to the plains and we could actually see some animals from our plane.

We immediately loaded into safari Jeep’s and got to do our first safari on the way to the hotel (not a bad way to start the trip).

I honestly thought we may see a few different things on this ride. But in the course of the 90 minute drive to the hotel we saw three of the Big Five.

The Big Five are lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo, and rhino.

Here’s what we saw on our first safari:

Wildebeest, Zebra, and Topi

Our guide informed us that wildebeest are the dummies of the safari. Or another way to say that is they’re lion’s favorite meals.

The reason wildebeest hang out with zebras is because zebras see very well and are much smarter than the wildebeest so they will run if they notice a lion approaching in the grass (if they see a lion waiting on a hillside or some area they even stare it down to let the lion know it’s been seen). When the zebra run, then the wildebeest know to do the same.

Wildebeest are so dumb…

How dumb are they?

Our guide once saw a lion take down a wildebeest and the rest of the herd ran 600 feet away, and then forgot they just lost a member of the herd and turned around and walked back towards the lion.

At least they’re smart enough to hang out with zebra (or maybe the zebra invite the wildebeest to hang out with them)

Lion

We were driving along, enjoying the insane amounts of wildebeest surrounding us. Our guide told us there are about 2 million animals that participate in the migration and half a million of those are wildebeest.

Our guide then got a radio announcement that a male lion was walking by the road and he out the pedal to the metal and off we went!

We sped through the plains, and when we arrived, a male lion was heading towards a pack of wildebeests who were all running away.

I thought we would watch from the car path, but instead our guide drove us right into the grass and even cut off the male lion so we could get an up close look.

Male lions hunt alone and get tired easily, so they don’t walk for long before they lay down. We were super fortunate to get to see him walking by us, as the rest of our tour groups only saw him laying down (which is still pretty freaking amazing).

Giraffes

Giraffes aren’t one of the big five (ironically) but I think they’re incredible to see up close. Their patterns are much more intricate then I previously knew.

Elephants

Elephants tend to be more on their own because they don’t like noise- especially low pitch noise.

In Africa, both male and female elephants have tusks. These are female because they’re with a group/family.

Male elephants are typically alone, and not with the rest of the family.

Buffalo

Buffalo are very protective animals, in addition to being large.

While most of the animals out here are everyone for themselves when attacked by a predator, buffalo will actually help each other.

That concluded our first safari and needless to say, we were beyond impressed!

It’s so hard to put into words the beauty, awe, and wonder that I felt on this safari. To be so close to these incredibly powerful, elegant, and majestic animals is phenomenal.