Highlights of Kenya’s Maasai Mara

By Roxanne Reid
To lovers of safari and wildlife, the words Maasai Mara conjure scenes of abundant game and endless plains dotted with trees. This national reserve in southwest Kenya is some 1510 square kilometres, or 2500 square kilometres if you count the surrounding conservancies – a riot of cinematic vistas, plains game and big cat sightings. Here are some highlights of our visit to Kenya’s Maasai Mara.

When you stay at Little Governors Camp (part of the Governors Camp Collection) inside the Masaai Mara National Reserve, you get the excitement of crossing over the Mara River in a little ferry to get to camp and then again to return to your vehicle for game drives. The steep steps on either side of the river are good exercise, helping to work off the abundance of good food you gobble in camp. Lunch was served under green-heart trees overlooking a plain where you might watch waterbuck, giraffes and elephants finding their own food, and our tent had a private deck overlooking a marsh area where hippo and warthogs came to visit.

Mini migration

​Being surrounded by hundreds of wildebeest on the plains, all grunting to assert their dominance in this rutting season, gave us a taste of what the noise must be like with some 1.5m wildebeest during the peak of the migration (but luckily without peak season’s crowds of people). We also saw how even these resident wildebeest wavered about crossing the river; if one went left the others followed, but then a zebra would go right and they’d turn to follow the other way. To and fro they went, not sticking with a decision, not really getting anywhere.​

​Hot air balloon

We were lucky to fly in a hot air balloon with Governors Balloon Safaris over Kenya’s Maasai Mara, over antelope, spotted hyena, buffalo and giraffe. People who went the following day even saw a leopard. The balloon set off from behind Little Governors Camp where we were staying. This meant we could wake up a bit later than people coming from other camps, in time to be airborne at first light. We flew low enough to spot animals from above, see hippos in the winding Mara River, but climbed to 1000 feet at the end for a 360-degree turn that showed off the scale of this reserve, with the Oloololo escarpment to the west. That’s where we had a champagne breakfast after landing, an amazing spread cooked up in a tiny makeshift kitchen on site.

Mara Expedition Camp

Great Plains Conservation’s Mara Expedition Camp is a wonderfully intimate place with just five tents looking out over lush riverine vegetation and the muddy Ntiaktiak River in the Olare Motorogi Conservancy bordering the national reserve. We had a wooden deck with safari chairs and wine-barrel tables, old-fashioned safari cases masquerading as bedside tables and tree branches serving as hooks in bathroom. It was still warm in the evenings so we ate our meals under forest mahogany, magic gwarrie and African green-heart trees.

River crossing point

Guide Nick Ratia took us to one of the crossing points on the Mara River, where we found eight giraffes, some elephants, a huge raft of hippos basking half submerged in the water, and some large crocs. This is where all the action of the migration would be in a few weeks’ time (we were there in early June), but we were glad to experience it without the mayhem of dying animals and a multitude of vehicles all jostling for position. Instead, we had a peaceful picnic lunch set up on the edge of the river.

A feast of lions

Twelve members of the Topi Plains pride of lions on the move, including various sub-adults and a small cub of about two-and-a-half months, struggling to keep up. Two young male lions on a wildebeest kill near camp. Fourteen lions with seven cubs of varying ages, wrestling, play tackling and having a tug-of-war with a stick. And finally, a pair of mating lions oblivious of our presence. This was a typical day or two for us in the Mara.

Leopards

We had two fabulous leopard sightings in the Maasai Mara. One leopard had an impala kill in a tree, the other we found walking around in the bushes before she climbed a dead tree for a better view of her surroundings, three legs and her tail dangling. Our guide said she had two young cubs hidden away in the bushes somewhere, not quite old enough to come out into the wider world. This came on the heels of sightings of lions and cheetahs – all in our first 24 hours in the Olare Motorogi conservancy area, where one of the biggest advantages is being allowed to drive off-road to get closer to great sightings.

Cheetah cub

We found a mother cheetah and her cub lying in the open, the late afternoon sun just right. Over the next three days we spent about four hours watching them, the cub suckling, chewing on a baby gazelle mom had caught, blood up to its eyebrows until mom licked it clean again. Frisky in the early morning cool, the cub pounced on what was left of the carcass, a small rock, a tuft of grass, then rolled over and bit mom’s tail. 

​Mara Plains Camp

To get to Great Plains Conservation’s Mara Plains Camp in the Olare Motorogi Conservancy, you cross a wood-and-rope suspension bridge over the Ntiaktiak River. As you mount the stairs to the main area, the widescreen view of open Mara plains smacks you in the face. There’s a library stuffed with books about natural history, comfy leather couches in the lounge and a large deck. Our ‘tent’ (if such a grand space can be called a tent) had red rugs, a leather desk, old travelling chests as bedside tables, and a folding steamer chest as a wardrobe – all old pieces that have been refurbished. A carved Lamu door formed the backing for the shower with its copper and brass pipes while a copper bath looked out over the river and the plains beyond. It was a joy to sit on the deck and enjoy the sounds of hippos snuffling below, leaves rustling and birds calling.

Hyena cubs

Spotted hyenas are amazing animals and good moms too. What better than a sighting of a group of 15 of them in the late afternoon sun, including some cubs of around six months and one of less than four months (you could tell because it was still brown, without spots). We watched the greeting and subservience behaviour, with lots of sniffing at the hind quarters. We spent about an hour with them while the smallest showed its curiosity about the world, sniffing the vehicle, investigating termite mounds and small shrubs, biting and playing with a stick.

Picnic meals on the plains

When you go out on an early morning game drive from Mara Expedition or Mara Plains camps, your guide takes along a packed breakfast. Then the plains of the Maasai Mara become your restaurant as you find a safe place in an open area, under a lone tree. And so the feast begins, to celebrate the morning’s sightings of cheetah, elephant, topi, buffalo, grunting wildebeest and more lions than you could have imagined. Definitely a safari to remember.

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