A day in the life of a waterbuck .. or .. A life in a day

I shouldn't have put those dates - we were only in the Mara for 4 nights. We left the Mara the morning of 9/29.

Thank you for posting this typical safari feeling which shows the "knife with two edges": a successful hunt and a life which is taken. Excitement and regret. Happyness and sorrow.......

Life in Africa.....as it unfolds

Thank you for sharing!

SV

spassvogel- you said it perfectly!

"Lion school" in its most graphic form! It was hard to watch, but also hard not to. The southern and western Tanzania portion of the trip was great, but the Mara was just unbelievable! The whole Migration seemed to be parked in front of Governors' Camp where we were staying. We didn't just watch game, we watched stories unfold. Sundowner has just told you one of them.

Poignant tale.

Looking forward to hearing more about your trip. The Mara sounds like it delivered … again.

Wow, Cindy...you actually shared part of a trip report! WooHoo!

And I'm not letting Samuel guide any of my friends anymore unless I get to go. I'm getting way too jealous of all the great sightings (and stories) that I never get to see!

Keep it coming, ladies. I'm counting on my vicarious thrills!

Welcome back! Agree with Lynn about the poignancy of your story. And I'd love to read more...

Oh dear. We are days away from booking a Southern Tanz trip and now I think we should have been researching the Mara migration! What a vivid little story.

Thanks for the comments! It was pretty amazing to see it all unfold.

Sandy, Samuel and I talked about you a couple of times so you were there in spirit. You MUST plan a trip to go when the migration is there. Unbelievable. The first morning we were there Samuel had other guests so we went out with Moses. He was just as good or better than Samuel. I didn't make a list of what we saw until the 2nd or 3rd morning. Lynn, I was thinking of you and your MM report as I was writing it all down so you were there, too . I'll post it all in a minute. As I said, unbelievable.

One morning's game drive
6:30 am Leave camp
6:35 2 young male lions, hippo out of water, many gnu's, hyena
6:43 2 more lions
6:48 Leopard, cheetah and hyena pretty close together. Samuel was very surprised they were all there. The leopard ran into the trees
7:05 Hyena and the balloons lifting off at Governor's and Kichwa Tembo (sp)
7:10 3 lions, yawning (2 good males and 1 female), gazelles, hyenas, hundreds and hundreds of gnu (it's easier to type gnu than wildebeest) and zebras, warthogs
7:25 many Topi
7:28 Jackal on a kill
7:41 Big male lion with big black mane. Beautiful!
7:48 Elephants (we didn't see lots of elephants this trip)
7:54 more elephants
8:00 Lions mating
8:08 Topi afterbirth laying on the ground and then we saw the topi mom and the brand new baby!
8:15 3 more lions, 1 male, 1 female and 1 subadult
8:35 Pee stop (probably behind the car. We didn't search out trees or bushes out there.)
8:37 Warthog with babies
8:40 Mating ostriches!
9:00 Other vehicle that had been looking for leopards since 6:30am and hadn't found them yet.
9:20 cheetah in the shade
9:45 Jackal pair and several eland
10:10 Breakfast stop
10:40 finished breakfast
10:40 Leopard with kill. That's a story in itself .
I didn't write anything else down after this. I think we stayed with her until 12:30 or 1:00. We were "late" to lunch every day

The list above isn't everything we saw. I just wrote down the time I saw them first. We saw many more topi, gnus, zebras, warthogs, etc. I did write down every time we saw lions, cheetah and leopards and elephants.

Sundowner,

thanks for this very real and very moving report of life and death on the plains which highlights the bitter/sweet safari experience.

The Mara really did well for you, the game drive you describe above sounds jam packed, and such a huge variety of animals.

Cheers,


Pol

... so you were taking notes back there, eh? That first cheetah was quite cooperative. It hopped up on a termite mound next to the road and posed nicely in the early morning light.

I need to figure out how to post my videos online. The Sony format isn't compatible with most video webwsites, so I think I'd need to do a conversion.

Sharon, I can't help with the videos. Sorry! But I hope you figure it out because I would love to see them.

Here's another sighting from the Mara

We left camp with the desire to "find the leopard". The guides knew where a leopard had been hanging out so that's the direction we headed. We didn't drive directly over there but just did a game drive in that direction. Another vehicle had gone straight over there at 6:30 and when we saw them at 9:00 they hadn't found her yet. (I'm very happy to see a leopard but I would hate to waste 2.5 hours looking for one.) At 9:00 we drove around a little while looking and then we went on to find a spot to have breakfast. That took an hour before we stopped because we kept seeing more animals .

While finishing breakfast, Samuel received a text message or a phone call telling him a leopard with a kill had been found. We headed over there right away. There were already 8 or 9 vehicles there (maybe more - I didn't count) and we pulled in to the last open spot. We were on one side of the riverbed and she was on the other side. The riverbed was mostly dry but did have some small pools in the rocks. We could see the kill - an impala - that she had pulled up under the shade of a tree. The leopard was hidden from our view by a big branch of the tree. Other vehicles could see her from their position.


We waited - patiently and hotly - to see her. After a long wait she went down to the riverbed to drink. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click - many pictures taken of her. She's so beautiful! After drinking she went back to the shade of the tree to rest more. The kill was fresh and she hadn't eaten any yet. Samuel (and the other guides) knew this leopard and knew she had young cubs. She rested another 20 minutes or so and went back down for another drink. Many more clicks. She did not return to her resting spot or her kill. She walked up to our side of the river and walked right past our vehicle! I was standing up looking down at her taking pictures as she walked towards us. I took one picture of her as she was two or three feet away from the vehicle and directly beneath me. Samuel quietly said "be careful" as I took her picture so I only took one and slowly stepped back from the side of the vehicle. Later Samuel told me a leopard jumped in a vehicle kind of by accident but still mauled two people that Flying Doctors had to fly out. I think he said it was last year.

Anyway, she walked past all of the parked vehicles and kept walking across an open area into trees, probably 300 yards away. Samuel guessed that she was going to get her cubs and bring them to the kill. All of the vehicles stayed out in the open area. No one followed her into the brush. I was happy about that. We fully expected to see the cubs shortly. Pretty exciting! I've never seen little leopard cubs.

One or two vehicles had stayed with the kill and we heard them calling to the rest of us that hyenas were coming. Hyenas! They're going to steal the impala! Oh no!!

We (and the other half dozen vehicles) drove back to where we started and all jockeyed for a spot. The hyenas walked down to the little pools of water, around the left side of the tree and upwind of the kill. One drank and the other rolled around in the little pool getting all wet, except his head and face. They stayed down there FOREVER (10 or 15 minutes) and started back up the hill in the same spot they came down, upwind of the kill. They arrived at the top and started walking off. Yay!! They didn't see or smell the kill! The leopard mom and her babies will get to eat!

She was still in the bush so we drove back to where she walked in so we could see the babies when they all came out. Before we could even get back over there we were called back to the kill area because the hyenas were back. Darn! Sure enough, those dreadful hyenas found the kill. Actually one hyena came down and found the kill and started pigging out. The other one stayed at the top of the hill waiting on his buddy. He waited probably 5 minutes and finally went down to investigate. They both ate on the impala awhile and then fought a little and then pulled it apart and drug it off.

We never saw the leopard again and didn't get to see the cubs. End of story.

OK, I'll ask. What the heck were you doing standing up in the vehicle? Samuel let you? Seems foolish. And a leopard jumped in the vehicle "kind of by accident"? Hmmm, am starting to get a bad feeling aboujt this place.

LAleslie, the vehicles are the pop top type of vehicles they use in East Africa. And yes, you can stand up and photograph from the open hatches in the roof. There were vehicles from several different camps there and most had people standing to take pictures.

I can't remember what he said about the leopard. Maybe Sharon remembers. It was chasing something or something was chasing it and it jumped into the vehicle. I remember thinking it was probably scared and just jumped into what was in it's way or like it would jump into a tree and then found itself in a foreign place just lashed out. The leopard didn't jump into the vehicle to attack the people.

I can't remember the particulars, either. Samuel said that some leopards are more nervous around the vehicles and people than others. This one was one of Bella's daughters and was fairly comfortable around the vehicles, although she was a bit startled when she first topped the cliff and ran right into a dozen of them. Sundowner had a great shot straight down at her beautiful face when she walked by.

Great story, guys! Darn hyenas!

LAleslie, I've had Samuel as my guide in the Mara for several years/trips. Let me assure you, he would never let you do something to endanger yourself or others or do anything to tease or entice the wildlife.

There are two types of jeeps used by the Govs' camps (that I'm aware of). One type has the flaps that roll up on the sides, where you remain seated, the other has the pop-up hatches on the top as Cindy described, where you can stand up and rest your camera on the top of the jeep.

We were using one of their Land Rovers with the canvas top that could be removed. There was a metal frame across the top that you could rest your camera on, or even climb up and sit on. After the first afternoon with Samuel, when I got "trapped" under the canvas in the first seat, he left it open. The front windshield of that particular model Land Rover is quite short, so you can't see forward from the two passenger rows of seats. Poor Samuel; he would spot something and say, "See that, Mama?!", to which I could only reply, "Not yet!"

With Sundowner's permission, I'll add a story about a busy night at our Governors' Camp tent. To set the scene, we were in one of the tents on the "river side" of the camp. Our tent was on a cliff high above the Mara River. There is a large pole fence near the edge so that you don't get too close. There is also a similar pole fence on either side of your tent, handy as we found out.

I love staying in tents on safari. To listen to the night sounds of Africa is one of the joys of being on safari. This night, we went to sleep listening to lions roaring in the distance and hyenas whooping on the opposite side of the river. A couple of hours later, I woke up to the barks of a troop of baboons going crazy across the river. I suspect that the leopard spotted over there the evening before was in the vicinity. Soon, our nightly "lawnmower" showed up. Having seen a hippo out front the night before, I was ready with my video camera set on "nightshot." We quietly unzipped the tent and watched a hippo graze right up to our stone porch. The kerosene lantern provided enough light for the video.

The party was just getting started, though. A bit later, the cracking on branches heralded the arrival of elephants. Up when the zipper again! We watched as several eles fed on the trees and bushes near our tent. I laid back down, but suddenly there was this tremendous "CRACK!" I jumped up and saw that a big ele had broken through the fence on the cliff and was making her way out on the edge, feeding as she went. Then, she and other eles actually went down over the edge. Where they found footing, I have no idea! After a while, they came back up and starting in on the bushes right next to our tent. I think there were about 7 or 8 in the group, 2 mothers with babies, three half-grown ones, and another adult. Every once in a while, we'd pop on the flashlight for a few seconds to see where they were.

While looking at the eles, I saw something odd by the broken fence. I did a quick look with the flashlight and realized it was a buffalo head. Gradually, the entire body emerged up from the cliff face, along with a second buff. The broken fence had become an access point for animals coming up from the river.

The young eles were getting tired. One of the babies just plopped down on its side and went to sleep a short way from the front of our tent. Then, the three "teenagers" bedded down next to the fence on the side of the tent, as did the second baby. Both mothers stood guard over the babies as they slept. We had a good laugh at the sounds of elephant flatulence ("Jamba" in Swahili) coming from the teens. (Side note: Anyone had a "Jamba Juice" lately?)

The camp guards showed up and started flashing lights at the eles to move them away from our tent. Slowly, they moved behind it, on the other side of the path. "Dangerous!", the guards said to us. By now it was after 4am. I was too excited to go to sleep after all that, but I think Sundowner got a few more winks.

LOL, Sharon. Sounds just like him.

I think I know which type of jeep you're talking about. Two large bars going across the top. Did the sides on that have plastic that you could roll up or down too?

I liked Samuel's old jeep better. The typical landrover with a pop up hatch top. I think he finally had to retire it because it was so beat up!

Yes, I think it did. I just remember the sides being somewhat open.

OK, thanks for the explanation. I obviously was picturing a Land Rover type vehicle.
One of the things that has kept me from this part of Africa is the pop-top vehicles, the crowds at many sightings and the hotel-like lodges. Many travelers say it's a different experience, but still rewarding because of the animals. But I just think I'd be unhappy with all that humanity. Not what I go to Africa for. Thus, we're lookign at Selous, Katavi and Ruaha in Southern Tanzania. Fewer two-footed beasts there.

We had been to Mikumi, Ruaha, Katavi and Mahale before we went to the Mara. We were watching lions in Katavi when one other vehicle drove up and "spoiled" our viewing. I think we had gotten spoiled! Yes, it was a bit of a shock coming from those areas to the Mara with the large camps and many vehicles roaming around. You forget about all the vehicles, though, when you have great sightings, as we did. In the part of the Mara where we were, there were mainly 4x4 vehicles from the local camps; very few were the mini-buses that had driven in.

I've been to southern and eastern Africa in all types of vehicles. I think that the open-topped vehicles are my slight favorite over the other types. You can stand up, move around for a better shot, get up over tufts of grass, etc. Of the open-topped vehicles, I prefer the ones such as Governors' had, or the type with the "clam shell" openings. You don't have the shade of the "pop-tops", but you also don't have the roof supports in your way when photographing (especially important if panning with video.) For tall people, the pop-tops can also be a problem (one of our guys was 6' 4" and couldn't stand in one of the "pop-top" vehicles.) In the open vehicles, you're limited to where you sit... no shifting around, standing up, etc. There are pros and cons for each.

ShayTay, is the Mara significantly less crowded off season? I was thinking late-May (yes, I know big rains--hopefully) or early-to-mid-June.

Sandi could probably answer that better than I could. I've only been in August and September. While you'll still see some game, it won't be nearly the experience that we had (I think Sundowner will agree, given that she was there during an "off season" period and could compare it for you.)

If you're going to East Africa in that time period, I'd go to the central Serengeti, rather than the Mara. You'd see the Migration herds and all the predators that follow them. It seems to me that the Serengeti, even during their "high season" has fewer vehicles than the Mara (I've been in February, June and September.) There are fewer camps and lodges in the park and it's not a quick drive from Arusha for a short stay. We met a Dutch couple flying in to the Mara for just that... a quick weekend safari.

Thanks for the quick response, ShayTay. I'm not doing TZ this time, have seen the migration in the Serengeti--wonderful but I'm just ready for Kenya and it seems easier to combine with Rwanda. Gorillas are the focus of this trip although of course I keep hatching new plans.

p.s. When are we getting the Katavi, Ruaha, Mahale stories???

I'm sure you'd see good things in the Mara, no matter the time of year. Samburu was one of my favorite areas in Kenya. There are different sub-species of wildlife there, which made it interesting.

The Tanzania trip report? How about it, Rick? Your soggy notes are still better than what I have, which is very little (got lazy on this safari.) I'm having dinner tonight with Trish and Jeff, who rounded out our group of five. Trish got a "bump" behind the knees from Pim, the chimp alpha male during a "display". Apparently, Pim didn't read the rules about staying 10 meters away!

Leely - For me late-May/early-June is usually when I visit. And, though not the volume of game as would be during the migration, the Mara never disappoints. Best though... less visitors, so less vehicles. And, it doesn't much matter whether you stay in the Triangle, Reserve or private conservation areas.

May would be at low-season rates most all properties, while till 15th or 30th June (depending on where laying your head) is at mid-season prices. By July prices jump to high-season.

Sandi, thanks. I remember your photos and all the green appeals to me.

Sorry for the hijack, sundowner. Hope you, shaytay and/or rick can share some more stories soon.

ShayTay thanks. My husband is 6'4" and has a bad knee, so those pop-tops would not be good for him. He likes to sit next to the driver in 4x4s because there's usually more room to stretch his legs/knee.
And heck yeah, where's the So. Tanz trip report. I can't book without reading that!

Leely, we went to the Mara in late June … it was fantastic, great sightings and not so many tourists. No migration but it didn't seem to matter.

Yes, Rick get working on that trip report!

Sundowner
Your timeline is wonderful advertisement for the Mara. Fantastic sightings, even mating ostrich. "Leopard, cheetah and hyena pretty close together" is a Disney movie. Did they break out in song?

Did you see evidence of the draught? How low was the river?

ShayTay and Rick
How about a tag team report?

LALeslie
Can you start a thread with the details of your upcoming trip? Or send an email to My screen name @ hotmail.

OK Lynn will do as soon as it looks more do-able. We've been working with Expert Africa in England. Boy, what a great outfit!
We're going back and forth, being neuoptic about the money. One day it's, "Carpe diem, we're not getting any younger." And the next it's "We can't afford this and we'll soon be eating cat food in our hovel."
I'm sure you're familiar with this particular conundrum.

LAleslie, some of the pop-tops would have room for your husband, others not so much. If you haven't already, let Expert Africa know that he's tall and about the knee problem. Letting our outfitter know made a difference in terms of bedding at one camp for our tall guy.

OMG, I'm so jealous

One more story...

One of the things we really wanted to see was a crossing. Let me say up front that we didn't see one, but still had some excitement at a crossing point. Along with a few dozen other vehicles, we waited patiently while the zebras and wildebeests nervously approached the river, saw the crocs, and raced back up to the top of the riverbank. They did this several times, but never got up the courage to cross. It was almost dark when we finally decided we had to head back to camp. As we left our spot by the river, we spied a lioness slinking towards the herd. Soon, the herd thundered past us in a panic! Samuel drove to the spot from which they had run and we found the lioness with a wildebeest that she had just taken down. After a few minutes she dragged it into nearby bushes. Needless to say, we were REALLY late getting back to camp! The next morning, we had to fly back to Nairobi. We did a short drive and went to the crossing point again, ever hopeful. Across the river, we spotted four lions. They could smell the carcass on our side of the river. The edged down to the river, obviously wanting to cross, but the crocs and hippos were too much for them, too.

Wouldn't you like to have read the thoughts of those lions contemplating a crossing, ShayTay.