First of all, I lost all of my pictures and videos from yesterday. Every. Single. One. The best I can determine is I was going through them and wanted to erase one. When it asked me to confirm my fat finger must have hit “delete all”. At any rate I’ve been sick about it. I am grateful it happened on day one and not day five and I will erase NOTHING else before I go home.
The day begins here with a delivery of tea, coffee or hit chocolate and some cookies to your tent — in my case at 530 – to sustain you on an early morning game drive.
I left at 6 am. The first thing I saw was a hyena! I’ve not seen them up here in Samburu before! Then I saw a mammal that is new to me — bat-eared fox
We found a mother cheetah on a rock with her three cubs. I got great shots of the cubs. They climbed over their mother to nurse!
Then we looked for lions. It’s difficult because you are searching in the terrain in these pictures and they could be under any one of thousands of bushes.
Finally we found the lions again. Seven of them, the male was not there. The same lions as yesterday . They were sound asleep.
The cubs were hidden in the bush behind the mom. You definitely cannot see them on this photo but they were tucked away where the red circle is.
It’s quite clever. The cubs were well hidden and any predator would have to go through four lions to get to the cubs. The cubs were awake. What I don’t understand is how the mother gets them to stay there. They are rambunctious playful cubs and I would think they would wander out, but they don’t. I cannot see human toddlers minding like that! I was corrected today on the age of the cubs — 3 months and on the mom’s name. There were three cubs as late as last week. Something has happened to one of them.
We tried to find the male. We found fresh tracks ….
…and very fresh lion poop down by the river. We think he crossed the river. His brother was calling him from across the river yesterday.
I came back for breakfast at 10 and we left shortly afterwards to go to the Ewaso Lions camp. It’s an hour away. As soon as we got there they served lunch, I couldn’t eat as I was full from breakfast! I spent until late afternoon there with my friend Shivani Bhalla who runs Ewaso Lions. She showed me changes they had made to the camp. They now have an office that is an actual building. They sleep and eat in tents. It was great to have relaxed time to catch up on each other’s lives.
Late afternoon we left there and found a leopard. A beautiful leopard! He was around in the morning but there were so a many cars around it was ridiculous. We didn’t’ get in the crowd. In the evening there were two others there. The leopard was asleep. The others left. We waited. The leopard woke up and went for a stroll looking for something to eat. I got the most amazing pictures! He came right up to the car and passed within inches (literally) of it. I got a closeup of his gorgeous eyes. It was amazing. I could have taken a picture with my cell phone but I didn’t want to put my camera down, so you will just need to wait for the good pictures!
I think I did pretty well for someone who woke up at 2 am and hasn’t been to sleep yet!!
I was fortunate to do my first safari with Shivani who taught me to remain a respectful distance away from the animals, to be very still and very quiet, and to wait. They will eventually do something.
Oh that monkey is still camping outside my tent. When I walked out at 6 am she was right there. I told her to have a nice day. I’ve named her Gertrude.
I’ve been getting back after 630 pm. I plug everything in to be charged, shower, wash clothes and go to dinner at 8 pm. The power is cut off where I am staying between 3 and 630 pm and between midnight and 5 am.
Tomorrow we are taking breakfast with us and eating out in the bush and going across the river to look for the two male lions.
Current lion count: Still 8
Looking Out Seeing Within 