Category: Sabbatical

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz9R-9NnWi8

Good food and lots of naps.

We have found a little piece of paradise–on an almost deserted island!! The owner of Manda Bay resort, Fuzz, came to get us in a speedboat and brought us to Manda Island. We have a hut on the beach all to ourselves.

This is the view from our hut.

We had a delicious lunch of fresh shrimp, vegetables and homemade rolls followed by a nap outside. Being bounced around in a safari vehicle for 12 hours/day is hard work and we are tired!! 😂😂 We had a nice walk on the beach and our only big plan for tomorrow is to swim in the Indian Ocean.

Every travel story has a snafu. We hit ours today. Until today everything has been perfect. Our flight from the Mara was perfect. Our flight out of Nairobi was perfect. Then things came to a screeching halt. But we found a guardian angel in Abdul.

We flew into Manda Airport. Someone from our resort was SUPPOSED to meet us and take us by boat to the island. No one was there. Abdul asked us where we were going and informed us the resort had not opened for the season– though we had prepaid.

Abdul called the owner and found out she is in London. He called our safari company and got them working. Abdul stayed with us 1 1/2 hours and made numerous calls.

So finally a boat came to take us to Kajani House. We got worried on the trip because although it is an island there is not a beach everywhere. We got more worried when we had a wet landing.

The people at this hotel opened the hotel for us. They are gracious and welcoming. We have a suite & are the only guests. They are creating a menu for us.

But we don’t need our swimsuits… Or our shorts because we are not on a resort and it’s a Muslim Island.

More to follow………

The hotel we are in is very nice ; the food is good and the people could not be more gracious, but we are moving this morning. Our safari company came through and we are moving to Manda Island. We are moving to a big resort on a beach. Our original reservations were for a small place on the beach. We are staying in a small place but we have discovered the beach is more important. We have no idea what the place is like but they are sending a boat for us in 45 minutes!!

A fabulous end to a great safari. We saw hippos walking back to the water after a night of grazing and a lioness and 4 10-month old Cubs at a distance. The highlight was seeing a mom and her two 6-week old Cubs up close. We saw her carry them. Then they passed by our car about 2 feet away.

It was special to me to end the trip with Olbramoti. He was the first male lion we saw here two years ago and his picture hung in my office, so I have seen him every day since. He is very handsome and he and his brother reign over the conservatory.

We are off to catch a flight from a grass air strip to Nairobi, then another flight to the coast and a boat to Lamu Island. There are no cars on the island. We are going to spend some time on a beach on the Indian Ocean and are hoping it is sunny and warm.

Final lion count ( DIFFERENT lions seen)

Total: 90
Males: 10
Females:25
Subadults:21
Cubs: 34

Sunrise this morning.

It’s cold and windy here. I am dressed in 5 layers!

An update to yesterday: we went to Lookout Hill where we could see Tanzania. There was a row of fires burning. The Tanzanians have set fires near the border in an effort to prevent the wildebeests from migrating north. They still come, but they have to make a long detour.

This morning we found 9 lion 1 1/2 yr old  Cubs playing. Just like our Cubs at the zoo, a stick is a valuable possession-worth tangling over! They jumped on each other, pounced, and ran around. It was great fun. One of the boys reminded me of Aslan.

Then we found more of the pride- 3 moms and 5 6 month old Cubs. The moms played with the Cubs. A cub climbed a tree and then one of the moms did, though she wasn’t very coordinated! This is the third time we have seen lions in a tree! The grass is so high, lions are nearly completely hidden.

We got very close to a raft of about 20 hippos.

They are entertaining! We also saw a tiny hyena following its mom and though adult hyenas are pretty ugly, this little guy was adorable! We were within 10 ft of a cheetah & her 3 large 10-month old Cubs.

We saw a crossing of about 2500 wildebeests over a small river.

This afternoon after a picnic lunch in the bush we saw many more lions including a mom & 2 adorable 3-month old Cubs…

… were within 15 ft of a couple on a date…

… and a female lion who let it be known to a male that she was very interested- and he turned her down and actually walked away!

Current lion count (number of DIFFERENT lions seen)
Total-76
Males- 10
Females-21
Subadults-21
Cubs-24

It’s cold here!  Especially coming from the heat of Samburu! We spent 12 hours out in the park, eating both breakfast and lunch in the bush. It was a wildebeest day. They are here!  We saw hundreds of thousands.

The wildebeest are migrating. To do so they have to cross a number of rivers. It’s dangerous. We watched a crossing of the Mara River of about 50,000 wildebeests with about 25 zebras thrown in. It took about 2 1/2 hours. It’s amazing to see. They wait around the bank awhile until one gets the nerve to start. They cross in a line, leaping off the bank and swimming to the other side. They go single file and keep coming and coming. We saw only two get snatched by a very very large crocodile. Two out of 50,000 is pretty good odds.

The hard thing to watch is the young foals who get separated from their mothers in the rush. These little ones swam back across alone looking for their moms. Most don’t find them and then their chance of survival is small. It is heart breaking to see.

We saw many more lions…

… and we visited again the pride we had seen last night. They were sleeping with very full bellies. It’s very interesting because we saw the subadults in the pride 2 years ago as Cubs!

We came across a pretty small river in a kind of ravine. It’s where we had lunch.

The black dot in the middle at the back is a Cape buffalo.

We saw a tower (group) of 26 giraffes, a pack of 6 hyenas, & and a tiny baby hyena in its den.

A little further the river is a lot wider and the ravine steeper. A young foal was trapped in the ravine having been separated from her mom when the wildebeests crossed the ravine. It was panicking a bit trying to find a way out. It was being tracked by both a leopard (BTW we have seen leopards 8 of 10 days!) and a lioness. The leopard saw the lioness and gave up the hunt. The lioness started down the bank of the ravine & then made a very smart move. She realized she could move faster along the top. She ran up the bank,  raced across the top, came down the ravine opposite the foal, ran across the river ( it was not deep) …. And a film crew was there–she got distracted, looked at them and the foal got away, ran out of the ravine and back to the herd. That was one very lucky baby wildebeest.

Tomorrow is our last full day here so we will be spending another 12 hours out. I’m hoping we can find the Monoco pride. Their pictures were hanging in my office so I have been looking at them for two years!

Current lion count (number of DIFFERENT lions seen)

Total-47
Males-7
Females-14
Subadults-18
Cubs-8

Our first day in the Maasai Mara. We are staying in a conservancy and the migration of wildebeests is just beginning to make there way up here. There are a lot fewer animals here than two years ago so far. The terrain is far different than Samburu. It is flat terrain with different types of trees and many watering holes. The grass is at least 3 1/2 feet high. The wildebeests will now it down once they arrive.

We took a nap after lunch and baboons walked by our tent and sat under a tree 25 ft from us!

We had one 4-hour game drive today and saw a lot! We saw several Maasai giraffes…

… which look quite different from the reticulated giraffes in Samburu, 2 crocodiles and a lot of hippos.

We came across a mother leopard who had just caught a hare for her 1 year old son.

The animals here are not at all afraid of cars as is evidenced here by the mother leopard’s chosen resting spot. (The car was there first).

The highlight was the lions!  We saw a mating pair. And then an entire pride!! One of the males was Mohican, whom we met two years ago. This is a picture of his brother, Romeo, who was limping badly.

The lions had huge bellies from eating. Nevertheless the teenagers in the group took on a topi (a type of antelope). They had trouble but we watched as they killed him. What was most interesting is one subadult attacked the topi. We thought everyone else was asleep but in a flash they were up running to help. It took them all to bring him down. They looked full to us but they managed to eat again.

Lion count: 30
Males: 3
Females: 8
Sub adults: 12
Cubs: 7