Final days on safari with the Woods

We arrived in the Maasai Mara around eleven o’clock after dodging big cumulus nimbus clouds over the Rift Valley.  There are some obvious signs like this of coming rain which the country really needs.  Another indication of approaching rains is heavy humidity and high temperatures both of which were in abundance in the Mara.  However we were greeted by hot sun and the smiling Lorotumo, our Masai guide from Naibor tented camp, our home for the next two days.  We decided to take a short game drive on the way to the camp so that we could arrive early enough to settle in before lunch.  Incredibly, at 11.30 in the morning we found a female leopard feeding on an impala kill up a thick Gardenia bush where she had stashed the meat. 

She was not easily visible but shortly after arriving there she finished her meal and then climbed down the tree to take a drink of water.  After a drink and a look around she sauntered off towards thicker cover and deeper shade from the heat of the midday sun.  This was an auspicious start to our stay in the Mara and sure enough, the wildlife was amazing. The following morning we spent nearly an hour with a large family of elephant which had three small babies.  Two of them were romping around the legs and bodies of their larger relatives who were placidly feeding.  As we watched an old bull elephant came to visit and his arrival caused quite a stir among the females who each came to greet him with a soft touch of the trunk to his mouth, a form of respect amongst elephants.  We had a good time exploring the area and each day the clouds built up threatening heavy rain.  This gave us some dramatic skies which is always picturesque to frame an animal against, be it an impala or a giraffe!  Although it was threatening every day, the rain never quite got to us while we were in the Mara. It turned out, that it had been raining heavily in the Rift Valley and then it came down in buckets the day after we left the Mara.

I had been promising that Shompole would be hot and dry with dust and desiccated bushes to meet us so it was amusing to arrive there in a rainstorm and the airplane coming down onto a muddy field.  Since my last visit in early December, the rains had arrived with a vengeance, turning the khaki bushes green and causing a burst of flowers to bloom.  Lake Natron had been dried up at the Kenyan end and dust devils wandered across the dusty lake bed and now we could see the lake water reflecting the sky again with the volcano Ol Donyo Lengai looming beyond in the distance. Despite the rain it was still pretty hot at Shompole and we celebrated our Christmas dinner with a light feast followed by an ice cream Christmas pudding, delicious!

We had seen lions in the Mara but the pride at Shompole were much more lively and had boisterous cubs.  On Christmas morning we watched them moving into cover, the cubs following their mothers and one black-maned lion and playing as they walked along.  Despite the lions we also enjoyed a couple of good walks to help work off the great food we’d been enjoying the last week or so!  

Little Shompole was great and I do love the views from here over the floor of the Great Rift Valley. It does feel wild and lonely and on these clear days during the rainy season the distant volcanoes and mountains along the Rift walls are just so dramatic.

It was a bit sad to wave AC and Matt on their own for the next leg of their honeymoon to Sand Rivers in the Selous, Tanzania and then on to Vamizi Island off Northern Mozambique but it was also such fun to spend time with them for the Kenyan section, I wish them the best in the years ahead and hope to see them soon in the UK.