Safari pt 2 - All the animals

Ok. Time for some animal pics! Like we said before, we saw basically every animal we could hope to see. Even our guide, Julius thought we were unbelievably lucky. We have talked with many people since the safari and there truly was something special about our experience. It was magic. 

The park itself is beautiful. We could have driven for hours without seeing anything and the land would be enough to satisfy the senses. Sometimes the land looks like the plains of midwest USA and then it would twist and turn and loom over you. Gullies filled with water, desert, trees. Enough about the land, I hear you. Animals. 

We're missing a few pictures of some gazelle, antelope, topi, and warthogs. There were just so many that I think we forgot to take pictures of them. We'll keep looking though.

Ostriches. They are really weird birds. And we didn't get to close. Julius said they could be pretty aggressive. 

 

Water buffalo. Ok so let's talk about the Big 5. Everywhere you go in Kenya there are t shirts and stuff with the Big 5 on them. People also talk a lot about seeing the Big 5. The Big 5 (lion, leopard, black rhino, elephant, and water buffalo) are called such because they were the most dangerous and challenging to hunt and kill. They still talk about seeing the Big 5 even though there are elephants and water buffalo everywhere you go. Heck, we saw more lions than hippos and we've already been over the hippos. It ain't hard to see 3 out of the Big 5. So we're going to dump the term Big 5 from now on. We saw dozens and dozens of animals and they were all awesome. 

Zebra chilling on their own and in herds.

Oh good. A gazelle. A Thompson's gazelle. Thompson was probably a white guy so let's just refer to these as Massai Mara gazelle. 

We think we saw 3 separate prides of lions. All had babies with them. This first pride had a carcass with them so the big daddy was obsessed with keeping any other younger males away from the food. 

Here's Wally with a wandering female lion in the background. She was on her way back to rejoin the pride we just left. 

Elephants, elephants, everywhere there were elephants. So many that Guthrie started throwing a fit about how it was "SO BORING!!" to see elephants. 

Cheetahs. Day one we saw a female cheetah out around dusk headed out on the hunt for the evening. 

The next day we saw two young males out looking for their brother early in the morning. The first one was calling for him with some kind of snarl/meow sound. This is a good spot to talk about bodily functions. We saw a lot of animals. And every single one pooped as we were watching them. It became quite the joke. Our presence caused A LOT of vacating of bowels. These cheetahs were also marking territory so they sprayed a firehose of... spray right out the anus. We also saw two lion mating. They mate 50-70 times in one day at about 15 minute intervals. 

Well, there you are.

Ok. So we were out driving around, having the time of our lives when Julius gets a phone call. The guides all have cell phones and better cell phone reception than the state of Wyoming (not a joke). They all have an agreement to keep each other posted on cool stuff. So Julius grabs the wheel and turns around going 60mph through the savannah. All he says ever is "Something special." So we get excited as we are thrown all over the truck laughing our heads off. (Everyone except Spencer who was pretty concerned about seatbelts and appropriate speeds on dirt roads.) Here's what we pull up to.

This is a leopard. Frozen. Note the gazelle in the background. It sat here for a while with it's tail switching back and forth. It's coat is gorgeous! No one had seen a leopard in 3 days so this was pretty exciting. 

It took off on the hunt. It stayed close to the vehicle for a bit to stay covered. We could stay too close, but we did see a baby gazelle and mom take off on a full sprint with the leopard in pursuit. Baby gazelle was unharmed last we saw. 

More lions. 

Breakfast in the bush!

More elephants. This baby was 2 WEEKS OLD. It was hilarious. It was playing with it's trunk and gingerly walking around like it had on been on legs for 2 weeks. It started to wander right up to the vehicle which is crazy dangerous so we started the engine to scare it off. Mamma elephant would attack the vehicle if baby gets too close. 

Hyenas. Most of the time they were solo. They are weird looking creatures. 

So a few hours before we had to leave to catch our plane back we got out of the vehicle way up on top of Lookout Point. Jen and Chris even got their picture taken. 

Then Julius yelled for us to get in the vehicle as fast as possible. Every single person dove through a window. No time for doors! "Something special!" 

No one in the park had seen a rhino for two and a half weeks. Sometimes they can go a month without seeing a rhino. There aren't many of them, but they also like to stay undercover in areas where vehicles don't, or can't, really go. Julius said we only get to see rhino when they move from one territory to another. But he got a call from another guide...

Absolutely ridiculous. With only an hour before we had to leave. Here he was. Trotting along. He did not like vehicles so we stayed further back and allowed him to move along without following too much. 

Baby giraffe on the way to the airport. Seriously, it seemed like every animal in the park had babies with them. The whole place felt... healthy. Thriving. We really felt like visitors to an area where we were not at the top of the pecking order. It was just an incredible experience and we feel like the luckiest people in the world. 

Ok. So one more pic. We took the truck back to the "airport" which was really just a grass strip where you had to shoo warthogs away to allow the planes to take off. We waited for the pilots to finish lunch and then they started to board us. There was only one pilot for our plane and he approached Wally with a question...

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Wanna be the co-pilot?

That's right. Wally rode in the co-pilot's seat for 2.5 hours! He was the perfect kid for the job. He sat there and never touched a thing (notice Guthrie was not asked, much to his GREAT disappointment. Tears, tears, tears, screaming, and more tears). Wally sat and studied every instrument and dial trying to figure out what everything did. It was great. The people in the back felt there was a little turbulence during the flight, but Chris and the kids were oblivious to any panic in the back. That will be their story to tell. 

So that's it for the safari. There are more pictures and more stories to tell, but we're glad just to get something documented that we can share with you all and save forever. 

Something special