Early Morning Playtime
If our first safari in 2005 was a total failure as far as big cats were concerned, the 2017 Kenya trip was the polar opposite. I’ve previously blogged the actual numbers involved and as I’m writing this and reviewing the files from the trip, I can still hardly believe what we saw. Bearing in mind this was only a 9-day trip, to far exceed the numbers encountered on previous longer trips was unexpected.
Arriving in the Mara mid-morning meant we had a game drive from the airstrip to the lodge for lunch. Before we set off we had a brief chat with our guide Alfred, to discuss our interests and what we hoped to capture. As usual I placed my order for Cheetah sightings, hitherto my favourite big cat. Rose wanted her beloved Elephants. Both were met with a ‘no problem’ from Alfred, but he widened the big cat agenda by confidently predicting in excess of 100 Lions would be possible.
Leopards are a different prospect altogether, due to their secretive nature and while we knew there were a few around, expectations weren’t high. Until our trip to Botswana in February this year, we had generally seen no more than one Leopard on a two-week trip and in some cases none. So to get sightings of 4 different Leopards was a huge bonus.
The consequence of this was, we witnessed a variety of sights and behaviours we had never seen before. It’s therefore no surprise we are going to return this year and we have been asked to look at the feasibility of taking a small group to the Mara in 2019. An exciting prospect.
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