Part 2: safari (for the whole newsletter, go to my website at www.patriciacrossley.com
Since we had our own vehicle we hired a local guide to take us out. Steve is a Maasai and wears his traditional dress of a red robe, earrings and beads as do most of the Maasai in the settlements we passed. He carries his spear and told us it is ‘easy’ to fight a lion with spear and club. He was born and raised six kilometers from the lodge and said that last year they killed eight marauding lions outside the Park. There are no physical boundaries of course and hungry lions and elephants frequently make the newspaper reports as they attack humans and cattle and trample crops in many parts of the country.

The Park teems with wildlife and, thanks to Steve’s great eyesight, we were face to face with the most spectacular. In the pale light of dawn we found a lone male lion, just waking up. The lions live on their own until about age eight. They hunt together with another male until they are ready to find an old male and take over a pride. The cubs from the previous male are usually killed when this happens. Once he has his own pride, the male just eats, sleeps and breeds as the females do the hunting.

We found a family of cheetahs, a female and three cubs, who had just made a kill and were finishing breakfast. They finished eating, completely undisturbed by us, then strolled down to a water hole to drink. Two jackals watched carefully, then trotted over to the remains of the carcass. One ate heartily, but one was very nervous and edged away. Unfortunately, he went the wrong way, directly into the path of the cheetah family. One of the big cats gave chase and the jackal narrowly escaped into a burrow in some bushes. The cheetahs were most likely doing this for sport, for they weren’t hungry, but the jackal took it very seriously.

A leopard had also made a kill and pulled the remains of a wildbeeste up into a tree. Over the couple of days we were there, the carcass became just skin and horns. The leopard at one point strolled unconcernedly across a clearing in front of us.

We met bat-eared foxes, hyena, elephants, giraffes and all kinds of gazelles and zebra s and stopped at a pool int the river where hippos were wallowing. If you would like to see just a few of our pictures, including one of Steve with our vehicle, you can click on www.patriciacrossley.com/newsletter/maasaimara.htm.

I’ll be adding more and will let you know when I have a new set posted. (Continued in part 3)