Erin sees her buffalo
Trip Start
Sep 17, 2007
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Trip End
Oct 08, 2008
Masai Mara National Reserve,
Kenya
Sunday, August 3, 2008
A van was parked by a far-away mound and Dixon got out his binoculars and said, "there is something on that mound." Lorraine thought it was a leopard. Unfortunately, we had taken a wrong turn way back at the river, and we had to drive quite a ways to get up there. By that time the leopard-thing was long gone, but we headed a convoy of white trucks who followed the first truck up. Here, way off,we spotted the animal in question, which turned out to be, not a leopard, but a cheetah. It was far away but I saw it running through the grass and diving for cover. They went down and crossed the river to the bank we had originally been on. We drove down to the bank and watched not one, but two cheetahs break cover and lope up to the cover of the brush. We continued on but didn't see much for the rest of the drive
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.If you recall, the first night we saw two buffalo in the distance, but it was getting dark so we didn't get closer. The second day, while returning in the rain, Erin had spotted what she believed to be another buffalo, but we didn't investigate that either. She wasn't happy about this and said she was "owed a buffalo."
Towards the very end of our last game drive, Erin spotted a group of three elephants feeding to our left. Then she pointed down the road and casually said, "and there are some more wildebeest."
"Those aren't wildebeest," said Dixon, "Those are buffalo."
"All of them?"
So spoiled Erin didn't just get to see her one buffalo, she got to see 300 of them, close up, with lots of babies. It was pretty cool. After some time spent with our buffalo herd, we turned around and said goodbye to the Mara.
After breakfast we began the long drive back to Nairobi.
Going on safari was an amazing experience and I'm really glad we had the opportunity to fit it in on this trip. Still, you can't really do safari on the cheap and I look forward to coming back here with a big wad of cash and doing a grand tour of the Kenyan and Tanzanian game parks. Until that big wad of cash materializes, however, I'll have to content myself with this brief glimpse of the world of safari.
~Travis
