Have you heard of the famous big 5? In today’s adventure on a Maasai Mara safari to Kenya our special agenda was to hunt for these big 5. This term big 5 came about because these are the five most difficult animals to hunt on foot in the olden days. We still use the term today even though hunting is longer allowed in Kenya due to the wildlife preservation policies. Who are those big 5 and did we manage to see all of them? After an awesome day one to Masai Mara Kenya that involved airport pickup and transfer to Masai Mara, day 2 started pretty early at around 6:30 a.m. Why? Because at Masai Mara Holidays we always emphasize that there’s nothing better than starting your safari with the beautiful African sunrise over the gigantic Maasai Mara National Park
Sprawling on the grass looking very full with blood stains around their mouth and paws. “Must have been a good wilder feast last night right “ Our first sight of the Masai mara cheetahs, Indeed it’s in the morning that you see more of the feasting like these vultures for example; waiting for their chance to finish off a preyed Wildebeest. We could even smell the stench even if we were just passing by. Very soon we spotted our first of the big five, the majestic Simba if you know what I mean. Our visitors were speechless; there were two real lions next to our land cruiser, it was crazy. Lions somehow hold another kind of authority when they are around, you can just feel it.
With our visitors still still struck silent, our driver George reaches out for his phone to communicate with other safari drivers to update them about the location of the lions. If you’re wondering, here is how being in the events sounds like, our drivers at Masai Mara Holidays work under the principle that he’d never told you what you are going to see, we like to keep the mystery until we reach the place to pleasantly surprise you, with our visitors now able to speak we landed onto four pairs of fluffy cubs resting in the shade with their mummy besides keeping an eye on them, our vistors heart melting on the side of these little babies they just couldn’t stop saying how cute they were. On a side note if you’re looking for the best value of safari packages to Masai Mara you should check our Masai Mara Safari Packages.
Next we spotted another member of the big five, the cape buffalo, you don’t want to mess with this guy even though they are herbivores. They can be extremely aggressive and they come with this epic name the Black Death. Another thing that happened in the morning which could potentially happen to you as well is our vehicle getting stuck in the mud but don’t wory if that happens all the drivers will surely come to help you just like we did. Before I forget to mention, the doors of the vehicles should always be locked and nobody is allowed to go while on a game drive except for toilet break or lunch, in that case the our driver would come and open the door for you, there are no fancy toilets in the park, just find some trees and leaves and you are good to go.
We continued our way to the next location where we discovered a parade of elephants, coming third on our list of the big five. Closest to us was the mother and her baby elephant and it was a sweet thing to see how they interacted with each other, after the sweet encounter, we met with the least expected animal of the big five. They are only 26 left in Maasai Mara National Park and that the chances of seeing one are very slim and yet we saw it. We were the only ones who were so close to the Rhino. Next we made our way to Mara River where the hippos work, once there we got down, a ranger guided us along the river while telling us more about the hippos and the crocodiles.
It was around 1:30 p.m. and the Sun was just above our heads so make sure you are well protected with a safari hut, it is also polite to give a small tip to the ranger. After the tour at 2:30 p.m. we stopped at a quiet spot under the shade near Sand River to have our picnic lunch, we stayed there for about an hour before heading to no-man’s land at the border between Tanzania and Kenya. While here we could get down to take some memorable photos and on our way back we saw a lot of animals, finally we came to the news, the wildebeest are the superstars of this season you should know that from July to October there’s a huge unique wildebeest migration which takes place from Serengeti in Tanzania to Masai Mara in Kenya as they look for new pastures to graze.
During this period which is the peak period, there are millions of wildebeest which take part in this migration; we witnessed many on them while on our game drive, they were all running in one direction and we chased them it was so real and so beautiful. If you don’t manage to go during the peak season, Masai Mara is always worth it we were back to our accommodation at around 5:30 p.m. with our visitors more than happy with what we have experienced during the day. We had accomplished seeing all the big five, however we missed the last one, the leopard, your eye should be very sharp to spot them they spend a lot of time on trees and this could make them difficult to see, a good idea is to bring binoculars for game spotting. finally the list is now complete that was day 2.
Wondering how is the Maasai Mara Kenya safari experience like, contact us today at Masai Mara Holidays, and let’s get into a discussion on how we can organize a customized safari for you to Masai Mara.
