Along with my trip to the Maasai village, I went on a safari to Maasai Mara, a very famous national park. According to my lonely planet guide, Maasai Mara is the best place to go on safari. We talked to our Swahili teacher Ana, who also owns a travel company, and she organized a trip for us.
The beginning of the trip. We had to take an 8 hour overnight bus from Mombasa to Nairobi. I slept through the entire trip. Amazingly, I slept through the part where the regular road ended and we had to go off-roading in the large coach bus (a road connecting the 2 biggest cities in Kenya, astonishingly, doesn't exist, the funds to build the road instead goes to fund Kenya's president's luxury golf weekends). All the other interns that came along on the safari didn't sleep a single minute. The best part of the bus was that it had air conditioning. NOWHERE else in Kenya has A/C.
My host father later said the midnight bus to Nairobi is hijacked pretty often. When we asked Ana about whether the bus was safe, her response was, "Safe. Very safe," with a huge smile. After all the super sketchy experiences we've had with Anna, I am starting to trust her less and less.
This is our safari van. Once we got to Nairobi, we had to change from a coach bus to a safari van. We spent a lot of time in this thing.
The highway to the safari from Nairobi was the worst road (this is again due to the local politicians channeling funds for road construction for their own personal entertainment fund-this is a very common theme in Africa in general) I ever traveled on. The distance from Nairobi to Maasai Mara was only about 90 miles, but it took 4 hours because we could only go 30 mph and we made many stops for the Maasai cow herds crossing the highway. The highway was only largest enough for one car and there were many potholes so we were forced to drive on the shoulder for most of the trip. My butt was extremely sore after the weekend.
We would also see local Maasai along the road filling the potholes with dirt and then holding out their hand for money.
We stopped to gaze at the Great Rift Valley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Rift_Valley). This valley runs from Syria all the way to Mozambique and it is the valley where humans supposedly came from. Some of the oldest ancestors of humans such as "Lucy" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(Australopithecus)) have been found in this valley. Knowing this, there was an incredibly eerie feeling being in the valley.
Wildebeests grazing on some grass. These were the first animals we saw once we entered into Maasai Mara National Park.
An impala chilling in the shade to get away from the afternoon sun.
Zebras.
Lions eating the zebras.
People watching the lions eating the zebras.
A water buffalo. This guy was huge. In Kenya there are the big 5 animals that are a must see on safari. This is one of the big 5. The other four animals are the lion, elephant, rhinoceros, and leopard. At first everybody thought the water buffalo should probably not be apart of the big 5, but after seeing the enormous size of the thing, we all agreed that this should be a part of the big 5.
Water buffalo testicles. These were massive. These things alone justified the water buffalo being included in the big 5. In Swahili large testicles are called makende. We had a photo contest among the interns to see who could take the best testicle photo. This one won by a vote of 5 to 1. It was taken by Tyler, the intern from Washington D.C.
Giraffe grazing on some grass.
Giraffe testicle shot. In Swahili these would be called vikende, which means small testicles.
A picture of the interns with our tour guide, Ana. This stone statue marks the border between Kenya and Tanzania. In Tanzania Maasai Mara is called the Serengeti. I think the Serengeti is much better known in the U.S. largely in part to the immensely popular 80's song "Africa" by Toto.
Wild ostriches prancing along the savanna.
Hippos! These guys were super gigantic. Hippos are considered the most dangerous animal to humans in Maasai Mara. More than the lion, leopard, cheetah, and the alligator the hippo kills the most humans. They will charge at humans and though these guys are fat, they can run like 25 mph. Although they are vegetarian, they are known to bite humans. When I mean bite, they put you into their mouth and bite you into half and then just leave you there for the vultures and hyenas to eat you.
Our guide Ana (this is back when we didn't realize how unsafe she was) thought it would be good to do a walking safari to see the hippos...
Our guide for our walking safari, Jack. He had an AK-47. He let me hold it. People told me I looked too happy to be threatening even when I was holding an AK.
In the background to the right is Ana, our guide, running away. When Jack handed me the gun, I almost dropped it causing a little scare. Ana would have been right in the line of fire. Luckily the safety was on...
A baby elephant and his mother. We were within 10 feet of these beasts. These elephants were not as big as I thought they would be, but they were still huge and would easily destroy our van. Elephants used to be a major problem for people on safari, even more than the hippos. Elephants never supposedly forget, and when they saw humans they associated them with poachers so they would charge after humans. These new generation of elephants grew up in a world where poaching was illegal so they are much more gentler towards us humans.
Inside the safari van with some of the other interns.
This is a sausage tree. It had really large sacks of I don't know what that looked like sausages hanging from its tree branches. It was one of the more unusual trees I have ever seen.
This little guy snuck in and stole this banana from one of our lunches. He was super sneaky.
Cheetah!
It is not a very good picture but this is a leopard. It was up in a tree resting after having a huge meal of a wildebeest. The bloody wildebeest carcass was dangling from the tree below. Our tour guide said that leopards are very rare and we were very lucky to have seen a leopard.
Maasai Mara at dusk. People say the savannas of Kenya are beautiful, but I have to disagree. It's extremely dry, nothing is really growing there except for this really dry grass and there is a ton of animal poop everywhere.
The end of the safari. We saw a hyena walking around at dusk. He was looking for some scraps of the zebras the lions were eating at the beginning of the safari. The following day we went to visit the Maasai village.
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