As mentioned in the last post it was a pre-dawn start, but thankfully there were no shenanigans during the night. Refreshed by a nice warm shower (I was lucky enough to have warm showers every day of the trip, a rarity in itself) I went off to the restaurant and had sausages, eggs and toast. With some tomato ketchup it ended up as a sausage and egg buttie. Very similar to yesterday obviously, but tasted slightly better on toast than in a chapati. 2.5 out of 5. Fuelled and ready for more game viewing it was off in to the park again. Obviously my prime target was to spot a honey badger in the wild, something that sadly I've never had the luck to see. Oh and also a leopard, the only one of the Big 5 I still haven't seen. I was close once in Namibia though. Where we were staying had floodlit watering holes that were great entertainment after dinner. After a couple of hours drinking some beer watching the animals come and go I had to leave the viewing area to go to the loo a few minutes walk away. When I got back a bunch of people told me that they'd seen a leopard. Sadly they weren't pulling my leg when I was shown the photos, but I did see a pair of Rhinos try and have sex. Well the male was trying, the female clearly wasn't interested. That leopard near miss aside, this early morning game drive was probably one of my best chances to see one. Honey Badgers, who knows. Those buggers are a law unto themselves. A boy can dream though.
The sunrise was gorgeous, and my dodgy pictures don't do it justice. It wasn't long however and we, along with many others, were on the hunt for a leopard. We did some very serious off roading trying to chase one down, just driving head long through the thick bush dodging trees and larger bushes. The leopard was very canny and managed to hide somewhere that no-one in a vehicle could get near. Top marks to our driver for trying so hard and also for his great work all round.
Defeated we headed back to the road and to the nearby tree where the leopard had first been spotted. It's recent kill was still there in the tree. After some gruesome pics we were on the hunt again and spotted a grey-crowned crane, and a solitary cheetah. It was a bit far away and compared to yesterdays phenomenally close encounter a bit dull. We moved on fairly quickly.
Next up was the pride of lions from yesterday in the same spot that we first saw them yesterday. Two of them were fighting over a recently killed zebra, so I managed to get plenty of pictures of the circle of life in action. A reasonable amount of time later we went a short distance away to find the rest of the pride. Over the next half our or so we went round in a circle so that we could see all of them and got incredibly close to the two large males hiding in a bush, as well as plenty of lionesses and the incredibly cute cubs. At one point I was worried that we were going to run over a cub it was that close.
After that amazing big cat encounter it was time for more massive herds of wildebeest and zebra, some buffalo, another solitary ostrich and some dodgy hyenas. The most memorable bit of this was one particularly simple zebra that thought it was Charlize Theron in Prometheus, it could only run in a straight line forward and couldn't veer to either side to dodge our crashing spaceship / van.
On our way out of the park we had one final 'once in a lifetime encounter'. Our driver had got word of something special so we hared along the track to find a single Rhino very close to the road and at the time we were the only van nearby. We stopped, everyone got up to get some cool pictures of the Rhino, unfortunately the Rhino had other ideas. Normally animals just walk away and you end up getting plenty of photos of animal's backsides. This Rhino clearly didn't like our presence and started to charge at our van.
At this point I managed to get my first picture of some nearby grass (out of focus of course) as I dove back in to my seat screaming like a little girl. A short while later I realised the stupidity of this move as I was actually moving closer to the charging Rhino with some flimsy metal and glass for protection. Thankfully our superb driver was on the ball and quickly got us out of harms way. The rhino was suitably appeased, but moved a bit further from the road. We reversed back and got some pictures of it's backside.
Final Masai Mara encounter over with it was time for the trip back to Nairobi. We stopped at the same place in Narok and I tucked in to some dull peas and rice. 2 out of 5. We also stopped off at the Great Rift Valley viewpoint for some more stunning views and a couple of hours later arrived back in Nairobi, driving through a very swanky district with all the embassies, before dropping off Emily, Leslie and Stephanie at the shopping centre with the KFC. Sadly I didn't visit so I'll have to wait a few more months for my Zinger Burger fix.
We then dropped Ali off at his hotel and Jill, Kristin, Timmy and myself headed to the Kibera slum. Apparently it's the biggest urban slum in Africa with a ridiculous population density and a lack of decent infrastructure. It was big, much bigger than the slum I live in in Kampala. We visited a 'factory' for turning animal bones in to jewellery. It was a good enterprise making some nice product that helped bring livelihoods for a good number of people living in the slums. We had one final walk through one of the main roads which was lined which shacks selling all sorts of stuff.
After that very interesting stretch of the legs it was back to Nairobi city centre on a local bus. Thankfully it was a proper bus and not a matatu and wasn't too bad a trip. Bags picked up it was time to say goodbye to Jill as Kristin and I went to the Easy Coach bus 'station' to get our overnight bus back to Kampala. Front seats were again in order, but it was smaller coach with a slightly different layout which meant I couldn't stretch my legs as easily as on Queens Coach. The trip was pretty dull as you can imagine. My dinner comprised of a packet of crisps and a lunch bar. 2 out of 5.
At some God awful hour in the morning, 3am or 4am we got to the border and fairly painlessly got across. Since Easy takes a slightly different route it was a bit shorter in terms of time, but was slightly worse for comfort. We arrived back to the outskirts of Kampala near the National Stadium. Sadly it then took another hour and a half to get to Oasis mall where the bus stopped. Traffic in Kampala is very very bad. The whole trip took about 13 hours. All in a fantastic long weekend with some great company and superb memories. I highly recommend going on safari in Masai Mara and if you're looking for something on a budget get in touch with Timmy who led this trip. 4.5 out of 5 as I still haven't seen a honey badger in the wild, very disappointing.
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