17 Jan 2024
While I slept really well and feel much more myself, and more intestinally stable, I still managed to hear lions coming from at least 4 different directions overnight, so they are most definitely out there. The challenge we would have this morning is that the fog that settles so low to the ground is an immense impediment to finding these very-close-by lion on our pre-dawn game drive. Until the sun is up and starts to burn the air off, you are stuck with guessing where the noise was when you last heard it, and hoping that the lions are still there by the time you get there.
We left at 6 am again and were pretty blind for the first 90 minutes of the day. Interestingly, I could see blue sky overhead and even see Mt. Kenya quite clearly in the distance, it was just the immediate ground level that was socked in with this dense mist. The days I’ve been here in Ol Pejeta, once the morning warms up it gets hot in the sun, and it feels good. It’s just this darn fog messing up our game drives.
We decided at one point to sit and just listen, hoping that they’d roar again and give us a clue. A lion version of Marco Polo, maybe? We could see the mist starting to burn off and more animals became visible to us. But no sound from the lions at all at this point. We followed some jackals and hyenas, thinking maybe there’d been a kill they would move in on or just come from, and we also headed in the direction that some startled looking plains game were facing, to no avail. So we kept driving and driving. We’d stop for things like giraffe (the first 5 I’ve seen here, reticulated) or eland. Finally we started to head for a clearing for breakfast. Peter got a call from another guide, Albert, that he’d found lions, and he told Peter where they were. Peter said we’d eat and go back that way. That was the plan, anyway. You know how all the best made plans go though, and this IS safari after all. Land of the unexpected.
We ate and had a nice chat about weather in Boston and how we handle snow (he could not fully understand until I explained it a few times!). Breakfast was the same as yesterday except the cinnamon buns were swapped out for little star shaped fried donuts. All good.
So we loaded the Land Rover back up with our picnic breakfast wares and off we went in the direction we’d just come from. Up and over small inclines and declines. I was merrily humming to myself about getting to the lions when Peter screeched to a stop with a “WHOA” and out our right-hand window, practically in the road, but absolutely in a clearing so that we would not miss him was a cheetah.
Now, for the uninitiated about safari and in particular this part of Kenya, two cats are very very hard to spot here: leopard and cheetah. The numbers aren’t as high as in the Mara, they’re much more shy around vehicles and the landscape is low shrubby, scrub bush, so not really ideal for spotting them. But here he was, a gorgeous cheetah, and here we were, all alone. And don’t forget, we saw the leopard on my first night here!
Peter turned to me with a big smile and said “good things happen to good people.” I told him “you and I are turning out to be a lucky pair!” He radioed one of the other camp guides and he wasn’t picking up, so Peter called him instead and left a message on his voicemail. We would sit here until the guide and his guests got here and then decide what we were going to do. As much as this sounds like a waste of time, waiting out a cheetah is my speciality it seems. I once spent an entire day waiting for two cheetahs to hunt. I was more than ready for this. I’d been training for this!
Suddenly, the cheetah got up and moved out of the beating down sunshine and headed under a small bush. We positioned ourselves near him, close enough that I could stare in wonder at him, but with enough distance that he could see all around him. He was scanning the horizon and otherwise acting all cheetah-like. More time passed. Meanwhile, one vehicle unknown to Peter pulled up, snapped a couple of photos and left. Clearly, they didn’t realize how momentous this was.
Even more time passed (I’m guessing now around a half hour). The other guide hadn’t returned the call. Suddenly our cheetah got up and started to move through the grass. Now, I haven’t mentioned it but the grass here is not nearly as tall or as thick as it was in Lewa. We can actually see into it more easily. So that was good. The cheetah was intent on moving in a certain direction and Peter said there was a ravine that is usually a good place for a cheetah to hunt impala or other gazelles. And the cheetah looked like that was what he was going to do. So we trailed him through the grass (thankfully we were in an area that allowed off-roading, otherwise this would have ended nearly an hour earlier!)
Peter finally got the guide on the phone and gave him directions, but telling him to head down the road and turn in the direction of a phone antenna on the horizon. Here you can’t really say “take a left at the fourth bush”. Finally the cheetah laid down under another bush. We positioned ourselves so that he had a view of the ravine which was indeed full of impala, gazelles and the like. And then the guide arrived. And oddly, after taking maybe 5 minutes worth of photos, they left. All that work for that?
It was time to have an honest conversation with Peter. I wanted him to know where I stood. I said “I turn over complete control to you. You can read this cat. I am worried about rain in the Mara and afraid I won’t even see cheetah there. So I’m prepared to wait this out, whatever it takes. Good thing I used the bush toilet at breakfast!” Before I could even finish my speech, he said quite seriously “we will wait.” And I kicked back, took my poncho from this morning and rolled it into a pillow for my back, put my feet up on the seat next to me and leaned against the door with my camera at the ready, staring at this cat. I knew this could be over in minutes or hours. I was ready. Peter was ready. Now all we needed was for the cat to be ready. And then the call came….
Peter speaks Swahili to the other guides on the radio. Some words I know, like words for most of the animals, and then there are some words that must not translate to Swahili so they just say them in English. But in the rapid, emotional sounding flow of Peter’s Swahili, I heard “cheetah” and “duma” (Swahili for cheetah) and also “fuel injection” and “pump”. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good, but somehow I felt like he was making a case for us to stay put. He turned to me and said “another vehicle has broken down on the way to the airstrip and they are requesting that we rescue them.”
Gulp.
I then pretended to interpret his next transmission over the radio to be something along the lines of “try again please, we have a hot cheetah on our hands.” But no luck. As lead guide, he had to go. And if anything gave me any consolation at all, it was two things: he felt worse than I did about it, and I know that safari has a funny way of paying you back. All things happen for a reason and whether we see the karma return to us today or another day, that we left to help will bring good karma to us. Somehow, someday.
So off we went zipping back on the roads. I ended up transferring to other guests’ vehicle and their guide while Peter went to save the day. Unfortunately my new temporary guide was the one who came and left the sighting quickly, so no chance we were going back to it. Instead they were going to the chimpanzee sanctuary, which I’d already visited in 2014. I went anyway, and was somewhat half-hearted about it until I remembered it was a Jane Goodall project. It wasn’t a great experience because we arrived just as all the chimps were being fed lunch, so the rangers had to beg two chimps to join us at the fence. (If anyone reading this is planning to visit, it really is good, I remember it being so, just avoid going close to lunch!)
We then headed back to camp where I had a Stoney Tangawizi to soothe my soul and chatted with Anita a bit. Turns out the vehicle wasn’t broken after all, and Peter was able to turn it over on the first try, which is good since it means I’ll get him and my private vehicle back for my last drive tonight. (Have I mentioned that I’ve had a private vehicle for all but the very brief encounter with the Floridians? Yes, I could get used to this!)
Lunch was good today. We had a cold lentil soup, veggie kabobs, tomato and celery salad, tabouleh and a seeded pumpkin bread. Dessert was a lemon cheesecake. I had a “Baraka Shandy” (named after the blind rhino we saw the other day) of ginger ale and lemonade.
Anita says my flight to the Mara is at 8:30 am tomorrow. We’ll go out on an early drive and head straight to the airport, I guess! I’m really, really hoping the rain they’ve had lets up. I spent lunch starting to pack and sort out my clothes. Back out at 3:45! Hopefully we find our cheetah again! <Break for afternoon drive>
The afternoon drive felt very much like this morning’s drive except that it wasn’t the weather not cooperating. I met Peter at the Land Rover and he apologized again for leaving the cheetah, as if he could do anything about that! I said, “let’s put it behind us and know that someday we’ll get rewarded for leaving, who knows when, but we will.” He seemed good with that.
He decided we’d go try to find the lions that my temporary guide had found earlier today while we were with the cheetah. Remember he’s the one that was so hard to raise on the radio. Well, we thought we knew where he meant for us to look for the lions, assuming they’d slept all afternoon and were where he left them to come to us at the cheetah. Given that my cats go down for a nap after breakfast and don’t surface again until dinner, it is entirely possible! We explored as much of the area that where we thought we should be, going around and around bushes, through thick grass, mowing over small shrubs, all in the name of finding a pile of sleeping lions. Peter radioed the guide and he wasn’t answering. Once, twice, three time, a dozen more, no answer. Finally we gave up, both on looking for lions and trying to raise this guy to get more details. We were easily 90 minutes into looking with no luck.
We went off to another part of the conservancy looking for different lions, or anything really. We saw a few more herds of elephants and a trio of big bulls posing beautifully in front of Mt Kenya. But no lions. We drove up to a flat plain with a view and had our sundowners. It was an overcast night, no sunset per se, but the conversation was good and we had a nice chat. Suddenly we heard on the radio someone trying to reach Peter….lions!
Never have two people packed up the snacks, empties and little picnic table and boarded the Land Rover so fast. I told him I was holding on but to do what it took to get there. And he did. It was maybe 10 minutes to the lions, but we’d lost so much light. Headlights were needed and almost everything was a shadow if you could see it at all, and we didn’t have night drive lights to help us. But when we pulled up, our headlights revealed three big males and three lionesses and they were cats on a mission, it looked like they were going to hunt. In the dark.
Peter moved us a head of the lions as they walked across the plain, and set us up perpendicular to where they’d be walking, illuminating the space in front of us with headlights. One lioness stopped to scan the plains and I felt bad for her. I didn’t want to reveal her to the plains game that was ahead of her, so I asked Peter to turn out the headlights. And that’s how we ended up sitting in the dark and how one of the coolest/scariest moments on safari happened.
While my eyes were adjusting, my hearing got more intense. I was trying to pay strict attention to sounds since I couldn’t see anything. It was killing me not to know what was going on ahead of us. Suddenly I heard the grass to my left start to rustle, and it got louder and louder until I realized it was a lion walking…..right.toward.us. And just as I realized that, I could make out the first big male, dark mane and lighter body, no more detail that that, passing maybe 15 feet in front of us. And then the next one came past, and the third one. Holy cow.
Peter heard the zebras scatter, so now there was nothing for the cats to hunt, they’d been spotted. Presumably they’d sacked out up ahead of us, but not before the three boys let out a chorus of roaring vibratos, strong enough for me to feel it in my bones. I couldn’t help but flip on my phone’s video recorder, and just record this moment in the dark. It was intense. My adrenaline was pumping. WHY does Kenya do this to me??
We left the lions and plan to return early tomorrow morning to see if they’re still there. Fingers crossed.
Returned to camp and drinks around the fire pit with the rest of the guests. There are 6 new guests here since lunch and they were declaring victory for finding the cheetah who’d just hunted. Ugh, that stings…
Dinner tonight was a spinach mousse over a cheddar cheese sauce, vegetable Wellington, which was delicious, and a fresh fruit pavlova. Really very tasty!
I can’t believe I’m already two camps into this trip. It has flown by, but when I look back on all I’ve done and seen, it seems so much longer. And the best part is, I feel so much more like myself than I have in several months. It’s good to feel like me again.
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