19 Jan 2025 - Sunday (I think? I may have lost track!)
Apologies for the mis-dating of previous posts. If you noticed and didn’t say anything, thank you for letting me enjoy the time warp I’ve entered here in the bush. I am utterly happy, almost obscenely so. Whatever baloney I’ve told any of you about this safari being my last is crap. How can I deny myself such joy?
I think the last thing I remember last night was my head hitting the pillow. I slept with the tent flaps open so I had fresh air all night, which may contribute to the deep sleep. For all of my insomnia and sleepless nights when my mind spins and accomplishes nothing except exacerbating over-exaggerated anxiety at home, I am sleeping the sleep of the dead here. This morning I woke at 4:30 am for the first time (having turned out the light at 10:30 pm) and only looked at my phone because I was afraid I hadn’t set my alarm (I did) and also afraid I hadn’t taken my anti-malarial after dinner (I did). So some anxiety dies hard in the bush. But I felt great when I woke up both times!
Anyway, the reason I woke was because I heard a very active, very loud lion pride and what I thought sounded like a cow or buffalo being attacked. The sounds were real, definitely lion, but I think maybe the buffalo piece may be imagined since I’d been dreaming of seeing a buffalo kill in recent weeks. I did drift back off to sleep for a bit only to be jolted back to reality by the alarm. I gave myself a breath or two to come to my senses and was up, dressed, sunscreened and camera-at-the-ready for 6 a.m. in the coffee area. They tend to have a group coffee chat rather than in-tent delivery as a wake up call here. I chatted with the Spanish couple who were here on their first safari. I told them they’d be planning their next one on the way home. Heck, I’m already planning the next one now.
Ping and the Eagle View guides all heard the lions and knew generally where they might be. We were on the road at 6:15 and drove and drove, guides splitting up to put more eyes on different places. (I always get anxious when we don’t quickly find cats in the morning because I hate to lose the golden light around sunrise!). At 6:45 Ping spotted them across the plains and put it into high gear. “They’re all in a pile,” he said, elaborating no further. Given that I’m what could pass for nearly blind on a good day in decent light, I of course saw nothing in the pre-dawn dimness until we were practically on top of them. And yep, it was a big ole pile of lions. Too many for me to actually count! (Well, eventually I did manage and it was 19!). This is the Ilksiausiau pride, which I think was close to 40 members when I was here last January but has now split in two. Even having seen them before, there is nothing like a healthy dose of lion to start the day. And I was getting an overdose!
We stayed with them for about 3 1/2 hours and the behaviors I got to see really ran the gamut. Initially the older females seemed intent on hunting. They haven’t eaten for a few days and there was plenty in the area that they could take down. They’re known for taking down giraffe, and there were several nearby, as well as zebra and wildebeest. Over time though, their interest in a hunt seemed to dwindle except for one female who broke away a bit from the pride and we’d come to follow her at the end of our sighting.
The pride was mostly adult females and adolescents, with a few sub-one year old cubs (not as small as those we saw last night though). They were playing, play fighting, actually fighting and playing chase for a coveted stick, set of wildebeest antlers or fur from a dead hare. (I can’t be the only cat owner who sees a lion eating fur or chewing bark and wants to yell “put that DOWN or you’re going to be sick!”). The competition for ownership of a stick was very heated and one lion finally gave up and went over to a whistling thorn acacia tree and snapped off a branch of his own. Problem solved.
I was surprised by how rough the older lions were with the younger ones. Swats across the head, body slamming them, biting them. The little ones seem to hold their own fairly well and I suppose it makes them tougher predators somehow.
Early on in the sighting, word got out that Figlet, one of leopardess Fig’s other daughters, was spotted elsewhere and almost all the vehicles on this sighting with us left. Ping told me and I gave an “awwwwww…” and maybe shot him some pleading eyes. I didn’t want to leave these lions but I didn’t want to miss Figlet either. Ping said “we cannot be everywhere and I think these lions are going to hunt today. They need to.” He’s told me many stories of missed hunts in his past and I think he tries to avoid them when he can. So we stuck around. (It turns out that Figlet was mobbed and the rangers were handing out tickets and fines, so maybe better that we stayed put!)
Gradually the lions drifted across the plains and went to hunker down for the day in some thick bushes and low trees. At least that was my interpretation. Ping thought that they were either going to cross through the bushes or hunt, not necessarily rest. Or rest while contemplating a hunt. One lioness though, remained on the tail of any of the plains game she could encounter. She’d run towards herds of impala or Thomson’s gazelle or zebra or even giraffe and just cause them to bolt and scatter. Ping said she was hoping to trigger her pride-mates into coming out to help round up one for a meal. But alas after about a 45 minutes of her working all on her own, she gave up and followed the pride into the bushes.
We were suddenly lion-free, so we moved off to a shady acacia tree nearby for breakfast, where we could keep an eye on the bushes and the game around it while we ate. By now everyone else was long gone, so anything that happened, if it happened, would just be our sighting. Nothing did happen though, at least not before lunch. Even without a hunt though, it was an amazing and productive morning. I was in lion heaven.
On this sighting, I got to see Twala as he pulled up to talk to Ping. It was nice catching up with him and Ping knew his guest. Small world here in the bush!
We drove around the area where Figlet had been sighted this morning but found nothing. Some Maasai were walking their cows through the area which may have spooked her undercover. We’re trying again on our drive this afternoon.
I forgot to mention on my first day, Ping slowed on the road and leaned out to look down. I assumed since we were looking for lions he was tracking paw prints. Instead he said “green mamba” and I said “Ping, hell to the no. You must have forgotten that detail about me!” He seems to have encyclopedic recall of things I saw with him on my 2018 safari and he even remembers seeing me on the sighting of Sankuet and Nadala last January! Yet, he forgets my snake phobia!
Another thing I forgot about Ping is how he is like the mentalist when he’s computing what’s happened at a sighting. He’ll point from one direction to another, like he’s calculating vertices and angles while simultaneously taking in environmental details and calculating probabilities. It is fascinating to watch and I can almost see the gears in his brain turning, churning the data through 29 years of experience to come up with a prediction. It’s kind of nuts.
Breakfast this morning was excellent, especially considering it was packed before 6 am and we ate at 10! Granola with yogurt, rolled omelettes, pancakes, toast, fruit salad (and for Ping sausage and bacon) along with coffee and juice. You wouldn’t think I’d be that hungry from sitting in a vehicle all day, but I am. I also think being outside all day is appetite-enhancing. Or that’s my excuse anyway.
We came back to camp for lunch and a midday siesta. I’m ok with that rather than an all day drive because it gives me a chance to recharge (and use a real toilet!). Plus, here more so than in the Reserve, the cats really go undercover during the hot midday hours, so driving around turns out to be pretty fruitless once the heat of the day sets in. I may take a quick nap after lunch because that is my favorite sleep anywhere. Although sitting on the deck looking at this view is pretty hard to resist too!
Lunch was outstanding, again. We had a beet carpaccio with cucumber and carrot tuille for the app. The main was a vegetable penne arrabiata. Dessert was crepe Suzette with an orange ginger ricotta-based ice cream. I either need to buy an ice cream maker or bring this chef home with me.
The rest of the afternoon played out oddly. We left at 3:30 and cruised by all three leopards’ territories with no luck. We passed by where we left the lions this morning and all was quiet there. Ping said the other half of that pride that splintered off was over by Leopard HIil so we went that way.
It wasn’t long until we came across 6 male lions who are about 3 years old. These are the Fig boys from Lerai conservancy. Ping spotted a buffalo up behind them about 50 yards, sleeping in a circle of whistling thorn acacia, a literal enclosure. Gradually, five of the boys entered stalking mode and crept up toward it. Two made their way into the enclosure where the buffalo was “sleeping” and it put up no fight at all. Odd. The lions then sat on either end of the buffalo, and the buffalo was caged in on all but one side by the trees.
We moved closer to the enclosure, oddly enough (a lot odd about this situation) right at the one opening the buffalo had as an escape. That didn’t make me feel comfortable as I had visions of an enraged old buffalo charging us as he escaped for his life. I didn’t want to be NBC Nightly News’ next “American Killed on Safari For Being Stupid”, so I asked Ping to move. So we moved to the top of the enclosure where one lion and some trees were between us and the buffalo.
After about a half hour, one lion got up and left, then the other followed suit. Odd again. Ping had no explanation. But he was convinced they would kill this buffalo. Then the buffalo moved and we could finally see what the lions must have seen, the buffalo had at least one if not two broken legs and appeared to be actively dying. An easy meal, right? Not so fast. We sat for another hour until it was past dark and the lions tried again, this time a more concerted effort but every motion toward the buffalo would elicit a groan or a moo from the buffalo. That was not much of a response at all, but it was enough to send these boys cowering for cover. Since we could only hear now and see what our red spotlight cast on the situation, it is hard to say why it played out exactly, but Ping thought that perhaps these young males had never taken down a buffalo before so they were confused first by the buffalo’s lack of aggression and also how they were supposed to do this.
The buffalo, somehow, with two broken legs managed to make its way out of the enclosure and was hobbling toward the lions, who were crouched in panic position within paws’ length of what could be a meal for the next several days! But still, no movement on their part! We stuck with them until 8:00 (nearly 3 hours) and they still hadn’t taken it down, or even seem motivated to do so. I don’t think these six lions were either motivated or honors students. Short of me getting out of the vehicle, killing it and cooking it for them, how much easier could it get? We are still really puzzled. Ping says he has never seen anything like it. As I said at the start: Odd.
What is even odder about this is that for a few weeks leading up to this safari, I’d had dreams that I saw a buffalo kill (more traditional, not the kindergarteners take on a dying buffalo version) and then the same scenario started showing up in my social media feed repeatedly. As if it was telegraphing what would happen. To add insult to injury, my guide at my next camp, saw a successful, “normal” buffalo hunt by lions yesterday. Cough cough.
While sitting on this sighting I was at once annoyed but also fascinated. Annoyed that this seemed to be a waste of time (especially when I heard the other car leave for the leopard sighting, which was within earshot because we heard the monkeys going crazy over a nearby leopard) but also fascinated that this was something Ping had never seen in nearly 30 years of guiding. What did it mean? Will they have killed it tonight if we go back tomorrow? My inexperienced gut is telling me that hyenas (who we heard nearby) will do the job, not these six clueless boys.
Anyway, we drove home in a light rain and had a late dinner, arriving around 8:30. The starter tonight was fried halloumi cheese with veggies in it, veggie lasagna and crème caramel. All of it was wonderful. I had it with my standard G&T and took a shot of Amarula back to my room. After a nice shower, I’m settled in for a good sleep. What a day.
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