18 Jan 2025 - Saturday
Up at 5:30 to finish packing and head out for my next camp, but not before one more game drive in the Reserve. I said good bye to camp manager and his team, who took excellent care of me for the past few days. I think I’ve neglected to mention that I was the only guest in camp, so not only did I have Ping and a vehicle to myself, I had the whole camp! Not that I was there for long beyond dinner and sleeping, since we are doing all day game drives, but it was still special. I cannot get used to that!
Ping really wanted me to see the Paradise Plains pride. They number about 13 and are known for masterfully hunting buffalo. He says they normally hunt around 10 a.m. (He says things like that and I start to doubt him because sometimes the facts seem a bit silly, but then….they happen, so of this I had no doubt.). That gave us about 4 hours to find them. Mind you, we’d seen a mating pair last night and he thought maybe when they’re mating the pride might splinter up a bit so he wasn’t totally confident we’d find them and if we did, what they’d be doing.
I would say it took until around 7:30 and through the binos he spotted a lone male lion cutting through the grass. We quickly caught up with this big handsome boy (I’m SUCH a sucker for healthy big male lions, blonde manes or black, ha!) and tracked him right to the swath of bushes where he’d sleep the day away. Sigh. We’d thought for sure he was leading us to the rest of the pride, but no luck. So Ping said we’d circle around Paradise Plains again, stopping every little bit to scan the horizon. And wouldn’t you know, he found 6 lionesses. They were just out of reach far off-road and in an area that was newly turning to swamp (a lot of the normally dry Reserve is still mushy/swampy from the rains of the last year or so, he’s unsure whether they’ll ever bounce back) so there was no getting to them. At first they were eyeing buffalo to our right and it looked like they’d go for them. But then they turned left and started cutting towards where the male had gone.
We turned and took the road to where it would intersect them, and what absolutely healthy, gorgeous females they were. It was just about 8 a.m. so I had some still soft light and two lionesses did me the honor of posing on termite mounds above the grass. Sigh. I was really pretty happy. They carried on and then they themselves took refuge into bushes (not near the male) to sleep the day away.
We’d heard that a 7 male lion coalition had taken down 7 Maasai cows near the marsh overnight. Ping’s thought was if there was commotion from that overnight, those 7 boys may have pushed the Marsh pride out of their territory, so we headed toward the marsh. In passing a couple of vehicles, the guide chat was exchanged and one guide coming from there said “no lions, no leopard” so Ping was a bit deflated. He thought sure his theory was good but we’d go check it out anyway.
We got to the Marsh area, which happened to be where we’d gotten out and seen the elephants on my first day. We got out and Ping said, we’re only stretching our legs briefly, we’ll eat breakfast and water the tires (pee!) elsewhere. Just as he finished saying that we heard the huff-huff-huff of a suppressed roar. “That lion is close,” Ping said. I pointed at the car and immediately hopped back in, with the thought of “we’re going to find that lion” whereas Ping (after the fact told me) was thinking “we need to get in the car to be safe from that lion.”
I figured maybe a 4 or 5 minute drive around the marsh area and we’d find him. I NEVER thought it would be literally less than 100 yards away. Maybe three trees down from where we’d been standing! Where I’d been hoping to pee! His gut had just told him that spot wasn’t right for either breakfast or a bathroom break. Good glory…but it gets better, hold tight.
So we pull up to this gorgeous male lion and he’s agitated. We’re unsure who he is or which pride it is. Maybe it’s the activity of the night before with the 7 lions killing the cows. Maybe it’s an interloper from another area. But he’s brought a heavily pregnant female with him, who isn’t threatened by him when he passes right by her. Ping thought he also saw another male lion approaching, so this boy may be one of two. Anyway, he’s agitated as heck and spraying to scent mark and half-roaring repeatedly. The female seems non-plussed. We follow him for a bit as he tracks along the river and disappears into a bush. We go to turn back and we look and he’s sitting like an Egyptian sphinx looking out over the river. We wait a bit to see if he’s going to move again, then we decide to head on for breakfast.
As we start heading back, Ping looks with his binoculars to see if there are any other lions approaching. It’s then that he sees a massive male leopard with a kill up in the tree directly over the lioness! We’d not only stood near it, driven under it, but also had two other big cats within eyeshot of it and we totally missed it! I managed to get a great look at him and a brilliant shot of him looking directly at me (chilling!) before he decided now that both lions had moved on that he was coming down. So we lined up for that shot (brilliant!) and off he scurried into the undergrowth. Ping thinks he is likely Romi’s unnamed son, who is known to be quite shy.
We decided to have breakfast (in the vehicle) here so that we can kill some time waiting to see if he’d come back. (Same breakfast as previous 2 days). He never did but Ping and I had a great chat and I heard more hilarious stories. The guide that passed us on the way into the Marsh area who declared “no leopard, no lions” was shocked to hear what we’d found, and he too parked with his guests to wait out the leopard’s return. While we were sitting there, I looked at the kill through the binos and saw that it was actually a young hippo! I was shocked. And my next thought was “boy, I would have LOVED to see him haul that up there!” I wonder how that happened!
I can’t overstate how completely random and unique this whole sighting was. Lions and leopards don’t mix, so to see them that close, and indeed with the lioness looking up at that leopard, is just bizarre! And the behavior of that male lion was very strange. We’ve yet to confirm his identity and hope once we know if that will help piece it all together.
Since I had to be out of the Reserve, our time was running out so we headed out. But funny enough, a few times over the last few days Ping (the cheetah fan) said that every time he leaves the Reserve to take a guest to Naboisho, he always runs into a cheetah right near the exit. And wouldn’t you know, today we saw Oloti again, at least 10 kilometers, if not more, away from where we’d last seen him near Ping’s camp! We followed him a bit but carried on to Eagle View in Naboisho.
Eagle View has recently been renovated and Ping has guiding privileges here. So I have the same room, menu, benefits as other Eagle View guests, but I keep Ping and his vehicle. After such a fruitful (cat-full?) few days in the Reserve I was so anxious to see what we get up to here. But first, lunch.
And wow…first, the view from the common area out over the conservancy is stellar. I thought I liked it at Kicheche Valley, but this is just exceptional. I really could get used to this!
Lunch was amazing. We started with potato leek soup, then I had a veggie burger and fries and dessert was a brownie with banana ice cream. As crazy as it sounds that ice cream was incredible. I never thought it would taste as good as it did. They’ve set the bar high here with the menu! What is really nice is that Ping eats with me here, so I don’t have to eat alone and he gets to have this awesome menu with me!
I took a quick hour break after lunch, so I sat on my deck and looked out over the same gorgeous view. Wow. All tents face that same view and I just have no words how gorgeous it is. Photos will never do it justice.
We headed out at 3:30. Ping wanted to try to find Figlet and her two cubs (Figlet being another of the leopard Fig’s daughters). We cruised around the area where she’d been last seen and came up empty. Ping said she’d been caught in a bushman’s snare a few days ago and they had to dart her to get her out, and since then she’d been very skittish with vehicles. Ugh.
More driving, more wondering what we were going to find. Ping caught up with a couple of guides he’s worked with before and one was with a guest who was really into leopards. They’d just spotted lions on the other side of the area we were in, so we asked them to call if they find leopard and we headed to the lions.
This was a male and two females of the Molibany pride. A new to me pride! They’d taken down a topi and the male and one female were finishing it off. The second female was lying in a food coma with the most bloated belly I’ve ever seen! The male and female actually had a skirmish over the carcass but then the male walked off and came to drink at a small puddle of water near me. I was taking video when Ping got the call….leopard. And right across the area where we’d just talked to the guide and his leopard-loving client! It was not even a 2 minute drive!
We pulled up just to see a young leopard heading for the rocky outcroppings. I got a few shots off and then asked Ping if he knew which leopard it is and he said “Nadala.” OH MY GOD! It’s Sankuet’s cub with the amber eyes from last year! She’s almost fully grown now and since we saw no Sankuet (although her territory is quite close by), I have to assume Nadala is independent now! I’m seeing all my cubs from last year all grown up! She is a beautiful cat and I managed to get one decent shot of her I think. I was thrilled.
We tried tracking her more but she went deeper into the rockier part of the landscape that we couldn’t reach, so we chatted with another guide when I saw a lone lioness heading away from the lions who’d been eating the topi. Ping says you always investigate a lion heading away from its pride. We approached and I started snapping photos and then I noticed that she had very full teats. She was a nursing mom! Ping noticed at the same time and said “she’s going back to her cubs.” Just then the mom started huffing to call out to her cubs. She was walking straight for another rocky outcropping and kept huffing. All of a sudden I heard that sound, that cute little chirp of lion cubs!
About halfway up the rocks three little faces popped out and they were absolutely beside themselves that their mother had returned. They could hardly contain themselves and they were chirping LOUDLY at mom to feed them. The lioness though had stopped at a ditch right beneath us to drink. Those cubs were relentless in their calling to their mother and finally she let out a suppressed roar and all three came running/tumbling down the rocks and down the grassy hill toward their mother. I could have died of happiness! Is it possible to be too happy?
The lioness immediately laid down and rolled over and the three started nursing excitedly. Their sounds of satisfaction were so cute and loud! They drank for quite some time and then things got a little aggressive and they were pushing and shoving for position. I think they may have either bitten the lioness or clawed too much (or maybe she was tired of the fighting) because once she swatted them and the second time she just got up. She was having none of it. Once dinner was done, she started to walk them in the direction of the pride, not the den where they cubs had come from. Ping wondered if they were about to be introduced to the pride. They appeared to be about 7 weeks old and he said that’s about time. We let them go on their way and headed back to camp. It’d been a day!
While I was still full from lunch, I had another excellent meal for dinner. I started with butternut squash ravioli in sage butter sauce. The main was a four cheese pizza on a thick soft crust. Dessert was supposed to be tiramisu but I was both stuffed and hungry so I headed back to my room to shower, blog and sleep.
Tomorrow another day in the Mara. Just what does it hold in store?
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