22 Jan 2025 - Wednesday
I cannot tell a lie, those hippos were something else last night. My tent is the furthest out from the main area of camp and the river wraps around almost three sides of it. I’m not sure if the river is deepest here or it’s just an obvious or convenient congregating spot, but it was full of very loud, splashing, flatulent hippos all night long. They only woke me once for an extended period with their loud honking. I can’t really complain though, it is just another sound of the bush that I will miss in a week when I’m back to sleeping with all windows closed.
I had the flaps on the tent left open again here and really love sleeping with the fresh air. It didn’t get cold at all which is nice.
Francis and I met at 6:15 and headed out. His routine is to get in the car and pull just out of camp and then stop and share what he’s devised as our plan for the drive. He was just starting to lay out his ideas when we both heard a large number of laughing hyenas up the hill not very far from camp. It was a no brainer, we needed to see what’s going on. They do not get that excited for no reason.
We stopped once en route and shut the engine off to confirm the direction and by 6:40 had come across an adult buffalo kill in a bush and a large clan of hyenas tearing into it, but also a male lion. It was all so confusing as it happened, but the two sub-adult lions who took it down were formerly of the Topi pride in the Reserve and had been pushed out of the pride when they hit the age for them to go. Suddenly, out of seemingly no where, three very big, extremely aggressive male lions came in and chased all the hyenas and the two younger boys away. It was a skirmish like I’ve never seen or heard, but thankfully I got it on video.
The big males took over the kill and gorged themselves on it. Ironically, these were the Topi pride males, and the two boys’ fathers! (And even more interesting, the three big males are sons of Notch and Scarface — the same Scarface I enjoyed seeing back in 2018!) And if I go back to last week’s posts, I saw one of these males with the young cubs in the Reserve, he was the limping one! So they’d come a long way into this conservancy to get a free meal.
The dynamics here were so interesting. The hyenas felt comfortable pushing the younger boys off and taking over, but knew enough that the bigger males were a serious threat and backed off. So even the hyenas knew how formidable a threat they are. The two younger boys split up and ran off in different directions. We managed to track one of them down, and his belly was big enough that we believe he managed to eat before both the hyenas and the big males spoiled the fun. We went back to the big males and found two of them already asleep in a food coma but one was still merrily eating away, not willing to waste a scrap. They will need to stay on that kill to protect it from scavengers until they are well done with it. And as for the younger boys, they will want to be together, but will have to find each other without roaring or calling out. They do not want to risk another potentially fatal confrontation with the big males, who will kill them despite the bloodline. They’re old enough now to be a threat.
Our next very quick stop was to a cheetah nearby who’d been lying out on some rocks but by the time we got to him he’d moved deep into a bush. I got some obstructed shots of his face through the foliage, hopeful of an ID, but he was not known to the guides.
We decided before we move on to have breakfast, so Francis found a safe spot to stop and lay out the spread. (I should add that the chef here also sent us out with sweet potato mini muffins and chocolate granola bar bites that I absolutely loved, so it wasn’t like I had nothing at all since my 6 am coffee! Breakfast was wonderful, with yogurt and granola, blueberry danish, hard boiled eggs and fruit salad. And of course coffee.
Once we hit the road again, Francis said we had a choice to make. The leopard Nalangu (who I saw in 2017 and 2018) had made a kill in Mara North which was about 1/2 hour away, or there was a male cheetah about 10 minutes away who looked like he was going to hunt. Of course that’s where we headed because I haven’t yet done a 6 hour stake out today! In all seriousness, we did buckle down and track him for about 2 1/2 hours and he seemed to have a couple of reasonable attempts at a hunt, but for whatever reason he didn’t go for them. Once we saw topi, eland and some zebras enter the scene, we knew that any attempt he had would be quick alerted, so we abandoned the effort and headed back to lunch just as some storm clouds started building on the horizon.
Lunch today was wonderful. I had red snapper with a mint yogurt dip, grilled sweet potato and zucchini, quinoa with very finely shredded carrot, green salad with tomatoes and a very nice tiramisu for dessert. I am not going hungry here. I would also argue that I’m eating healthier here, at least for lunch and dinner! The storm struck just as I was drinking my cappuccino so I scurried back to my room for a quick yoga session (they have yoga mats and weights as well as a spin bike on the deck!). I might just keep up my 173 week streak on Peloton after all!
The afternoon drive was definitely less action packed than this morning. I met Francis at 4:30 and our pre-drive briefing included the disappointing news that the cheetah we were following and left at 1:30 actually hunted and killed a Thomson’s gazelle just about where we left him 90 minutes after we left him. So close…
We had a few options for the afternoon drive. One was to find another pride that had settled near camp, or try to catch up with the now newly-fed cheetah or revisit the three big males from this morning’s hostile takeover. I of course opted for the lion pride.
During siesta I had returned to my tent in a downpour which passed by the time I headed out for the drive. The storms here seem very surgical in how they strike, cutting across thin swaths of the savannah while leaving spots adjacent nearly dry. We found some parts of the conservancy quite muddy while others bone dry. These lions were not 5 minutes out of camp so they got the same rain I did, and were now lying in the sun and brisk breeze trying to dry off, which they were for the most part.
These lions were half of the Enkoyani pride. It was made up of two mothers, 3 sub-adult males and 2 sub-adult females. Francis said they had split from the rest of the pride and may reconnect at some point. The lions were dozing and would occasionally raise their heads but other than that they weren’t up to much. What was interesting though was a browsing bull elephant right behind them. Neither seemed to notice each other because none of them stirred.
We were going to move on to the cheetah who hunted without us, but we found that he’d gone so far that by the time we reached him we’d be out of good light, so we returned to the three big males to see what progress had been made. The buffalo carcass was pretty cleaned out and one male was sleeping in the bush next to it to protect it from scavengers (all of whom - hyena - were still lying about the area just waiting for a sign that they were needed for clean-up. The two other males were lying separately nearby. I was pretty surprised to see that two of the boys weren’t nearly as round and bloated as I’d expect after a large hippo meal. The one boy who was pretty round could barely move and had no intention on doing much of anything, clearly. He rolled over twice and it was an effort for him to shift his center of gravity to heave from one side to the other.
I enjoyed another lovely G&T on the savannah watching lions sleep. There’s nothing better.
Dee, the camp manager, ate with me tonight which was really nice. Dinner was a mixed vegetable soup, a pistachio encrusted ahi tuna with carrots and asparagus cream, and a creme brûlée. I had the rose with it again, which was very nice. We watched an elephant approach the back lawn of the camp while we ate and the Askari chased it off. He will pull down trees on the property if he’s not stopped!
It’s quiet outside my tent right now, but who knows how long this will last. Up at 5:25 again tomorrow.
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