Amboseli and the Mara

what follows are pictures from the four days in the masai mara. viewer discretion is advised as things are not always pretty when they die over here. but if it helps, just think of the lion king (which i have watch about 1,032 times with anthony's kids) and the elton john song 'the circle of life', at least thats what i told the clients with queasy stomachs to do. so here they are...

after picking up the clients at the airstrip, we headed for a small game drive back towards camp. riding up on the roof, i spotted about 6 thompsons gazelle in a full sprint coming over a hill about 150yds away. the clients thought 'oh how cute, they gazelle are playing.' knowing a little better, i said to them watch for the cheetah and about a half second later it exploded over the ridge in a full-out run and began to close the distance on the gazelle. i got out my binoculars just in time to see the take down. cheetah 1 - gazelle 0.

as the cheetah began to eat the adorable little antelope things started to get a little ugly...i chose not to post the worst of the pictures our of respect for my mother.

eventually, after eating almost the entire gazelle, a hyena caught wind of the kill because of circling vultures and moved in for the taking. cheetahs are esentially programmed not to get into fights and she quickly conceded the kill to the stronger animal. bastard...

we saw cheetah everyday in the mara, which is very uncommon as they are the most rare cat.

these are three brothers that we saw on a few separate occasions.

more cheetah, they could be my favorite. the clients for some reason thought it would be a good idea to pay $385 per person for a balloon ride over the mara. while this seemed absurd to me, it did yield a good find as they spotted a pride of lions feeding on a giraffe, which is an incredibly rare kill for a pride of lions.

there was one cub in the pride that was particularly active and he kept running off into the tall grass. his mother would become nervous with our two cars so close and she ran off many times to chase him down and carry him back. this happened about 4-5 times and from what i gathered, seeing something like this is pretty rare...the guides see it only once or twice every couple years.

more cub action. at one point, be climbed completely inside the hollowed out giraffe to have a look around. hes too young to eat meat yet, so instead he constantly cried for milk.

so i guess i can tell yall a bit about what im actually doing over here. as of right now, im moving the cars to and from camps for the safaris and in between, while clients are at the lodges, i return to nairobi for a resupply. while on safari, i ride on top of the car and act as a spotter and tell the clients about the animals as they bounce questions off of me. im essentially traning to be a guide on later safaris so tim and anthony stayed pretty quiet while i was talking to see how i was doing. as well as being taught about the animals im learning how to drive around them so as not to spook them and to set up the clients for the best possible shot. from what i gather, it sounds like i might start being a guide for safaris in august, and in the meantime i will be spending lots of time int he mara at our seasonal camp on the mara river. as well as hosting clients, i might be doing some driving and little guiding for them. posting these pictures and editing the blog takes a long time and ive spent about three hours on this alone today, so ill work more tomorrow and send and email when its all done.