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It has been a few days since we got back from the Masai Mara National Reserve but it was really hard to get internet connection and update this blog. though I am in Mombasa right now I would like to break it up in to Mara and Mombasa so this will only cover the time we spent at the Mara reserve.
As you might have seen from my facebook status, I heve been complaining about "wasting" an extra day in Nairobi. My plan to go on this safari was canceled because there were no people signed up for it. It was possible that I could have taken it all by myself but that means I would have to pay for everything alone and that would be rediculously expensive.Game safaris in Kenya are very expensive even organised as a group let alone just for one person. Anyway, eventhough I spent monday in nairobi doing not so much I was finally lucky to find five more people signed up for tomorrow. I should have expected things like this while backpacking. Hooking up with other travellers not only cuts the cost of the already expensive safari but also is a great opportunity to meet people from different places. isn't traveling all about meeting new people and discovering new things????
Honestly,I don't even know what exactly I felt at the end but it definitely was something of a life time experience.I didn't know either as to what my expectation was interms of places and things or animals to see in the park but I was obviously shocked by the number and variety of wildlife we were lucky enough to see. As I said in my blog from Nairobi, I was in love with the City and was seriously impressed by its organization for an African city and when we left Nairobi I was expecting to see more towns and cities with the same or at least similar order as Nairobi. But unfortunately there was nothing that you would even call a city or a town for that matter between the capital and the Masai Mara reserve. In my opinion, the only one place which seemed a proper town was NArok, the town where we had lunch both ways. The rest were just a two block street-side "villages" or rather "settlements"with a series of small 'hotels', shops, restaurants and Nyama choma places( butcheries). I thought of the yawning gap between the poor and the rich; the cities and the rural areas; Nairobi and the rest of the country! It is too wide that it looks like the government will have so much work to do to bridge the gap between these two extrenes. This thought was reinforced when I traveled for another 500km south east of Nairobi to Mombasa.
inspite of all the boring and not too exciting villages, the drive through the rift valley's escarpement was excellent. the beautiful green expanses of savannah surrounded by small but gorgeous hills and spotted by the famous African Acacia trees was brilliant. I don't think any of us were expecting to see wildlife before we got to the Park. but to our excitement, we were welcomed by heaps of gazelles, giraffes and zebras along with some other animals like the wildbeest well before the entrance of the Masai Mara reserve. In the three days we spent in the park( Reserve), I was surprised by the abundance of wild life. it was incredible. But the main thing that made Mara different from the other parks in Kenya or anywhere in Africa was not only the big number of game seen but also the opportunity to see them very close. how can you not be pleased to see a lion scratching against the back of your safari van, or a cheetah climbing up and down a tree right infront of you in a 50m distance or a whole pride of lions with ten cabs by a watering hole??????
you could call it a little unfortunate that we didn't see all the big 5 but I was more than content with three out of five and a cheetah definitely makes up for the leopard! In case you care about the details of the animals we saw, the following are the ones I remembered.
Lions, Buffaloes and elephants from the big 5 and a cheetah, topis, wildbeests, zebras, giraffes, thomson's and grant's gazelles, jackson's hertbeest, golden backed jackals, a leopard tortoes, and so much more that I couldn't remember right now. we also saw quite a few species of beautiful birds including ostriches, rollers, blue and superb starlings, the ground hornbill, african crowned crane, the marshal eagle and so much more.
But of all the things,what I found most exciting was the fun we had with the other members of the group. Richard was certainly the clawn of the group and he was very good at cracking jokes and making fun of us. I liked him so much. And the two Swedish girls ( Malin and Elin) had a very good sense of humour and were a real fun to travel with. Leslie and Loly were a little too quite and shy but they were nice girls. ( Am not gonna forget you guys all. thank you for a wonderful trip we had and it wouldn't have been the same without you!!!!)
The other good company was Sammy, our driver-guide. I thought he had a good knowledge of the wildlife, the environment and the life of kenyans in general not mentioning that he was also funny though weird sometimes!
On our last day we played a soccer game between the group which was really fun. But unfortunately, I retired after about 15/20minutes unable to run. As an Ethiopian I was supposed to be good at running but my lung betrayed me and I was kicked out of the game before even I was allowed to show off some of my skills!!!!!
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