Masai Mara Game Drives Part 3 - The Larger Specimens...

Here are some shots of some of the bigger animals we've seen.  I know they don't give you a good perspective but believe me, these creatures are each massive in their own way.  We spotted this mother elephant and her calf our first evening in the park...we were so pumped we couldn't believe our luck....at least until the momma got tired of us pestering her and turned toward the van full of us and started doing the ear flapping thing...!  Several of us had a flashback to our childhood when we would watch Marlin Perkins on Mutal of Omaha's Wild Kingdom...we suddenly felt a whole lot more empathy for "Jim" the guy that was always getting the worst end of the deal by the animals while Marlin, the host was casually explaining that "this is what the mother elephant does when she's about to charge..."  Needless to say, Jonathan also picked up on her anxiety level and we got out of there - we were very glad for the speed of the Bullet that time!

Did you know that even a Zebra's tail is striped?  Yep, it sure is...and we know that because like most of the big animals, when you drive up to them they usually turn their backsides toward you.  We were fortunate to get this shot of the little guy and the rest of his family actually looking at us.

These three giraffe didn't know quite where to go to get away from it all.  They thought they had found a nice quite place for their evening snack but there were about 7 safari vans all converging on them at once...this is one of the few pictures that I have which doesn't have a van in it!

 Ok, I know this one is hard to see but these are hippos enjoying their morning swim.  Unfortunately, they like the cool dark water so the only thing that we could see for any appreciable time was their heads...and sometimes it was only their nostrils.  What was most entertaining abou this was the sounds that were echoing up from the river below.  There were at least 10 with a mixture of adults and young ones and we were observing them from atop a fallen tree along the upper bank of the river...rest assured, they could not make it up the steep bank...Anyway, all you could hear was snorting, blowing out water, and belching!  It sounded like we were listening in on a teenage boys phys ed swimming class!

 This was the last group of animals we saw before leaving the park for the last time tonight.  We were headed out and we came across this large herd of cape buffalo, probably at least a hundred of them.  Several young ones with their mothers, and several stern looking bulls like this guy.  He was actually standing about 20 feet directly in from of us and he was not about to move!  We had him in a stare down for at least 5 minutes and then we finally blinked and drove away!

With that I'm going to have to call it a night and get rested up for our long ride to Nairobi tomorrow.  I'll try and get some of the "fast ones" and the people shots up tomorrow night.  Hope you are all enjoying your weekend and sorry to hear about the snow...I'll try not to mention my sunburn when I get back next week...