On Safari Again, Pt. 2: Lewa Conservancy and Masai Mara, Kenya
My previous post about our latest adventure began with us spending two nights in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, before moving on to Amboseli National Park to begin our safari where we had countless incredible encounters including horny elephants, mating ostriches, and people who live in huts made of cow manure. Now it was time to move on.
Wednesday, August 7, 2024
We were up bright and early again to make our way back to the tiny airfield near Amboseli National Park to board another small plane at 7:45am and fly once more to Wilson Airport in Nairobi so we could take another short flight on a similar sized aircraft to our next stop according to our itinerary:
Day 6-7: Elewana Lewa Safari Camp, Lewa Conservancy (Wed, 7 August to Thu, 8 August)
Spanning over thousands of hectares of vast open savannah grasslands in northern Kenya, Lewa Wildlife Conservancy is home to the world’s largest population of Grevy’s zebra. Renowned as a pioneer and leader in responsible tourism, Lewa Wildlife Conservancy actively advances and develops community engagement and wildlife conservation. It has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site and serves as an important sanctuary for a large selection of wildlife including the endangered black rhino as well as the white rhino. Lewa offers visitors the opportunity to have close encounters with these prehistoric creatures against an unspoilt backdrop, making it one of Kenya’s top game-viewing destinations. Boasting one of the highest wildlife densities in Kenya, the park is also inhabited by elephants, lions, buffalo, wild dogs, giraffes, cheetahs, and over 400 bird species.
Overnight: Elewana Lewa Safari Camp
Elewana Lewa Safari Camp has a stunning location within Lewa Wildlife Conservancy – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – with outstanding game viewing and views of Mt. Kenya to the south and the arid lowlands to the north. Each tent has a thatched roof, verandah and full ensuite bathroom, very much in the ‘Lewa’ style. The central areas have cool gardens with a sunny verandah and swimming pool to enjoy during the day, and cosy log fires in the lounge and dining room during the chilly evenings.
The camp is based within the private 62,000 acre wildlife conservancy. The conservancy is home to about 10% of Kenya’s black rhino population, and the single largest population of Grevy’s zebra in the world. Lewa reinvests all the profits generated from tourism into its core programs. When you visit Elewana Lewa Safari Camp, you contribute to helping thousands of people from different backgrounds and cultures to improve their lives, and give their children a future, at the same time as ensuring Africa’s wildlife has a stable home.
Our guide from Amboseli, Juma, drove us to the airstrip, said goodbye, and soon we were on probably the smallest aeroplane I had ever been on in my life, a status that would change again in a couple of days, and powered by what sounded like a lawnmower engine that had us touching down in Nairobi once more. While waiting for our connecting flight we encountered the same grumpy, older American couple that we saw in Wilson Airport the first time that were impatient about boarding the plane and constantly talking about Chicago. We got chatting to them later and could immediately sympathise with their situation; they had flown from Kansas City to Atlanta, then a layover in Doha, Qatar and continued from there on to Nairobi, however, there had been a mixup with all of the woman’s luggage and one of the man’s bags on the first flight, all of which hadn’t made it to Atlanta. When they contacted American Airlines their solution was that it would be faster to send it all to Chicago and then onto Doha, but that didn’t work, because there was a breakdown in communication between the airports in Doha and Chicago and their luggage was now considered “lost”, but they had AirTags in all of their bags and suitcases so they knew exactly where all of their luggage was, but it was all just essentially stuck in limbo and they had resigned themselves to the fact that they would probably never see it again. To make matters worse, the woman only had the clothes on her back and you tend to get pretty dusty and smelly on the game drives and although the camps have laundry services, if she wanted to have her clothes washed, she would need to skip every second day of the drives, plus the cleaning services don’t do underwear. We could understand their foul mood, but unfortunately it would only get worse for them.
We took our connecting flight and before long we landed on a dirt airstrip, where we were met by a Masai tribe member in traditional robes who drove us to the camp. Yet again he was a really interesting guy, telling us about the time he had visited Singapore for a conference and received a few strange looks while walking around Boat Quay in his robes while on a break, although he had brought regular clothes with him as well to wear in his free time. En route to the camp we encountered something we weren’t anticipating, but later found out to be more common than we expected, a pair of white rhinoceroses laying in the grass so naturally we snapped some phots before continuing on to the camp. It had been a hectic morning and it was now around 1:30pm so while our room was being sorted we tucked into a fantastic lunch at the camp while able to sit in some seats large enough to accommodate us again, but soon we were met with some news. There had been some sort of mix up with the bookings and our names weren’t on the reservation, however, there were names for two other people who weren’t there so we had obviously been taken to the wrong camp. To make matters worse, those other two names belonged to the Americans who had lost their luggage so they had not only been taken to the wrong camp as well, but we had also eaten their lunch. This trip just keeps getting worse for them!
Finally at 3:00pm we had arrived at the correct camp and they at theirs so we dumped all of our stuff in our tent and went out for another bumpy game drive. By this stage I was exhausted, having not had a full night’s sleep in over a week and it was becoming very clear that it wasn’t the dust that was affecting me, I was now starting to feel genuinely ill. Still we took our freezing cold drive in the back of a Jeep with a family from Germany and I would’ve assumed that a German man would be more accustomed to a cooler climate, but the father was handling it the worst out of all of us, donning a hoodie and three plastic ponchos to keep the wind out as we were taken around to look for animals. We saw some more rhinos so I took some videos of them, but they pale in comparison to what we had seen earlier in the day and wouldn’t even come close to what we would encounter the next. All I had on my mind was having some dinner and getting into bed.
Some scenes from our first chaotic day in Lewa Conservancy plus our new tent:
Thursday, August 8, 2024
It’s incredible how dark it is in these tents overnight, there is absolutely no light for your eyes to even adjust to so I had to find a way to navigate my way around by touch when I needed to pee in the middle of the night, but what was even more difficult was being up at 5:45am with the way I was feeling. My head was stuffed and throbbing and I was coughing a lot, but this safari was a once in a lifetime opportunity so I just had to suck it up and throw myself into the Jeep once more.
It was a beautiful morning, but after about an hour of being bounced around while I coughed and sneezed, my head pounding the entire time I thought that staying in bed may have been the better option, because we hadn’t really seen anything besides a couple of small birds and all I wanted to do was shut my eyes and rest. Eventually we stumbled upon some ostriches and a few black rhinos this time including a particularly rare one where its second horn was larger than the front horn, all of which were wandering around and feeding, something we’d be doing soon too as we stopped to set up some tables for coffee and a snack.
When we were done with our coffee we were given an option for the rest of the morning. We could get back in the Jeep and drive for 45 minutes back to camp or we could have an armed guide walk us back, a trip that would take an hour and a half, stopping to look at whatever we happened to see along the way. We had barely walked in the past few days, instead cramped into tiny planes and Jeeps with poor suspension and I just couldn’t bring myself to climb back into one of those with the way I was feeling so we opted for the walk. Besides a couple of giraffes and few small deer we didn’t see a whole lot along the way and although I had trouble keeping up with Anna and the guide, it was just nice to be back on our feet for a while.
What little we saw that morning:
Now back at the camp while the others ate lunch I figured the only way I was going to feel any better was just to get some sleep so I showered and went back to bed for a three-hour power nap and it worked wonders! Sure, I still had my cold, but the symptoms weren’t so bad and I felt somewhat rejuvenated. Let’s see if we can find something worthwhile this evening!
We were back in the Jeep with the German family and on the road at 4:00pm, coming across some impalas fighting one another and then some rare imperial zebras. So, what makes them so different from regular zebras?:
Grévy’s zebra (Equus grevyi), also known as the imperial zebra, is the largest living wild equid and the most threatened of the three species of zebra, the other two being the plains zebra and the mountain zebra. Named after Jules Grévy, it is found in parts of Kenya and Ethiopia. Superficially, Grévy’s zebras’ physical features can help to identify it from the other zebra species; their overall appearance is slightly closer to that of a mule, compared to the more “equine” (horse) appearance of the plains and mountain zebras. Compared to other zebra species, Grévy’s are the tallest; they have mule-like, larger ears, and have the tightest stripes of all zebras. They have distinctively erect manes, and more slender snouts.
Once we knew what to look for it was actually quite easy to see the difference between these and regular zebras, particularly their narrow stripes which were quite mesmerising when they walked as can be seen in the video, as well as some more rhinos we spotted along the way:
Our driver had been on the radio while we were watching the zebras and as we saw more animals he was becoming more and more impatient, not particularly worried where he pulled up for us to get photos, even if he could tell that there was a tree in our way or it was just a bad angle, he didn’t seem to care. Anna and myself had begun to think that he was probably just new at this job or perhaps maybe even the work experience kid, because he wasn’t on the same level as our previous guide, Juma. His decision making also seemed a little odd, because he completely bypassed a parade of elephants, but stopped so we could look at a bird, and then refused to pull up to get a great shot of a rhino with a ton of gazelles and impalas at a watering hole. Maybe he was just an ornithologist of sorts, but it was all a little frustrating, however, we would soon find out why as he put the pedal to the metal and veered off into the grass; he must’ve been chatting on the radio to another guide and found for us an incredibly rare sight — A lioness with her four cubs, estimated to be three to four-weeks old, the cubs playing in the grass while the mother looked on. It was fantastic just watching the cubs playing in the grass, the mother walking past, right in front of our car and then down the side several times before eventually picking up one of the cubs in her mouth by the scruff of the neck as the other three followed her, walking off into the grass.
Maybe he was just excited to get back and tell his colleagues about the cubs, but our guide seemed to be driving pretty erratically on the way back to the camp, absolutely flooring it on the dirt tracks in the dark. At one point I said to Anna that I hoped nothing runs out onto the road and almost as if on cue we flew around a bend and a black rhino was crossing, but he was able to hit the breaks and swerve in time and we eventually arrived back at the dining hall to share our photos and videos with the others.
What we didn’t see in quantity at this camp was more than compensated for in quality, first some endangered zebras and then not long after, this lioness and her cubs:
Friday, August 9, 2024
Another day, another incredibly small plane, but this time it wasn’t all as straightforward as we had hoped. We were at Lewa Airport at 8:30am, ready for our flight when we found out that we were going to be delayed due to storms at our destination that our microscopic aircraft wouldn’t be able to handle, meaning we were stuck in our “terminal” for the foreseeable future. That’s frustrating enough in a regular airport, but it’s compounded significantly when your airport consists solely of an open hut with a thatched roof and some wooden seats. We sat around looking at passing elephants while chatting to some of the other travelers and it wasn’t until about 12:30pm that we finally boarded our plane, bound for Masai Mara:
Day 8-10: Elewana Sand River Masai Mara, Masai Mara (Fri, 9 August to Sun, 11 August)
The Masai Mara together with Tanzania’s Serengeti form Africa’s most famous wildlife park, the Masai Mara National Reserve. The image of acacia trees dotting endless grass plains epitomises Africa for many, then add a Maasai warrior and some cattle to the picture and the conversation need go no further. The undeniable highlight of the Masai Mara National Reserve is undoubtedly the annual wildebeest migration traversing the vast plains of the Serengeti and the Masai Mara. It is known as the largest mass movement of land mammals on the planet – with more than a million animals following the rains. Large prides of lions, herds of elephants, as well as giraffes, gazelles and eland can also be spotted in the reserve. Aside from horse riding safaris and traditional vehicle safaris, hot-air ballooning over the Mara plains has become almost essential.
Overnight: Elewana Sand River Masai Mara View
Situated along the banks of a river from which it has taken its name, Elewana Sand River Masai Mara is located within the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya on a secluded and picturesque site. The camp enjoys stunning views over the Sand River and out to the neighbouring grassy hills and plains of Tanzania.
The camp sits on the migration route for the millions of wildebeest, zebra and Thompson’s gazelle that move between Serengeti and Maasai Mara every year. Guests enjoy the privilege of exclusive views of the plains and hills dotted with thousands of animals as well as being in the thick of the excitement of frenetic and famed river crossings, all from the comfort of camp.
The aeroplane we had taken on Wednesday was the smallest I had ever been on, but it only took two days to break that record with this two-hour flight upon one with only six passenger seats with regular seatbelts from a car and no partitioned off cockpit. There was only one seat on each side of the plane and the aisle would’ve been no wider than about 20cm (8″) so to board I had to squat under the ceiling while shuffling down the aisle sideways and trying to find a way to manoeuvre my butt around the headrest every time I got to another pair of seats, despite my narrow hips not fitting in the remaining gap. I eventually made it to my seat at the front of the plane and once seated I still couldn’t sit upright due to the low ceiling. To compound matters, I was still a bit sniffly so I had to try my best not to sneeze on the back of the pilot’s head or even startle them both with the sound, but we eventually made it to Masai Mara unscathed.
We landed at around 2:30pm, Anna immediately regretting not filming me struggling to disembark the plane, and as soon as we were on the ground we could already see lines of wildebeests stretching all the way to the horizon and we would pass many more, as well as a vulture or two on the way to our camp. We were led to our tent, once more the furthest one from the main camp and this time requiring an armed guide to lead us there and back after daylight hours, but one thing that made this tent a little different from the others was that it had an outdoor shower overlooking a nearby river, something that could be a burden with the exceptionally cool nights here in this part of the country.
By the time we had arrived and settled in it was too late for an afternoon game drive, plus it was pouring rain so we just sat down in the camp’s bar to relax for the evening before dinner, laughing that the Chinese influencers from our first stop on our safari were staying there too while learning that our barman, Jeremiah, once served Julian Assange when he was working in Zanzibar. When we returned to our tent we both used the outdoor shower in the freezing cold, Anna a little unnerved by a baboon that would not stop staring at her the entire time she was bathing.
Not a particularly eventful day, but here are some scenes anyway:
Saturday, August 10, 2024
The rest I had managed to get a couple of days prior had me feeling nice and refreshed to get out for an early game drive with our fantastic guide, Benjamin, and another older American couple in their 60s. The man was quite nice, but the woman, Theresa, turned out over the course of the coming days to be kind of needy and almost childlike while constantly talking. An example of this was when we were showing Benjamin our footage of the cubs in Lewa and he went on to tell us how recently a male lion in the area had taken over another family of lions and in a display of dominance ate all of the cubs. Of course after seeing how cute they were a few days previously it was a sad story, but the woman almost had a breakdown. “I don’t think I could watch anything being eaten.”. Well, I guess you should have thought of that before you decided to go on a safari, because the coming days are probably going to be a little distressing for you.
It almost seemed like destiny that only a matter of minutes after we set off on that day’s drive we saw a lioness sitting in the grass while the male set about tearing apart a dead gazelle before they both approached our Jeep, him with blood smeared across his face and legs. Once the male lion had sniffed the ground for the scent of others and moved on we did too, but it was only two minutes more until we found another animal stiff on the ground, disembowelled with its throat torn out so there must’ve been something else around and before long we found two more lionesses gnawing on the spine of some felled creature. A quarter of an hour later after passing some giraffes and another lion roaming around in the grass we found one more lioness gnawing on the head of a gazelle, its innards spread out around the ground. This might be a rough couple of days for Theresa.
Some photos and videos from just 45 minutes of pure carnage, the second video of the gazelle’s head being eating is particularly brutal:
It was now time to continue on to what we had come here to see. Sure, watching lions ripping the meat off a gazelle’s face was cool, but what we really wanted to witness was the crossing of the wildebeests. Each year 1.7 million wildebeests begin migrating in January to March with approximately 500,000 calves usually born in a two to three-week period in February, but we were here for the fun part :
The crossings of the Grumeti and Mara rivers beginning in July are a popular safari attraction because crocodiles are lying in wait. The herds arrive in Kenya in late July / August, where they stay for the rest of the dry season, except that the Thomson’s and Grant’s gazelles move only east/west. In early November, with the start of the short rains, the migration starts moving south again, to the short grass plains of the southeast, usually arriving in December in plenty of time for calving in February.
About 250,000 wildebeest die during the journey from Tanzania to the Maasai Mara National Reserve in southwestern Kenya, a total of 800 kilometres (500 mi). Death is usually from thirst, hunger, exhaustion, or predation, including by big cats.
This seems like the spot
We just happened to be a short drive from the Mara River so we journeyed down the dirt roads which had us making some extremely steep crossings and to a manned checkpoint where we had a toilet break while Benjamin purchased a ticket to enter and it didn’t take long until we were surrounded by wildebeests as far as the eye could see, sometimes our path cut off completely as dozens of them decided to cross the road in front of us. The plan was to get a prime spot on the river and soon enough while countless vultures were picking one of their carcasses clean we found an ideal place riverside where hippos were lazing about on the land while crocodiles lurked in the water. This must’ve been the place to be, because there were countless other Jeeps on both sides waiting to see something, anything get mauled. Despite there being at least one hundred people waiting to see the herd cross the river, our annoying companion, Theresa, could not stop going on about the hippos laying on the sand, talking to them as if they were infants that could hear her, all while the rest of us were anticipating some blood-filled action.
We waited around for the best part of an hour, even changing locations as the herd moved forward and then retreated again multiple times until they had moved quite far from the river and it was then that it was becoming clear that the wildebeests weren’t going to cross any time soon. Instead we opted to just follow some and take in the sheer magnitude of how many were around before driving back to camp. On the way back Theresa had been suspiciously quiet, however, we didn’t really think about it until we stopped off at the toilet block at the checkpoint when she made a beeline straight for the disabled bathroom where we could hear her vomiting quite loudly. She had all of the symptoms of heatstroke, but it could also be her reaction to seeing a lion decapitate a gazelle corpse earlier in the day and when we arrived back for lunch we were informed that it would just be the two of us in the Jeep with Benjamin for the afternoon game drive.
Some photos and a video of our first encounter with hundreds of thousands of wildebeests:
At 4:30pm we were out again for our afternoon drive sans the other couple and almost immediately encountered two very content looking lionesses kicking back in the grass. The reason for this would soon become apparent when we continued to find scattered animal limbs and organs on the ground so we followed our little trail of viscera and it led us to an area of the river that flows past our camp where a lion was laying on the sand on the opposite side. We figured with the lionesses around we might catch some feline on feline action so we pulled over and waited. The waiting process was mostly the three of us just chatting, at times getting into some deep topics, but things moved up a notch when after about half an hour Benjamin got out to pick some leaves off some nearby plants to show us the different scents, but not long after he got back into the Jeep we soon saw that just a couple of metres down the slope in front of the plants there was another lioness hiding in the grass! Benjamin brushed it off with some nervous laughter, but it also meant there was a higher chance of what we wanted to see coming to fruition if the lion saw her. What was even more incredible was that the lioness was the one we were told had had her cubs eaten alive by the very lion that was on the riverbank.
Eventually the lioness got sick of waiting for him to make the first move and decided to take matters into her own paws, walking down the hill and crossing the water in a shallow area of the river to try her wily feminine charms on the male. Benjamin alerted some other guides as to what was taking place so soon we had some company as we continued waiting. There were several occasions where it looked like there may be some action, the lioness being a bit flirty and using different techniques to seduce the male, rubbing up against him, sniffing him, and even laying in position in front of him and with each move she made he started sniffing around too and every time it looked like he was going to give in, only to lose interest at the last moment, walk away, and lay down once again. This happened repeatedly until the female finally gave up hope or maybe just remembered he ate her cubs and came back across the river, however, all was not lost when he finally decided to come back over as well and join her. We thought we were going to have the chance to see lions mating right in front of us as it was beginning to appear more and more likely to happen, but there was one minor problem; it was starting to rain and it was only going to get heavier so Benjamin sealed in the the Jeep with its canvas sides. The feline pair wandered into the grass looking very much like a couple, but it was impossible to follow them when we could barely see the end of the bonnet of the jeep so instead we took a low-visibility drive on a muddy track back to camp for dinner.
I spent most of the time filming what was going on with the pair, but it’s pointless sharing a bunch of videos where nothing happens, but we managed to get some great photos:
Sunday, August 11, 2024
Today would be our last day in Kenya so we decided to do things a little differently than before. All four of us were back in the Jeep, but instead of doing two separate game drives in the morning and afternoon we did one extended drive, having a slight sleep in before setting out at 8:00am, stopping for lunch along the way, and then returning back at camp at 3:00pm.
This drive began in a similar manor, spotting disembowelled zebras, lions crashing in the grass after a big feed, and vultures taking the opportunity to swoop in to pick the bones of a water buffalo clean, but after an hour we got to see a few new animals too. Besides some warthogs and unique small cats we also stumbled upon a leopard that was hiding in the grass under a tree, keeping an eye on a carcass it had hidden in the branches. Also, in the distance we spotted a family of four cheetahs, at first trying to catch some sort of rodent, but it wasn’t long before they gave up and began walking towards our ride. These cheetahs didn’t have a care in the world, they had no qualms at all about just walking straight past the side of our Jeep as we and a few other cars watched them wander off into the distance and once they had passed and were close to being out of view, there was an event that upset Theresa that we were unfortunately unable to capture in photographs or video due to it happening so quickly — We witnessed them take down a gazelle in the wild!
Once the cheetahs had brought down their prey they laid down and started to eat it in the long grass so it was impossible to get a decent shot of them in the process, but here are some that we managed to get, including videos of a small flock of vultures ripping apart a water buffalo and the cheetahs approaching and walking past our Jeep:
After stopping off for some lunch and a toilet break while watching more influencers taking cringey photos at the checkpoint we drove to a similar point of the river in the hope of seeing some wildebeest carnage, but we would have the same amount of luck as the previous day. In fact, they looked even less likely to cross today as, not only were there fewer of them, but they didn’t really seem to be moving much in general, rather standing almost in single file, eating while a few zebras hung around. We wouldn’t get to witness any get decimated by crocodiles or lions that day, but at least we saw some cheetahs kill a gazelle.
The drive was done so we went back to the camp before another massive storm kicked in. The previous night I was a little wary when the staff broke out in song for someone’s birthday and much to my chagrin it was now my turn as Anna had told the staff of Elewana Sand River that mine was at the end of the month so while we were having dinner they came out with a cake and performed a traditional Kenyan birthday song. I’m not a fan of being the centre of attention and people singing ‘Happy Birthday’ feels like a real life unskippable ad, but I appreciated the gesture, even if it were three weeks early.
Our final afternoon and evening in Kenya:
So this brought to an end our time in Kenya and now it was time to move on to Uganda. Stay tuned for the third and final post about our safari when we spend a night in Entebbe before flying out in another extremely small aircraft again for two consecutive, backbreaking hikes to find gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.
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