Thursday, September 27, 2012

African Adventure: The animals of Masai Mara

It was time for safari, which consists of riding around in the truck on the established paths through the savannah searching for animals and then stopping for photos. We loved it! And with the soundtrack of "The Lion King" in our heads, we saw tons of animals.


 The beautiful giraffes. I could have watched them for hours - they were so serene and elegant. Just amazing.

The hippos only come out of the water at night to feed on the grasses along the bank, so we only saw them in the water. Apparently, they hang out in the water all day because the sun will dry out and crack their skin.


We saw these elephants just before they headed into a copse of trees. Had we been 15 minutes later, we wouldn't have even known they were there. Got us thinking about what else was hiding in those trees!

Cheetah! We saw two cross the road on their way to check out a herd of gazelle and wildebeest. We thought for sure we were going to see a "Magic Kingdom" moment, but they must have already had their breakfast.

Our timing was perfect for the Wildebeest migration through Masai Mara to the Serengeti. There were literally hundreds of thousands of wildebeest roaming in huge herds. It's estimated that over 500,000 calves are born during this migration each year!

The king and his queen. We were told we would see a "lion honeymoon", which one of Brian's co-workers who was also there actually did. No wildlife porn while we were watching.

Akuna Matata! The warthogs were much smaller than I was expecting - actually sort of cute.

And a few baboons. There were many more, so I'll add some more pictures in my next post.

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