Ahead of the Game in Kenya

Published on UT San Diego

A giraffe strolls through the golden savanna of Kenya’s Masai Mara game preserve. More than 90 species of animals live in the sanctuary. Norma Meyer

Hakuna matata, no worries — hah! Our windowless Land Cruiser was parked in the midst of 14 — count ’em, 14 — canine-fanged razor-clawed lions, so close I could see every gnat on their tawny, bone-crushing bodies.

A king of beasts slowly got up, slinked by within a hair of our vehicle’s side, then plopped down in the cool shade of the front bumper. Other members of the female-led pride playfully piled atop one another, licked each other’s faces and stretched on their backs like lazy house cats.

“They’ll soon hunt for dinner,” said our safari guide Ping. Ohhh boy.

We were in Kenya’s far-famed Masai Mara game preserve, an out-of-this-world Animal Planet of trotting zebras, thundering elephants, stick-legged giraffes, unsightly wildebeests, graceful gazelles, scampering baboons — in all 90 spellbinding species. Until you’ve gawked at tartar on a lion’s choppers, it’s hard to believe marauding carnivores don’t ingest camera-pointing Homo sapiens in safari trucks. Once we stopped within 10 feet of a massive male lion, his mane gorily matted with crimson blood and guarding his freshly killed meal of a half-ton hippo. His piercing yellow eyes fixed on us. Then he yawned. Whatever.

An excursion through the Masai Mara game preserve in Kenya gets you up close to lions and many other wild animals. Norma Meyer

Nothing preps you for the heart-racing, heart-melting, awe-striking adventure of a lifetime in the primal wild. To be vastly outnumbered by thousands of extraordinary creatures, all communicating with each other on unspoiled golden savannas. I turned to blubber when a days-old elephant nursed its protective mother after the two carefully plodded across a stream.

My Kenya trip also threw open my eyes on a human level: In another region, I visited a Masai village where traditionally garbed “warriors” and their families live in cow-dung huts and the women walk hours with jugs on their heads searching for water to drink. Nearby, a rural medical clinic treated perils of bush life — like getting stomped by elephants sharing the trails home.

SAFARI THRILLS

“Don’t move. The female looks agitated,” warned Ping, who had a knack for tracking big cats and a nasty scar rippling down his bald scalp from being attacked by a Cape buffalo while on foot.

Lions can run 50 miles per hour; I was standing upright a pounce away in an open-air 4-by-4. This time, we were enjoying a happy hour “sundowner,” sipping cocktails out of silver chalices while studying a fascinating mating-hopeful male and uninterested quest, both resting in the grass. Normally, lions perceive safari vehicles as unthreatening rectangular units — staying still as Ping advised kept it that way. Soon, as if on cue, the noble duo simultaneously belted out throaty roars, rattling the acacia-dotted terrain.

 

A mother elephant nurses her days-old baby on the Masai Mara game preserve in Kenya. Norma Meyer

Ping was our crack animal-intuitive guide from Mara Plains Camp, a seven-tent oasis in a people-sparse wildlife-teeming conservancy on the edge of more tourist-trodden Masai Mara Reserve. What’s supercool is camp guests get free use of $4,000 worth of photo equipment — a Canon 7D camera and 100 mm-400 mm telescopic lens — along with $2,200 Swarovski binoculars. I did my safari in low-season spring; from July to October crowds descend for the world-famous annual Great Migration, a phenomenal stampede of 2 million wildebeests, zebras and gazelles rampaging through the Mara (with salivating predators in tow).

Having a front-row seat in nature’s raw dramatic theater throws your emotions into overdrive. Just after dawn, we mesmerizingly watched a majestic spotted cheetah with her beautiful cub, their ears cocked, gazes intent, surveying the plains from a termite mound.

 

A mother cheetah and cub share quality time before hunting for dinner on the Masai Mara. Norma Meyer

Off in the far distance, a herd of Thomson gazelles — so cute, they look like mini-deer — grazed with their offspring. (No, please no…) Then it happened. Our off-road vehicle crazily gave chase as land’s fastest mammal, with cub close behind, madly tore across hills and while terrified prey sprinted for their lives, efficiently took down a gazelle fawn. With cub prancing next to her, the panting mother cheetah carried the kill by the throat in her mouth — ditching two scavenging jackals — and set it down in tall grass. Then as she maternally stood sentry, her hungry youngster frantically devoured lunch, even crunching the bones. (This is where I kept telling myself, “circle of life, circle of life…”)

At night, I lay in bed in my remote spacious tent, hypnotically listening to wildebeests loudly grunt and hyenas cackle. Like all guests, I was told not to leave my quarters after dark; if I needed to come out, I yelled, “Jambo! Jambo!” (“Hello! Hello!”) to night watchmen patrolling for four-legged party-crashers. I also, comically, was armed with a colossal orange horn to blow in case a beast barged through my floor-to-ceiling zip-up screens. The camp manager assured the last time someone sounded the alarm “15 naked Masai warriors came running with spears.” Now, that’s wild.

TRIBAL VISIT

In their primitive village of mud-stick-and-cow-dung huts, the Masai women greeted us by gleefully singing, dancing and grabbing our hands to join in. Their necks were encircled by decorative dinner-plate-shaped beaded necklaces, their bodies draped in multicolored sheets (called kangas) and their feet swaddled in sandals crafted from recycled tires. Their elongated earlobes bore huge stretched holes. Slender young men, wrapped in intricate beaded jewelry and red-checked blankets (shukas), exuberantly jumped in the air, a competitive festive ritual. Barefoot children, with baby goats tagging alongside, were most excited to see images of themselves on my camera.

This village, Ngabolo, was in Laikipia, more than two hours from the Mara via a 16-seat bush plane that lifted off from a dusty strip and soared over menageries of zebras, wildebeests and topi antelopes. In both the Mara and Laikipia, tourists can arrange to visit Masai settlements for a pounds-everything-into-perspective cultural experience (you’ll smack the next American who gripes about slow Wi-Fi). A gentle Masai named Isaac took me into his round thatched hut that had softball-sized gaps as “windows” and was so smoky I choked. It was dark inside, but when my eyes adjusted, I saw his wife cooking over an open fire. Next to her, their toddler son hysterically cried. Isaac said the scared boy had never seen a white person.

 

The Masai people, such as these women, have clung to their tribal traditions. The women live in a village in the Laikipia region of Kenya. Norma Meyer

I learned about the hard life of these humble women — they build the houses, collect firewood, search for water, milk cows and tend to children. A seminomadic tribe, the men herd cattle whose numbers represent their wealth. (Our Masai guide described a cow as “an ATM machine” since it can buy you goods.)

Classes weren’t in session, but we later stopped at the village’s new primary school, cheerily emblazoned “Education For A Brighter Future” and supported by The Sanctuary at Ol Lentille, a high-end do-gooder eco-lodge that immerses guests in the Masai community. Ol Lentille also helped build a rural hospital that still needs equipment. This day, a medical mission of UCLA nurses treated wary villagers, bedecked in traditional beaded jewelry and frightened to even have their blood pressure taken. A 2-year-old had been severely burned in his hut, a man writhed on the floor with appendicitis pain, and an ailing tuberculosis patient occupied the lone hospital bed.

“People here live in bushes. We saw a man where a giraffe had stepped on his back,” said the hospital’s only doctor, locally born Alfred Saigero. “In the last four months, we’ve had five people with elephant injuries.”

Nearly 300 miles away on the wide-open Mara, elephants roamed sun-dappled plains, seemingly oblivious to vacationing voyeurs in safari trucks. I had sacredly stared at scores of tusked behemoths, their precious offspring huddled nearby raising snorkel-like trunks and flapping Dumbo ears.

But in Laikipia’s wilderness, parades of pachyderms trek twice daily to the dam to drink water, using the same paths as the Masai. “Some kids walk six miles to school,” Saigero said. “If they see the elephants coming toward them, they have to turn and run back.”

IF YOU GO

• Traverse a rustic swing bridge to enter all-inclusive Mara Plains Camp, a seven-tent luxury retreat on the wildlife-abundant Masai Mara. Enjoy gourmet cuisine near the campfire with amazing hosts Amy and Shaun, then soak in your tent’s copper bathtub. Rates from $956 a night per person include game drives, guides, meals, alcohol, laundry, airstrip transfers, park fees, photo equipment use. Stay three nights and get free round-trip airfare from Nairobi to the Mara (a $400 per person value). www.greatplainsconservation.com.

• Teetering on a panoramic hilltop, the all-inclusive Sanctuary at Ol Lentille in Laikipia offers four unique villas, including the arabesque Sultan’s House. You’ll see and hear trumpeting elephants in the valley below. Owner John Elias, a talkative Brit, fills you in on local Masai projects (which your tab helps fund). Rates from $925 a night per person include game drives, guides, meals, alcohol, personal butler, laundry, massages, visit to village schools and hospital. Extra donation for village visit, www.ol-lentille.com.

• Kenya’s official website, www.magicalkenya.com.