Masai Mara

So while my mum, dad and sis were here we left Nicolas in their capable hands and buggered off to the Massai Mara for 2 nights. Nicolas was just 6 weeks old and we were abandoning him!
I was very very very very sad at the airport waiting for our plane to depart. Sad because we were leaving Nic, sad because I’d had to say goodbye to my sister, sad because Benedikt and I had been arguing and mostly just plain sad due to lack of sleep! I snapped out of it though and proceeded to have an amazing weekend.
Benedikt and I revived our relationship after 6 weeks of hardly even speaking to each other... between Nicolas and all our visitors and going to the coast and all our grumpiness due to sleepless nights etc it was really really good to have some time alone.
We arrived at Camp Naibor by midday and had a lovely lunch watching over the resident hippos, one of which had just had a baby 2 days prior. I wanted to know all the details of the birth of course! And wow, those little hippos have to dive down to reach mamas teets to suckle. Nicolas has it easy!
We then had a nap (sleep was my priority for the weekend) before going on a really pleasant game drive where we saw loads. Tons of lion, tons of wildebeest, elephants, giraffes, zebras, hyenas, topis and the obligatory Thompsons gazelles and impalas. The evening dinner was so social, we first sat round the fire meeting everyone before moving to the dining tent to sit at a big table with everyone. I really enjoyed having a gin and tonic or two!
The next morning we went for an early morning drive and headed out to the mara river to hopefully catch some animals crossing. We weren’t disappointed. Unfortunately we didnt catch the most exciting part of all on camera, but seeing it in person was quite something. We saw 2 crocodile kills within the space of 5 minutes! The animals all congregate on the banks and hesitate and procrastinate FOREVER... before one brave soul decides to go for it. Or sometimes he is pushed in by the sheer number of animals behind him, moving towards the river. So of the very first lot of wildebeest that we saw cross over (after a good couple of hours of being there), the far right one was taken out by a croc. We saw it fighting for its life for a good 3 mins or so, being swept down river at the same time. We hardly even saw the croc, and weren’t even sure that the wildebeest was being attacked at first. Poor thing.
Then we had just turned our vehicle around when we saw 3 Topis making their way across directly in front of us. They were all just swimming along nicely, when we see this crocodile launch itself off the bank and make a beeline for the last one. The croc was like 3 times the speed of the topis and had this massive V shaped wave behind it as it glided through the water at full speed. That topi stood no chance. The Croc attacked and down it went. It fought and fought, we saw a confusion of hooves, horns, the tail, its body turning over, legs shooting out... but within 2 mins or its movements stopped and we saw the croc-topi shape drift down river. Poor thing. I was really sad for the two animals we just saw being killed by the mean crocs.
Anyway, we had a lovely massage after lunch, followed by another nap. And then an awesome evening game drive. We saw cheetahs and leopards which meant we could tick off everything we’d wanted to see.
That night we had our own impressive stories to swap around the fire. We made friends with this lovely English couple and they were yet to see the crossing... so we got them all excited. We also chatted loads to these interesting American guys who had done a whole southern African trip by that stage. One ditzy yet clever lady from Albercurcie was thoroughly entertaining!
I had a lot of red wine on the second night... and we’d agreed not to have a game drive on that last morning but to rather sleep in and have a chilled breakfast. It was a lovely treat before returning to dawn patrol with Nicolas!