We have just got back from a three day safari to the Maasia Mara! We left on sunday morning, and drove for 5 hours on some of the bumpiest roads known to man. On Engligh roads it would probally have only taken about 2 hours.
We arrived at our campsite, dumped our stuff, and went for our first game drive. The roof of the van we went in lifts up, so we can stand up and look out. We have quite an eventful 2 hours and managed to see elephants, giraffes, lions, a cheetah and a leopard! Theres only about 30 leopards in the whole of the park and their not seen very often, so we felt lucky!

Our campsite was just outside the park, quite near some of the traditional maasai villages. It was only us staying there (me, Gaz and Jodie another volunteer at Huruma). Our chef was really good, and we even got mash potato! We had meat, which we pressumed was beef, and didnt find out till the next night it was actually goat! It tastes alright, but we proablly wouldn't have been so keen if we knew what it was in the first place! Each night we had two Maasia men who guarded our camp. They stay awake all night checking for animals etc. I tried to make conversation with one of them, but as they only speak maasia and swahili, it was a bit difficult!

On monday we spent the whole day in the park (from 7.30am till 7pm!). We drove down to the mara (about 80km) which is the river that all the wildebeast cross when they migrate to the Serengeti. We went with an armed guard for a walk along the river to see all the hippo's and crocodiles. There was huge families of hippo's and they were mostly out of the water so we got some really good photo's.
After lunch, we drove to the border of Kenya and Tanzania. We drove into and walked around briefly in Tanzania illegally!
On the way back we were lucky enough to see a Black Rhino! These are endangered and are hardly ever seen, and I was the one to spot him! This meant we got to see all of the big five:Lions, Leopards, Buffalos, Elephants and Rhinos!

On our last day, we did a very early game drive, leaving camp just after 6am! We noticed a male lion wandering around, and after following him, we got to see two female lions with three cubs.

The last part of our trip was to visit a traditional maasai village. You have to pay for them to show you around and for you to be able to take photo's as they are convinced we are going to sell our photos for loads of money! We got to see inside their houses, they are small huts made of sticks and cow dung, with rooms for the baby animals. They were nice and warm inside but very dark. They also showed us some dances and how they make fire. In between showing us around they tried their best to sell us everything. All the men where taking off their jewlery and asking us if we wanted it! They even wanted us to trade some of our clothes with them!