Another exciting day in Africa! We got collected from Brackenhurst cottage at 6.30am for the 5 hour drive to Masai Mara! There was a mistake with the mini bus as the driver thought there was only 7 of us going but in fact there was 9 so it was a bit of a squash!

The drive wasn't the smoothest of journeys, the first two and a half hours was on tarred roads but the last part was on dirt tracks basically! It was a long journey, we were then met by our Masai Encounter guide and 4x4 truck!

Masai Mara is 200 square km's an has biggest population of lions per area. Approximately 7200 lions! Africa's big 5 that's known world wide consists of Lion, Rhino, Leopard, Elephant and Buffalo!! We went for a 2.5hrs game drive straight away which was brilliant, got to see giraffe's, 3 lions, gazel's, wilder beasts in migration, vulchers and that's just the ones I remember! Lions were amazing - we were only about 20 feet away from them!

We then came to our Masai Camp site where we were greeted with warm towels for our hands and face and fresh fruit juice! I am sharing a tent with Johanna, and the tent is 5* in the middle of nowhere with no other tents around. Out the front of our tent looks straight into the bush!

Our second game drive of the day started at around 4pm and was certainly an unbelievable 3.5hrs! Our first animal we got pretty close to was a cheetah then a massive male elephant! We were out in the bush during sun set which was spectacular! The guide then stopped the vehicle and we all got out in this wide open space to watch sun set, he put up a table for the drink of your choice: beer, gin and tonic, vodka, juices and had snacks like crisps and nuts - very romantic ha.

Then a Hippo was spotted out of water, it was massive! We all jumped back into the truck and got a closer view, hard to take photos in the dark! We then spotted a few hyeena's! The last part of the drive was the most exciting, we came upon another 2 lions!! Can't use words to describe this, but we followed one and then stopped the truck another 7 lions came to the roar of this one lion. Basically in the jeep lights: 8 lions lay down in front of us and played! One of the male lions came and circled the jeep, and was as close as 2 arms length away from me! The driver scared it off, then I realised it was too close for comfort!

Game drive finished at 7.40pm by this time it was pitch black and we required guards to take us back our tent, there we had a warm bucket shower and when ready flashed our torch twice for a guard to then escort us down for dinner! We then had 'bush tv'!! All sat round a fire in a circle looking up at the stars!

Dinner was by candle light! Whole evening very romantic, but strange experiencing it with a stranger!! Three course meal consisting of tomato soup, chicken stuffed with something and rice then Creme brûlée! Along with 2 or 3 tuskar beers!!

The evening didn't stop there, we were then escorted back to the tent, as it had been a long but exciting day! We had hot water bottles filled and put into our beds while we were at dinner and the tent lighting was very suttle and relaxing! While lying in our beds trying to sleep, all you could hear was the roar of lions, totally unbelievable!

You can apparently here lions roar from up to 8km away but the next morning the night guards told us they had to scare the lions away from camp last night along with buffalo's and hippos!!

This place is amazing and totally safe! :)