August 28-September 2: The Maasai Mara Triangle

My first destination in Kenya is the Maasai Mara National Reserve and Mara Triangle, located in the southwestern corner of the country and contiguous with the Serengeti NP of Tanzania. The Mara Triangle is the western portion of the Reserve between the Mara River, Tanzania border and the Isuru or Oloololo Escarpment.

The Mara (580 sq. mi.), as it is locally known, established in 1961, is named in honor of the Maasai people, the ancestral inhabitants of the area, who migrated to the area from the Nile Basin. Their description of the area when looked at from afar: “Mara” means “spotted” in the local Maasai language, due to the many short bushy trees which dot the landscape. The Mara is one of the most famous natural reserves in Africa, in part because its unique role in hosting the huge mammal migration of 2 million plus wildebeest, plains zebra and Thompson’s gazelles during the dry season of August-October before they turn south to the Serengeti in Tanzania for the wet season. The Mara is a meca for the wildlife during the dry season because it receives just enough monsoonal rain showeers the keep the grasses green when everything to the south is dried up. And like the Serengeti, it is importantly to remember that The Mara is the ancestral home of the Maasai people who were displaced from the Reserve to benefit the wildlife and tourism.

The landscape in The Mara is primarily open grassland with seasonal rivulets and a few major rivers, including the Sand, Talek and Mara. In the southeast region are clumps of the distinctive acacia tree, and shrubs and trees fringe most drainage lines and cover hillslopes and hilltops. In the south are distinctive low, flat-topped volcanic “inselbergs”, which are usually topped with a shrub thicket. The western border is the escarpment of the East African Rift, which you might recall is part of the great African rift system that extends some 3,500 mi long from Ethiopia through Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and into Mozambique. The southern border is contiguous with the Serengeti NP of Tanzania and fortunately there are no fence lines to disrupt wildlife movements between these areas – although people are not allowed to pass! Otherwise, The Mara is surrounded by well-developed and populated agricultural and pastoral lands. Consequently, The Mara, along with its southern neighbor is truly an “island” wilderness home to the many wildlife species. Unfortunately, in recent years the wildlife populations have suffered significant declines due to the increasing human population and development surrounding the Reserve and the accompanying human incursions, including poaching and cattle grazing, into the Reserve. In fact, only the Mara Triangle, the area west of the Mara River, is completely dedicated to the wildlife. The rest of the National Reserve still allows cattle grazing by the native Maasai communities. Here are a few photos to set the scene:

Before getting to The Mara I had to cross the border post at Isibania. It would have been a breeze through and taken maybe 15 minutes if I didn’t have to wait 1 hour for the custom’s agent to come back from lunch at 2:30 pm (?!). For various reasons, including not finding any campgrounds nearby, my needless delay at the border post, and my need to take care of some “city business” (i.e., get sim card for my hotspot, shop, refuel, wash Green Dragon), I ended up staying in the first significant town after the border crossing, Migori, and ended up staying at the Hotel Discretion. Yes, that’s right, Hotel “Discretion”. What that means, I will let you ponder; I simply used it for a bed and a secure lot for my vehicle in the bustling urban center of Migori.

I had 3 nights in The Mara before I was joined by brother Mark and Kirsten. For my first night, I chose the only public campsite with complete facilities, Oloololo, which is located near the northwestern entrance to the Reserve. The video will show the campsite and its setting so I won’t repeat it here. For the remaining 4 nights in the Reserve (2 more by myself and 2 with Mark and Kirsten), I moved to a no-frills (i.e., only pit toilet, no water) campsite farther south into the middle of the Reserve and perched up high on a hill partially overlooking the plains and Mara River. A sweet setting but without any good shade trees. Again, the video will show the campsite and setting. Mark and Kirsten brought with them lots and lots of food – no surprise there – but also the return of “sundowners”. Here’s a photo of our sundowner on the first night:

I have a couple of anecdotes to share from my stay in The Mara:

#1. I am a little reluctant to share this anecdote because it could have earned me a Darwin Award, but in the spirit of full disclosure, here goes. When you are in the “bush” and you have to releave yourself it is customary to find some sheltering vegetation or landform. At one point along my drive I really “had to go”, so I stopped the vehicle near an old termite mound that had some small shrubs growing out of it – seemed like a reasonable spot. Here’s what the site looked like:

Pretty reasonable looking spot for taking care of business, right. I went to the middle of the termite mound and found a burrow in the middle that looked like this:

Doesn’t too active, does it? Here’s an even closer look at the burrow:

As I dropped my pants and started to squat about 3 feet away from the hole, an alarmed or frightened or pissed off – I didn’t have time to determine which – bolted out of the hole straight at me. I was so startled that I jumped 10 feet in the air and landed with my legs at full speed, where I promptly tripped on a rock and landed face down. In the split second that this took place I had visions of being rammed up the you know what by one very pissed off warthog. But when I turned and regained my feet, to my great relief he was racing away as fast his legs would take him. Fortunately, he was scared and not pissed. Needlesstosay, I lost a few heartbeats during this encounter. Good thing my head is already shaved of hair or I would have lost some of that as well. Moral of this story is: “never squat near a burrow, no matter how unused it looks!”

#2. I went to a Border Post in the far southwestern corner of the Reserve and talked to a couple of the Park Rangers. They shared with me that they do border patrol along the Tanzanian-Kenyan border through the middle of the Maasai Mara as well as anti-poaching, since they are located along the Reserved Boundary. To my amazement, they showed me a pile of animal snares used by poachers from the adjacent villages to trap and kill antelop for the meat. They retrieve 100-300 wire snares every day on their patrols and so far this year they have collected 70,000 snares. Yes, that’s right, 70,000! Here’s a photo to prove it:

OK, that’s it for anecdotes. There’s not much else to say here about the landscape and the wildlife that the video won’t do better, so I will leave it at that and let the video and pictures below do the talking.

Note, sorry, but not really, but the composite video is super long because I had 5 full days of observations in The Mara, and there was so much to observe. There is quite a bit of footage of the wildebeest herds and the migration because this was THE main spectacle, and what a spectacle it was. Also, for this video I composited my footage chronologically, so you can see how my observations progressed over the 5 days. Of course, I wasn’t able to capture all the cool species I saw on video, and I stopped videoing a lot of repeat scenes after day 2, otherwise the video would have been twice as long. I realize that this video is longer than most of you will want to sit through, so honestly I don’t expectt many of you to watch this. But if you want to experience the spectacle and see lots of lion footage, then skip your Netflix movie and sit back and enjoy The Mara, because I sure did!

Maasai Mara composite video (83 minutes)

From the Wildside:

Photo Gallery: