Lions!
Hello, Friend ~ I’m Scott and welcome to your 5-minute vacation for Mar. 6th. I share these snippets of our travels in the hopes that my photos and stories will allow you to go on a vicarious vacation and “get away from it all,” if only for a moment. I appreciate you inviting me into your inbox today.
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(Today’s postcard is a continuation of our safari in January.)
After a somewhat bumpy ride in a 12-person plane to the southwest corner of Kenya, we landed near the Olare Motorogi Conservancy on the Mara. The Mara is everything that I think of when I think of an African safari. I’m looking forward to telling you about both our four days on the Mara and our très lux lodge Mahali Mzuri but first, we gotta talk about lions.
Lions. Wow.
On our first morning game drive, our driver John spotted a couple of lions sleeping in the bush on the side of a small hill. John had very good eyes because the cats were over a couple hundred yards away and their tawny-colored coats made them difficult to distinguish from the browning grass. But that’s the skill of a good guide for you.
He drove us closer to the sleeping lions. And closer. And closer and closer and closer until we stopped about 30 feet away. I don’t remember if John warned us to be quiet but after recovering from the initial shock of just how close we were, we were speechless.
At first, we saw only two lions. When we were closer, we saw that there were four. No, five. Make that six ~ one adult male, three adult females and two juveniles. They were hard to count because they blended into the bush so well.
We saw the lions, the lions saw us. We were awestruck, the lions went back to sleep. John explained to us that the lions, like all the animals on the Mara, didn’t see the vehicles as something of interest and so ignored them. However, John cautioned, if we got out of the vehicles then the lions would definitely realize how tasty we were.
We were fortunate to see this pride two other times during our stay: once just after a successful zebra kill and once again when they were sleeping off the previous night’s dinner.
This pride seemed to be very close-knit. Both times that we saw them in the morning, they were sleeping as a group, slotted together like a large, tan crossword puzzle.
They seemed to be light sleepers, awakening frequently to keep an eye on their surroundings. Even though they heard us arrive, they weren’t interested in us. Or at least our vehicle.
The adults would shift position, yawn, and then go back to sleep.
But while the adults slept, the cubs were active. Whether chewing on someone’s tail…
…or checking to see if the adult was awake now.
I was intrigued by how the lions in this pride were so close-knit and physically affectionate. For example, when one of the cubs took a break from eating to visit the male or…
… when one of the females cleaned a cub after eating.
I realize this picture might be hard to look at but as cute as the cubs are, they are also lions ~ apex predators ~ from birth.
Watching this pride over the course of three days, I was reminded several times that their lives were not a nature show but an unsentimental reality. We saw the arc of their life: conception, (but not birth), the very young, the not-quite adult, adults, and death (for both prey and lion). We saw that although each adult was a powerful, formidable animal, their true strength and the real reason for their success was the pride. Whether they were taking turns eating their kill, grooming each other, or just lying almost on top of one other during their frequent siestas, there was clearly a connection between them all, from the youngest to the oldest.
I’ve visited many zoos and watched many nature shows on TV but ~ and this is probably obvious to say but, well, here I go anyway ~ this was different. I caught an unedited peek into life on the Mara and saw how fragile it was, even for the most powerful and successful predators. I didn’t expect that. I’ve thought about the lions a lot ~ especially the deaths ~ since we returned home and I’m not quite sure yet how I feel about all this. Before we left for Kenya, people who had been on a safari before told us that Kenya would change us. Perhaps this is what they meant.
But one thing remains unchanged: I still think the cubs sure are cute.
Next time, I’ll share more about the Mahali Mzuri lodge and the other animals we saw (leopard, cheetahs, hippos, o my!) during our stay there.
Until then ~
Cheers!
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