Honeymooning Lions

I can't believe we have already been in Africa for 4 nights. So far the trip has blown away our expectations. We spent one night in Niarobi and caught a flight to our first camp, Lewa Safari Camp, early the next morning. As the plane prepared to land we looked out the window to see a herd of elephants and then a dazzle of zebras right next to the runway. Needless to say we were all pretty excited. On our drive into camp from the airstrip we were in awe. At every turn there was another animal. We saw gazelles, elephants, giraffes, rhinos, ostrich and tons of other birds and animals I forget the names of. Many of the animals would only be 10 to 20 feet from our jeep! Upon arriving at camp we were shown to our "tents". They were spread out all over the camp with great views of the surrounding plains. We sat on our deck and counted giraffes on the hill. At 4 we loaded up in the jeeps again for our first official game drive. The highlight of the night is when our guides spotted a cheatah. They pulled the jeep right up to the cheatah and spend about 20 minutes watching it move from shady spot to shady spot. 200 and some odd pictures later we were again in awe of Africa. We were able to get closer to a lot of animals then we had on our drive to camp and got some great photos. Each evening drive ends on a hilltop to watch the sun set and stretch your legs. Not too bad for our first safari day.

At 6:30 the next morning we went on our first morning game drive. We started laughing when we realized that zebras were now nothing to get excited over. How lucky are we that after one day of safari we have seen so many zebras that they were almost like cows in the Midwest of the United States. We managed to come across two male white rhinos who were fighting over territory so we stopped and watched them dance around for quite a while. Next we stopped for breakfast on a hilltop where Phil made friends with approx 200 little red ticks, yuck!! The evening drive was spent searching for lions, and we found 2 different pairs. The first pair we spotted was a male and female on their honeymoon. They were so hidden in the grass that I didn't realize there was a female lion there until she stood up, and we were only 15 feet from them. We left the first pair after getting a radio call about more lions across the park. We took off and our guide, Alex, wasn't being shy about getting there. Up to this point our Land Cruiser probably hadn't topped 20 km/hr but we might have approached 80 as we raced past things we had already seen in our search for more lions. The second pair were sleeping away the afternoon perched on an overturned dead tree and we were able to get a few good pictures before moving on to enjoy our sundowner.

Our third day in Lewa repeated the same schedule, starting with a morning games drive where we were lucky enough to find the honeymooning lions again and watch them mating before we stopped for breakfast. After eating we went in search of garanuk, the last animal we needed to spot to finish out the "Northern Five." On our way to a remote part of the conservancy we passed a watering hole where there were 15 or so elephants drinking and splashing themselves. While we were watching them play another family came down the trail and before we knew it there were 25+ elephants all hanging around. We took enough pictures to run our camera battery out of juice! Not far past the watering hole our wildlife guide spotted the garanuk across a valley s owe took off in that direction. It wasn't until we were right next to the animals that any of the rest of us could actually see them which is a testament to his eyesight. Or evening game drive sent us on a quest for leopard and so we explored parts of the conservancy we hadn't yet seen. We managed to get caught in a rain storm and saw plenty of wildlife, but we had our last sundowner at Lewa without having seen the third big cat.