Beyond our Backdoor: Masai Mara

It’s hard not to go crazy with Safari pictures, and believe it or not, I did restrain myself. But, since we are still in Kenya with fast internet access I will share some of our favorite photos. Our time in Massai Mara was amazing. We only had a short time to be on Safari before heading to a mission retreat on the coast of Kenya (our real reason for traveling to Kenya) So it really was a blessing that on the evening that we arrived it started to rain. There hadn't been rain in a very long time (and in fact the well at our safari camp had run dry and water was being delivered by truck). For us what this meant was that for the one full day we had on Safari we were able to go on an all day Safari drive. Usually it's too hot during the mid day and the animals are not active, but because of the cooler weather (and God's answer to our prayers) we had amazing animal sightings. Our guide told us it usually takes 3 days to see all that we saw.

We enjoyed telling the kids that we'd be sleeping in tents on Safari and then seeing their reaction to the tents. Not exactly roughing it.

Ella is under the red blanket on the couch above, enjoying the early morning view.

Water Buffalo, this male exited the water and was posturing to charge our vehicle, exciting!

The lions gave us quite a show as they devoured a zebra rather close to the road. You can see Ella and Mekdes viewing them from our vehicle (above Mekdes' head)

This was the view out of the other side of our vehicle as we watched the lions. This zebra was being stalked but escaped.

cheetahs with herds of buffalo behind them

As we were watching the cheetahs, the elephants were in the distance. Our driver told us they were headed our way and we sat and watched them approach (as did the cheetah above) they then walked very close and around to our car, it was amazing, and a bit scary.