On the Mara

It’s Everything We Had Heard About, and More

It is hard to describe the vastness of the Rift Valley. Think of the landscape of the eastern half of Colorado with a few sizable hills thrown in around the rim of a vast valley. Replace the wheat with natural grasses. Make the streams more frequent, still lined with trees.

Now populate the area with large herds of exotic animals grazing, wandering, and resting, while keeping an eye out for predators.

Only zebras here, but the entire distance to the mountains is filled with wildlife.

Herd of elephants with impala grazing nearby.

The quantity of animals is so great that predators such as lions maintain a much smaller territory than they do in other parts of Africa. It’s a well-stocked pantry!

All of the black dots you see here are wildebeest – one of the most plentiful animals in the Mara – headed for ??who knows.

It’s incredibly impressive, just amazing to see so many majestic beasts in one area. The animal interaction, whether co-existing peacefully or as part of the predator-prey relationship, is fascinating.

The variety of animals is also jaw-dropping: elephants, giraffes, hippos, rhinos, lions, leopards, baboons, wildebeests, zebras, gazelles, elands, topis, hyenas, jackals, warthogs, dikdiks, impalas, mongoose, crocodiles, ostriches, and pythons.

And birds: cranes, storks, eagles, egrets, vultures and more.

I can’t think of an equivalent location in the US that comes close to the natural diversity and plenty that the Masai Mara has today. Perhaps when the American buffalo ran in large herds on the Plains it might have looked something like what we see in Kenya today.