Kenya and Tanzania -- Oct 2012 -- Part III of III

Masai Mara National Park

About 1/2 the Vantage group left around 8 AM by safari jeep to drive to Nairobi (perhaps a 7 hour drive). Most of them would board overnight flights for home (all with a stop and plane change somewhere in Europe, such as London or Amsterdam). One couple was going to Nairobi by jeep but planned to stay overnight there and fly out the next day (to avoid such a super-long travel day).

The other (approx) half of us (including me) left on a flight around 10:30 PM to Nairobi. We then traveled to another Serena lodge in the Tsavo West National Park in Kenya. More on this below.

The arrangements meant I had an easy morning hangiing around the lodge in Mara Serena Lodge (and spent some of it taking photos -- some of which were of the lodge interior and appeared earlier in the gallery; and some of the people in those photos were waiting to get on the jeep; I went to the reception building to bid them farewell).

The view out the guest room window early in the morning was rather strange. Large portions of the plain (or valley) visible from the room were devoid of animals. These areas had been FULL of them the previous day.

When some animals started to return, some large groups of wildebeests seemed to come in long lines. One of these lines came running -- uphill from the general direction of the Mara River.

Several of the photos taken from the guest room window that morning are in pairs. With the two members of the pair taken at different zoom lens settings.

This photo shows one of the long lines around the horizontal center of the photo. They are moving left to right. Note that the lower 2/3 of the photo shows an area with very few animals in it, while the upper 1/3 has animals. The area in that "lower 2/3" was one of the areas devoid of animals (unitil the lines of wildebeests started arriving).