Meyers Mission: Pinch Me, I think I’m Dreaming! (Safari Part 1)

By Dale

Trying to describe what we experienced this week has been difficult to say the least. “Amazing”, “Awesome”, “Unbelievable” seem to continually roll of my tongue but these can’t really capture even a portion of the experience. It’s like trying to describe a dream! You know what you saw but it was so vivid, so alive but to justly paint the picture for another is almost impossible and it feels like they may not believe you anyway because your descriptions are too fantastic. More than once I felt like I was going to wake up any minute and realize this was all a dream…but it wasn’t and we have pictures to prove it.

We’ll need to do this post in parts because the experience was just too full to cram all into one (thanks for this recommendation, brother Dan!) Pictures are worth a thousand words but they unfortunately won’t always do justice to the landscape or the wildlife. These pictures will serve as platforms for each of us to make some comments about our experience and so throughout we will try to identify the photographer and the one commenting. Below is a brief description of our three day trip.

Early Monday morning (March 28) we made a long 5 hour trip (an experience in itself) to the Maasai Mara which is a vast expanse of African land on the border of Kenya and Tanzania. Our accommodations were very nice hotel-type canvase “tents” with a main lodge area for dinning on delicious and abundant foods. Included in the package were a total of four game drives (averaging 2.5 hours each) in which we were taken in a safari Land Cruiser (open sides and top) through the grassy lands in search for wildlife, particularly “The Big Five” – Elephant, Rhino, Lion, Cape Buffalo and Leopard. Here is a glimpse.

Photo by Dale

What I liked in the first day was the lions. The lion couple was under a tree. Our vehicle was the one car that got the closest to the lions. The lions picked a good spot because of all the rocks surounding the tree. We couldn’t get too close. (comment by Ann Marie)

Lion Photos by Rachel

We got to see Cape Buffalo the first time out. Cape Buffalo is the most aggressive grazer on the plains. It was amazing to get to see these huge animals in there natural habitat. (comment from Isaac)