Discover the Magic of Kenya’s Masai Marai National Park on This Incredible Safari
An expert guide adds untold magic to a classic Kenyan safari.
“When he yawns three times, he will get up.”
Peter Ojuku is in the front passenger seat of the safari vehicle, one elbow out the open window. He appears to be paying only cursory attention to the two lions lazing in a golden field in Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve.
Behind him, our group of six strains forward, leaning over each other, peering through binoculars and pinching phone screens to get a closer look at the grand animals, who seem as unbothered as our guide. We pass around snacks while we wait – mixed nuts, potato chips – noting the first wide yawn then another.
I’d put money on Ojuku’s comment being one of his best jokes but seconds after the male lion’s jaws stretch open for a third time, he’s on his feet, sauntering away. Ojuku smiles, his steady gaze already somewhere else.
It’s not that difficult to spot wildlife in Kenya; I see two giraffes in Nairobi’s city-fringe national park on the drive from the airport. But there’s seeing a giraffe and there’s instantly recognising which of the three local species it is from the pattern of its coat. There’s watching a lion lounge in the sun and there’s knowing the big cat’s behaviour well enough to predict its next move. There’s us and there’s Peter Ojuku.
A guide with experiential travel company Abercrombie & Kent for 26 years, Ojuku’s presence is inestimable on our seven-night Kenyan adventure, which takes in a whistlestop stay in the capital, three nights in a private reserve and another three in the fabled Masai Mara. On paper, it’s a fairly standard itinerary – two safari sites to maximise encounters – but A&K began in Kenya more than 60 years ago and the now-global brand’s insider knowledge shows in every exclusive stay, easy transfer and the care taken by each driver, host and guide.
“When they’re not moving, cheetahs are very hard to find,” Ojuku tells us on our first game drive, as afternoon clouds tint the light blue. We’re somewhere in the wilds of the 36,400-hectare Ol Pejeta Conservancy, a former cattle property that sprawls across the equator in the shadow of Mount Kenya and is now home to Africa’s Big Five, our luxe tented accommodation at Sanctuary Tambarare and those elusive, famously fast spotted cats.
From out of nowhere, a tall ranger wearing gumboots and carrying only a backpack and an alarmingly small stick sidles up to the truck. As he murmurs in Swahili, I wonder how quickly he can possibly run in those boots.
Dwarfed by the endless plains and equally vast sky, he wades into the long grass and we bump along in his wake until the driver cuts the engine. Like a game of telephone, news of the potential sighting spreads through the group and I clumsily scan the landscape, searching. Every tree, stick and shrub looks a bit like a cat until my eyes land on an unmistakable round furry face in the green. “Cheetah!” I whisper-shout.
We’re all oohs, aahs and awws as the animal rolls on its back and grooms like its domesticated descendants. When it stands and slinks by, intimidatingly close, I hope that our walking tipster is already far away.
Ol Pejeta might not have the name recognition of the Masai Mara but where the latter wows with its sheer volume of wildlife, this place shelters two of the rarest treasures on earth: the last remaining northern white rhinos. We visit Najin and her daughter Fatu in the 280-hectare enclosure where they’re kept safe from disease and predators. The hatchback-sized creatures eye us warily before lumbering over when head caretaker, Zacharia, pours treats from a bucket. I want to remember the moment forever – the fluffy tips of their ears, their tough wrinkly skin and wagging tails. Fatu, who at 24 is still fertile, is undergoing IVF treatment in hopes of saving the species. “Even a single baby through science will be a world celebration,” says Zacharia proudly.
Later, the cool night envelops Tambarare’s pavilion-style lodge. I choose githeri from the daily-changing menu – a local dish of maize and beans served with chermoula and tomato relish – while Ojuku tells us about his time living in Japan and delights in trying to shock us with Kenyan customs he knows differ from our own. Property manager Jackson had mentioned the adjoining bar is “open till the last guest goes to bed” but no-one keeps the staff up late. In my canvas-walled suite, beneath a mosquito-net canopy, I sleep too deeply to hear the lions roaring.
It’s rainy season in the Masai Mara (April to May) and from the window of the regional commuter plane on the 45-minute flight from Nairobi, I watch the Lion King landscape of savannah and acacia trees whiz by below.
During game drives we rumble through countryside so epic that it takes me a while to even register an elephant here or a buffalo there, the giants hidden by the scale of their surroundings. “Imagine this place teeming with animals, 360 degrees,” says Ojuku. The idea of millions of creatures on the move during the Great Migration to neighbouring Tanzania (July to October) is hard to comprehend. The wonder isn’t lost on our unflappable guide: ”However many times you see it, it’s different.”
I feel the same way about the Mara River, which thunders outside my suite at Sanctuary Olonana, sister-property to Tambarare. From bed I watch the latte-brown rapids churn as I wake up; from the sunken lounge I can see small birds flit across its surface. In the bath, after days of three-course meals, snacks and Sundowners, it’s easy to relate to the hippos lolling on the opposite shore. The raging water soundtracks breakfast, lunch and dinner on the lodge’s main deck, mother nature’s music almost as beautiful as when the local Maasai staff sing for us one evening, draped in the vivid blankets and colourful beaded jewellery of their traditional dress.
On a wet afternoon following overnight rain, we make slow progress through marshy ground, counting birds – including the black-chested snake eagle and a vivid lilac-breasted roller – and stopping to observe Mary, who is grazing with one of her daughters and a grandchild; the trio are among about 30 rhinos that live on the 1510-square-kilometre reserve. As we continue on, heading for the lodge before the park closes at 6pm, the air is heavy and an unseen army of frogs chirps like a child’s toy ray gun.
Then the radio crackles. Anthony, our ebullient Maasai driver and the first person from his village to become a guide, executes a hasty three-point turn in the bog. His one-word clue to the excitement – “leopard” – is all we need. We’re on the trail of the last of our Big Five encounters and while we were watching Mary in the distance, the sleek speckled cat was lounging behind the carcass of a fallen tree right by the vehicle.
I catch little more than ears poking out above the grass and a rear end disappearing as the leopard wanders off but it counts and is thrilling. Just like meeting Najin and Fatu, seeing warthog babies running furiously behind their mums, stumbling across 16 giraffes in one spot, watching a baboon staring at the sunset, finding dozens of hippos relaxing in a big muddy puddle – and so many other moments. As ever, Ojuku puts it best: “The savannah is always full of surprises.”
