It was an early wake up today, with breakfast at six sharp and just enough time for us to make our own lunch boxes before we were packed into the cars and off to do a sunrise cruise.
The morning, at least for the first three hours, was very quiet... in a nice way. The boys were looking for the two leopards we watched mate last night. The feeling was that there was a good chance they'd be hunting or enjoying a kill.
Sunrise was quiet and beautiful.
We bumped into three lionesses on the prowl and decided to follow them. They went in and out of hunting mode - occasionally keyed in and alert, then alternatively relaxing. They lazed by the car one time, then moved off under a tree. We watched for a good hour before suddenly they took off across the road, went down into the high grasses and towards a large tree. It was only then that Grayson said "oh...there is a leo-pard eating in the tree!". The tree had lots of large, horizontal branches which made for a stable enough climb for lions (who are not even close to as adept at climbing as leopards are) and two of the lions did indeed jump up and climb into the tree to try and steel what the leopard was eating - a gazelle. The leopard, no match for lions, not even in a tree, gracefully leaped out of the tree, perhaps twenty feet from the ground, landing with barely a sound, and bounded up a larger tree next door. Grayson shouted with excitement "Oh my god. Who are you guys?!?!". It was very funny - he was shocked with the luck we'd had before this little scenario, and this one was the icing on the cake.
It wasn't long before one lion jumped down out of the tree, then the other. Grayson noticed, with his eagle eyes, that there were bees bothering the lions. A bunch of hyenas, who had gathered under the tree in hopes of getting some morsels of food, scattered.
Eventually, the lions gave up on any more tree action, and they headed back to laze under the tree near our car again. What an exciting moment for our group. Grayson spotted another leopard in a small tree about a hundred meters down from the scene of the crime, and we figured it was the female half of the pair we were tracking this morning. We'd found our couple after all.
We continued driving to the east, a little away from the Seronera River valley, and near the Masai Kopjes. We found three cute little lion cubs playing in a marshy area. We watched them for a few minutes, wondering where their mothers were. Turns out, they were out hunting, as we ended up spotting them about five hundred meters away trying to stalk down various prey with little success. We are learning that the lions are very opportunistic "hunters": meaning that they will take the easiest options first - someone else's kill, an old or sick animal, an injured animal, or a baby animal. The healthy, full grown prey have attributes that make them harder to kill and may only succumb to very desperate or skillful lions.
We spotted a couple of jeeps close to a small bush in the middle of an open field, and immediately thought "a cheetah!". We were wrong, as there were four cheetahs!! :-). A mother and her three cubs lay ten feet from our jeep.
On the way to lunch, we stopped and watch a herd of about 40 elephants. Some where circled around little babies who looked like they were napping in some mud, others were a little ways off, drinking from the nearly empty river, while the large male tuskers were quite a safe distance away. I love and can't get enough of watching elephants.
We ate lunch at the visitors centre again. The fat little rodents we watched yesterday were at it again. They are called Rock Hyrax and, like every other animal in every zoo or animal park in the world, you're not supposed to feed them - the signs say so, the guides tell you, but when you see a table of ignorant tourist surrounded by about twenty overweight rock hyraxes, you start to suspect that not everyone listens to the rules!
We got back on the road and started chatting with Grayson about the business model behind the Safari companies and how guides are compensated. It turns out that although full time guides attached to companies are paid a monthly salary, the salaries are fairly low and vary greatly from company to company. The majority of the guide's compensation comes in the form of tips. Although we were well aware of the tip expectations (Amanda had told us that $30-40USD per guide per day was a general rule of thumb) we didn't know that it was the lions share (pun intended) of their compensation. For Grayson, the salary seemed secondary to whom he was working for, how they treated the guides and what kinds of clients they brought in.
We returned around 3pm, had a nice shower and a did a little laundry. Then the four of us chilled and had a beer on our porch, relaxing while listening to the jackass-hyena (Robin) and the other kids in the kids quad tent. Kim and Alex downloaded a bunch of pictures and video on to their iPads - we are going to have a fantastic collection of "documentation" of this trip. This is our last night at Kati Kati camp and I have to say I will miss it.
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