The road from Loita Plains to the park gate at Sekenani is only 55km. But it's a very poor dirt (or murram) road which doesn't seem to have been maintained for a very long time. At times it was better to drive off road at the side of the road than on the road - it took us 4 hours to get to the gate! We later learnt that that there is a local rumour that someone with influence over the road maintenance has an interest in the regional airline that most tour operators use to get tourists into the park without having to drive down this road.....it's only a story but it sounds and looks believable to us!!!! At one point we had just crossed a poor bridge over a river when I spotted something move across the road just in front of us - a snake, looking very much like our rubber one in the cab! We stopped and reversed so that Sue could see it too - it had disappeared - had it somehow got to one side of the road or the other - or had it jumped up under the truck....... Other animals seen before the park entrance were good numbers of zebra, Thompson's gazelle, wildebeest, hartebeest (probably topi) and eland.
Sekenani Gate was a mess with a number of vehicles arriving and some very pushy Masai women trying to sell souvenirs. We sat in the back of the truck with the mosquito screens lowered and had lunch watching it all go on. One group of tourists were forced to retreat back into their vehicle by a small mob of hawkers each of whom seemed to need to be more pushy than her neighbour in order to try to get a sale - they didn't appear to sell anything. When things had quietened down we slipped over to the gate and bought our entrance ticket.
Inside the park the road improved - slightly! The vast grassy plains are very impressive, almost park-like at times. We drove down almost to the Tanzanian border at Sand River (Kenya and Tanzania used to allow people to cross the border into the Serengeti but they have been having a "tourism war" for the last few years and have therefore closed it - not good news for people like us or the local economies), then turned back north towards dark purple rain clouds that were forming quickly. The light over the plains made all the colours more vivid and a partial rainbow literally shone out from under the clouds. Close to the edge of the park we came upon a wide vista full of antelope, we stopped and scanned the scene, there were a number of safari vehicles dotted around the place, some moving, some stationary. As we scanned we saw two of them following something - a cheetah and two cubs - every time she moved on the cubs followed her, followed again by the vehicles. She would sit down to wait for her cubs, but as soon as the vehicles had caught them up, off she went again, the vehicles ended up driving round and round them, this continued for quite some time - it really looked like harassment to us for the sake of a few tourists getting a close viewing. shortly after a pair of lion appeared, again being very closely followed by vehicles - how on earth can the have any chance of hunting with this activity going on? - we decided that we'd rather not see the cats than to participate in this sort of activity. At Talek Gate we left the park for the evening, going to a campsite a few hundred yards away right on the edge of the river that forms the park border. Almost as soon as we had arrived so too did the rain - torrentially but only for about half an hour. The bar looked good, but the campsite had seen better days so we paid for one night and had Smash and a tin of tuna for supper (quick and easy after a long day) and went to bed.
The next morning we were the first at the gate, no luck finding predators today, we headed off Westwards following tracks across the Mara - they were hard to navigate even using the GPS, some went through some quite deep boggy patches and in the end we lost our bearings for a few minutes until we realised that we had in fact done a loop! The landscape is fabulous, so much grass waiting for the migrating herds to get here - the few grazers that remain here all year round must have great difficulty in deciding what to eat next as they are literally walking through acres and acres of food!
Coming back out at lunchtime we decided to have a look at the next campsite down the track -again next to the river, this one (Riverside) has lovely large open green lawns with shade trees and is next to a part of the river where it bubbles over stones. The showers here looked much better than next door and we decided to try it out. As we were washing up some staff came over to check if we were ok, we were slightly puzzled by this concern until they explained that they had just chased a hyena out of another part of the camp and wanted to assure us that all was ok. We hadn't seen the hyena, although we thought we had heard one, so we were blissfully unaware as usual! That night we went to sleep to the sounds of baboon and hippo in the not-so-far distance.
The next 2 days we rested on the campsite, walking into the village to buy bread and tomatoes etc. from a tiny little ramshackle dark shop, the owner warned us that the bananas were expensive at 10 shillings (6p) each. Talek is a very small and scruffy town, although with two very new and smart looking banks - probably for all the lodges around. No-one gave us any hassle at all and it was pleasant to be able to wander around, Sue went into the curio shop near the park gate and negotiated for a bangle that she didn't really want(?!).
We walked to the park gate in the evening to ask for information on the northern part of the park (the two parts are run by 2 separate organisations), when we got back the baboons were returning from their feeding grounds and were seeming more aggressive than usual. The large male was far too interested in our rubbish bag and was becoming more and more pushy, so we locked it away and got the catapult out to keep them away. This worked (without hurting them), but they made quite a racket through the night.
Sekenani Gate was a mess with a number of vehicles arriving and some very pushy Masai women trying to sell souvenirs. We sat in the back of the truck with the mosquito screens lowered and had lunch watching it all go on. One group of tourists were forced to retreat back into their vehicle by a small mob of hawkers each of whom seemed to need to be more pushy than her neighbour in order to try to get a sale - they didn't appear to sell anything. When things had quietened down we slipped over to the gate and bought our entrance ticket.
Inside the park the road improved - slightly! The vast grassy plains are very impressive, almost park-like at times. We drove down almost to the Tanzanian border at Sand River (Kenya and Tanzania used to allow people to cross the border into the Serengeti but they have been having a "tourism war" for the last few years and have therefore closed it - not good news for people like us or the local economies), then turned back north towards dark purple rain clouds that were forming quickly. The light over the plains made all the colours more vivid and a partial rainbow literally shone out from under the clouds. Close to the edge of the park we came upon a wide vista full of antelope, we stopped and scanned the scene, there were a number of safari vehicles dotted around the place, some moving, some stationary. As we scanned we saw two of them following something - a cheetah and two cubs - every time she moved on the cubs followed her, followed again by the vehicles. She would sit down to wait for her cubs, but as soon as the vehicles had caught them up, off she went again, the vehicles ended up driving round and round them, this continued for quite some time - it really looked like harassment to us for the sake of a few tourists getting a close viewing. shortly after a pair of lion appeared, again being very closely followed by vehicles - how on earth can the have any chance of hunting with this activity going on? - we decided that we'd rather not see the cats than to participate in this sort of activity. At Talek Gate we left the park for the evening, going to a campsite a few hundred yards away right on the edge of the river that forms the park border. Almost as soon as we had arrived so too did the rain - torrentially but only for about half an hour. The bar looked good, but the campsite had seen better days so we paid for one night and had Smash and a tin of tuna for supper (quick and easy after a long day) and went to bed.
The next morning we were the first at the gate, no luck finding predators today, we headed off Westwards following tracks across the Mara - they were hard to navigate even using the GPS, some went through some quite deep boggy patches and in the end we lost our bearings for a few minutes until we realised that we had in fact done a loop! The landscape is fabulous, so much grass waiting for the migrating herds to get here - the few grazers that remain here all year round must have great difficulty in deciding what to eat next as they are literally walking through acres and acres of food!
Coming back out at lunchtime we decided to have a look at the next campsite down the track -again next to the river, this one (Riverside) has lovely large open green lawns with shade trees and is next to a part of the river where it bubbles over stones. The showers here looked much better than next door and we decided to try it out. As we were washing up some staff came over to check if we were ok, we were slightly puzzled by this concern until they explained that they had just chased a hyena out of another part of the camp and wanted to assure us that all was ok. We hadn't seen the hyena, although we thought we had heard one, so we were blissfully unaware as usual! That night we went to sleep to the sounds of baboon and hippo in the not-so-far distance.
The next 2 days we rested on the campsite, walking into the village to buy bread and tomatoes etc. from a tiny little ramshackle dark shop, the owner warned us that the bananas were expensive at 10 shillings (6p) each. Talek is a very small and scruffy town, although with two very new and smart looking banks - probably for all the lodges around. No-one gave us any hassle at all and it was pleasant to be able to wander around, Sue went into the curio shop near the park gate and negotiated for a bangle that she didn't really want(?!).
We walked to the park gate in the evening to ask for information on the northern part of the park (the two parts are run by 2 separate organisations), when we got back the baboons were returning from their feeding grounds and were seeming more aggressive than usual. The large male was far too interested in our rubbish bag and was becoming more and more pushy, so we locked it away and got the catapult out to keep them away. This worked (without hurting them), but they made quite a racket through the night.