first day

We went to the Mara for our last long weekend with the Crutchers and Hartzells. The first two nights we stayed in tents at the Sand River gate in the southeast corner of the park and then for the last night we drove up to Andy Aho's Mara West camp on the Oloololo escarpment.
I would rank the Maasai Mara right up with Mt Kenya as one of the most beautiful places in this country.

This a small chapel built by an italian in the 1940's along the road down the escarpment by Maai Mahiu.

These beautiful fields stretch along the road. Last September on our way to the Mara these fields were ready to be harvested. It looked really nice to have a field of amber grain with the acacias sticking up in the middle of it all.

Sand River

This place had ticks like none other. Just walking up to the bathroom one evening, Susan, Carol and I brushed off tens of ticks off our legs. They would drop out of the trees right on to you. It was quite disturbing..

Originally I had thought to stay alone in a little tent off to the side, but after we saw these prints in the bathrooms and it got really dark and we could hear a male lion somewhere on the other side of the river, I chickened out and crawled in with the Crutcher's :)