How is a full day Game Drive in Maasai Mara Reserve
The Maasai Mara Reserve is the Kenyan part of Serengeti Reserve. It´s the most popular park in Kenya, and it´s famous for the Big Five and also for the gnus migration between the two parks (from July to October). That´s also where the Maasai tribes live (see more about that in this other post).
If you´re planning a trip to Kenya, you should definitely include a safari in Maasai Mara in your itinerary.
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HOW TO VISIT THE RESERVE
To visit Maasai Mara you gotta do a game drive – you need a 4×4 car, and it´s highly recommended doing it with a guide that knows the area. The park is huge, you´re very likely not to see many animals if you go by yourself. Also, the guides talk to each other all the time on the radio, telling where they saw some animals – that´s how you get to see so much!
Blogger’s tip: Maasai Mara is far away from Nairobi – you´d better reserve a day just to get there and sleep in the reserve, and then you can do a whole day game drive on the next day.
I visited it in a 7 days tour, the experience was amazing.
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HOW IS THE GAME DRIVE
It´s worth it to spend a whole day doing a game drive, the park is huge and there´s lots to see. In the safari I did, we left early in the morning (7:30 AM) and returned only around 6PM.
The Game Drive happens in a small bus that has a pop-up roof – it´s perfect for seeing the animals, as it gives you a 360 degrees view of the area.
It starts early in the morning, and lasts the whole day. The animals you´ll see change every time, but I saw many of them, including four of the Big Five: elephant, buffalo, lion and leopard. Also, there are many giraffes, zebras, pumbas, wildebeests, antelopes…
During the tour we managed to see two different leopards (they are the hardest to spot from the Big Five), and even saw one of them hunting! We saw a cheetah, which is also pretty cool. I was worried about not seeing lions, but I ended up seeing 23 different lions, totally impressive!
The tour happened during the migration period, from Maasai Mara to Serengeti, so we saw loads of wildebeests doing the migration. I was there in September, the migration period is from July to October.
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EATING
There´s obviously no restaurant inside the reserve, so the best thing to do is to bring it with you. At the safari we took lunch boxes, and we had a picnic at the park. The lunch box was very good, we had chicken, a sandwich, a cake, a banana, water and juice, very filling.
In the tour the meals, water and accommodation included – we had dinner at the Tented Camp/Lodge.
SLEEPING
There plenty of options of places to sleep at the reserve, from camping to fancy lodges – when you book the tour you already choose which kind of place you´ll sleep in.
I spent the night at Mountain Rock Mara Springs, at Tented Camps. I was really impressed by it, it´s not a camping at all – you sleep inside a big tent that is very similar to a proper room, with two beds (with mosquito nets), a hot shower and even a private toilet.
Mara Springs is a great place for relaxing, it´s very peaceful. There they have a huge tent that is the restaurant area, where you have the meals (and where you can charge you batteries – at the tents the electricity works only from 7PM to 11PM, but it works 24h at the restaurant).
Blogger’s tip: if you stay there, make sure you lock your tent, there are many monkeys around the camp that love to go inside the tents.
If you´re looking for something fancy, there are many options of lodges around – the girls that was doing the tour with me slept at AA Lodge, a very beautiful and fancy place.
How about you? Have you already been to Maasai Mara and have some cool tips about it? Or do you plan to go and do you have some doubts? Share your ideas leaving a comment here!
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Planning your trip:
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