We made it! Because we like to be as aggressive and complicated as possible with our travel, we started with a red eye flight to Boston followed by a 12-hour layover, followed by a pair of eight-hour flights, a stay in an extremely high-security Nairobi airport hotel (complete with me finding out when we tried to check in that I’d never completed the booking, which is a first), and a teeny-tiny prop plane ride before getting to Bataleur Camp in Maasai Mara. Thank goodness for award miles that got us lay-flat biz class seats and family who gifted us with the most comfortable napping bed and the best rec for oysters in the North End.
*The Seat Assignment Incident
A side note on airport adventures: we logged a new one this trip when our seats got split up so we asked the gate agent if we could be together and her kind favor set off some kind of bedlam chain; the grown men who ended up next to each other after that apparently hated each other with the fiery passions of hell and forced the flight attendant on board to switch people again because otherwise blood would have been shed; another couple who kind of sucked anyway ended up getting separated and the lady complained about it the entire flight; then because i think the first two guys couldn’t even be NEAR each other two more guys had to move their seats, and all the while Kevin and I sat next to each other in our favored seats and acted like we had no idea what was going on. And i don’t feel guilty about it because it’s our honeymoon dammit I’m a repeat victim of giving up my window seat with legroom for the entitled mom in the back row middle seat who can’t be separated from her pre-teen because I’m in public and too embarrassed to say no even though I’m furious.
Maasai Mara Game National Reserve
The Maasai Mara is vast, raw, and overwhelming. We are teeny tiny dots within 1,000 square miles of unapologetic nature, and it is impossible not to feel great insignificance and great privilege at the same time. I’m just going to get it out of the way and say it; everything looks just like it does in the Lion King and it’s grand and I’m very excited that my naive, cliched mental picture of the African wilderness is also correct.
We are staying at & Beyond’s magnificent Bataleur Camp which features tents that are 10x nicer than our actual home; my observations are brief because I haven’t fully stopped short-circuiting but our accommodations include our own G&T bar, 3 bathing options (we have an indoor shower, an outdoor shower, and a giant claw footed bathtub in the middle of back room), a window from the outside that opens up into a closet from the inside where our tent butler brings us coffee and cookies and says good morning to us at 5am (aka the Vanishing Cabinet from Borgin & Burkes in Knockturn Ally) leather-covered everything everywhere, and an expansive front porch that opens up onto the game reserve and serves up giraffe and hippo and gazelle crossings every 5 seconds. This tent is straight out of the Quidditch Cup campgrounds in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire except you’re here to watch animals instead of people flying around on brooms.
Our first game drive happened about an hour after we got settled in; we have our own guide and a private Land Cruiser which is the coolest car I’ve ever seen. Our guide, Erick, is patient and has mad Land Cruiser skills and knows everything about everything in the reserve. A rundown of what we have seen so far, as in-order as I can remember it:
Tree Hyrax (in the woods, within 10 seconds of beginning our drive), giraffe, zebra, baboon, Thompson’s gazelle, zebra, impala, eland, buffalo, secretary bird, zebra, heron, warthog, cheetah, elephant, zebra, lion, zebra zebra zebra zebra. There are. Animals. Everywhere.
Some highlights from Day 1 in the Maasai Mara:
- We watched two baby elephant play fight by braiding their trunks into some weird adorable hug and then slowly shove each other around.
- We saw a cheetah within 90 minutes of being on our first safari drive; a lot of visitors end up never seeing one at all.
- We had our first lion sighting; a lioness who was all gashed up and almost visibly sulking after getting in some kind of territorial fight with another lioness.
- I am doubling down on my bird-loving revelation from the Galapagos and getting really into bird watching here; my dark horse runner-up of the day after the elephants was the secretary bird – it is literally named the secretary bird because it kind of looks like a bird version of a hot secretary with long legs and tight pants and pens sticking out of her hair and it’s kind of sexist but also I’m dying and it’s so true.
- I would like a pet warthog.
Casual pics are hard to come by because Kevin handles our made-before-the-whole-internet-thing camera, stuff is usually far away and looks teeny on an iphone camera, and you have virtually no desire to pick up your camera and snap anything because you’re so enthralled you can’t do anything but stare and gape and smash your binoculars into your face a little bit harder. I have no idea how these instagram influencer ladies take these crazy safari pictures seeing as you’re not supposed to wear fancy clothes, you aren’t allowed to get out of the car (I fully support this rule and prefer to not be eaten or sacked with half a ton of buffalo horn force unexpectedly).
Out for now to lay by pool and watch more animals and mess around with the Vanishing Cabinet and claw footed bathtub and G& T bar. All posts are about a week delayed because honeymoons rule for relaxing and being super procrastinate-y in finishing things.
sounds like perfection!!!! relax and procrastinate!