May 2, 2019
Volume 49 - No. 18
By Richard “Pete” Peterson
We landed at Maasai Mara airstrip to much excitement. Ping, our new guide, introduced himself quickly, grabbed our luggage, tossed it into the truck and said, “The lions are about to make a kill. Let’s hurry.” Just like reality TV! We jolted across the savanna in hot pursuit of the hunter. In the The Paper - 760.747.7119
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distance a cloud of dust rose, and maybe thirty seconds later we saw a lioness padding across the savanna. “She missed,” Ping said. It was a spectacular day, sunny, with the ever-present African wind stirring shrubs and kicking up dust. We were surprised at the amount of wild life we saw. Within minutes we saw rhinos, hippos, crocodiles, water buffa-
lo and literally hundreds of scavenger birds including the rare Ginnent Antelope plus Oryx, hartebeest (rare), and of course, the ubiquitous Kori Bustard. Seeing the Marsh Pride of lions was like revisiting friends since we too were fans of National Geographic’s television shows on them. We parked at a fallen tree, to watch a young male sleep, stretched out on a limb.
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Ping, like all the guides assigned to us, loved his work. All eagerly shared their knowledge on everything African. Ping went into great detail on the vicious nature of water buffalo, while a particularly menacing one lowered his horns and trotted toward our vehicle. When the animal was maybe fifty paces away, Ping hit the ignition and we backed away. Too close for me. (Later, we learned he had