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Welcome to Maasai Mara

Welcome to my first Fisi Camp blog 

My name is Marie and together with my husband Ken we built Fisi Camp in this beautiful part of the Mara, we also live and work at the camp, with the help of our valued staff we offer our guests a most amazing and unforgettable experience. We want to share with you what life is like in the Maasai Mara, home to so many animals including the ‘Big Five’ where everyone lives so close to nature, in all its glory.

The camp lies on the eastern side of the Maasai Mara national reserve separated only by a small stream, since the park is not fenced the animals are free to roam wherever they like, although the predators do tend to stay away from human activity. We often get Hyenas, (Fisi in Kiswahili) in the camp at night and you will be sure to hear them during your stay. Other than that, we regularly get different antelopes, zebra and even elephants occasionally coming into the camp.

In these series of blogs I hope to bring you stories of our personal experiences on safari and that of our guests. Because of my personal interest in the ‘Big Cats’ I will also bring you stories about our visits with the Sopa pride of Lions. The total number of lions in this pride are around 22 however, when they are not all together at a kill, they separate into several smaller groups to rest. The males, of which there are three can usually be found around the periphery of the territory.  We shall be checking in with this pride regularly.

This morning, first we came upon 5 lions, one female and 4 young doing what lions do best, lazing around, sleeping, they looked pretty full as if they had just eaten, and sure enough, not far away, we found the half-eaten carcass of a wildebeest. At the kill we found another female and 3 more young still feasting, well, the female was still feasting, the young were jumping around on the carcass and playing with the hooves, having great fun.

It was such a peaceful scene and so quiet as there were no other vehicles around.

After spending some time with this group, we moved on to see if we could find one of the males belonging to this pride, and while driving around looking for the male we unexpectedly chanced upon a mother cheetah with 4 very young cubs.

Cheetah cubs are just so cute, and while 3 of the cubs were sleeping near the ever watchful mother one of the cubs was very curious about us and approached our vehicle a little to get a better look.

We found out later that 2 years ago this particular female cheetah, had 7 cubs and had sadly lost them all, it’s pretty tough for a cheetah cub to survive, especially when the mother takes them into lion territory.

I hope at least some of these cubs survive this time, we shall try to find them from time to time to see how they are doing and when I say we, I mean our amazing guide that actually finds these animals for us.

Eventually, we found one of the Male lions belonging to the Sopa pride, he was sleeping on the black volcanic rocks that litter this part of the Mara. He was lying next to a female from a different pride, she had separated from her own pride to give birth, a lioness will usually give birth alone and introduce the cubs to the rest of the pride when they are a few weeks old.

 

We looked around likely hiding places for the cubs, but couldn’t find them. This is quite unusual behavior for a male from one pride to get so close to a female from another pride, especially one with cubs.

So we leave them in peace until next week.

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