It is cold...
If you visualise Africa like a warm continent only, you are wrong, it is cold, really cold sometimes. I even had temperatures below zero celsius or zero in Zimbabwe in a National park, and not while Climbing the Kilimanjaro.
So it's cold, its 5am... the camp brings you a good mug of hot coffee and two biscuits. You get ready and leave around 5:30-6am.
It is dark...but the sky is starting to shine... and to be honest the light in the morning is not that great in Africa, I don't know but since my travels are photographic oriented I do chase the good light sometimes, and I don't find it a nice "golden hour" to be honest. On the other Hand sunsets are something out of this world. NOTHING BEATS THE SUNSET IN AFRICA, NOTHING!
So you start your day, with an early morning game drive, at least you should, never stay in the camp/lodge and start the day late, otherwise why would you go to the Mara? Even if you are cold, tired, saw all the animals you wanted, GO, always GO for every game drive you can, something is always gonna happen.
Njapit and Me started the day and he said he wanted to look out for something special today. It was not the Wildebeest crossing the River because we drove North. So I didn't ask and kept looking outside for some sightings.
All of a sudden Njapit says "look Hyena hunting a baby Wildebeest" so we got off our direction to quickly see the action. We arrived a bit too quick and scared the Hyena that had the Wildebeest calf on the ground. The Hyena hesitated after we arrived, and the calf wasn't hurt, but kind of shocked, and he managed to stand up and started running; The wrong direction! He is chased by Hyenas till he jumped into a waterhole. Wrong decision. The one Hyena calls, alarmed many others Hyenas nearby and in a few minutes the calf was surrounded on all sides while waiting in the waterhole. His destiny was one and only one, but I wasn't prepared for what I was going to see.
Suddenly the calf starts running and the pack of Hyenas right behind, the chase lasted 20-30 meters, and the calf was pushed to the ground very easily.
But what happened next is something I knew but wasn't expecting. Usually the predators struggle/suffocate their prey, and then start eating it. Not the Hyenas.
There was no intent to kill the calf, no Hyena went to the throat, it was exactly the opposite. They started eating it from "soft" parts, like belly, lower belly...reaping it off and eating the intestine first.
I was just watching the whole scene from a distance of 10-15 m. I did not film, or take any pictures till the calf died, I was impressed and "shocked" in a good way because this is nature, and nature is brutal, nature has to survive, but it was a difficult scene to watch.
All finished very quickly, a few minutes, but for me it was long enough, and hard enough.
And when you think is all over, something way way far on the horizon starts moving into our direction... The kind of the "Jungle"....it is actually the king of the Savanna but nevermind.
A big male lion, that was recently treated by the Vets of the park because he got heavily injured during a territorial fight with another lion. So he was hungry, and needed the fresh kill that he smelled in the air.
I thought that a pack of Hyenas would be a challenge for a single lion, and he was also half injured. But NO!
The king didn't even had to do anything, the whole pack of Hyenas just left while the lion was approaching. The kill was taken over by the lion in no time.
see the two minutes video of the Maasai Mara trip:
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