A couple things about Africa’s Great Rift Valley: It’s the largest, longest, and most visible feature of its kind on Earth. Astronauts, in fact, have suggested it is the easiest geographical feature to see from orbit. The Valley spans some 3,500 miles (5,600 kilometers) from the Horn of Africa in the north, southward through Ethiopia and Kenya, Tanzania, and all the way down to Malawi and Mozambique. A giant faulting procedure in Earth’s crust, along with terrific volcanic energy, transformed the region into a lava-laden, super-rich area that plays host to a diverse range of life.
The geological upheaval that made the Great Rift Valley also produced Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya, and numerous other volcano-spurred peaks. Lake Victoria, which graces the western edge of Kenya, would not exist. Nor would the fertility in the landscape that made this rich region a breeding ground for living things of all kinds, not least importantly the first hominids and, later, human beings, who ever walked the planet.
This morning at Maasai Mara Governor’s Camp, we set out at 6:30 for the first of three daily game drives. This park stretches across such a region that you can drive out for an hour and see nothing but mountains walling every side of you, enormous, lumbering plains between them, and hundreds of animals scattered as far as the eye can see.
Virtually everything you can think of is here, and after taking six or eight 2- or 3-hour drives over several days you begin to wonder, “Can anything new and original be left?” The answer is an unqualified yes. Every time you drive out you see different things, different situations in different places, and animals engaging in other parts of the life you saw before.
Today it was lions resting with their cubs, eyeing distant gazelles in the morning Sun, the cubs feeding and nuzzling. Baby elephants fought and played as they pushed against a bush set between them, while their mother chewed loads of grass, keeping a watchful eye.
We saw many young giraffes, hyenas eating bones, bushbabies (Africa’s smallest primates), countless baboon antics, jackals on the hunt, hippos bathing in water holes and barking with ferocious grunts, enormous Nile crocodiles (we didn’t tell them we sampled their cousins at a restaurant the other day), baby warthogs being led by their mothers, anxious dik-dik (which look like dwarf deer), and beautiful birds such as saddle-billed storks, egrets (who accompany elephants), cranes of several types, guineafowls, white-headed vultures, African fish eagles, secretarybirds, African jacanas, and many others.
The overwhelming size of the park here amazes anyone who comes. And the region continues on (southward, in Tanzania, it’s called the Serengeti Plain). The Great Rift Valley holds just as much amazing wildlife, you feel, as it did 2 million years ago when our forebears came onto the scene.
Tomorrow we will have a short game ride early, board a plane for Nairobi, spend some time freshening up at the Norfolk Hotel, and begin our flights home. It has been a spectacular experience — one that exceeded my wildest dreams. The eclipse was perfect, the wildlife amazing, and the hospitality from the Kenyans unbelievable. After my return to Milwaukee I will post many images and videos on our web site and I encourage you to do the same if you witnessed the eclipse.
For now, thanks to Melita Thorpe of MWT Associates and to the fun and hardy travelers I got to know a little better along the way.
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