Kenya - Big Five: Elephants

Now it's time to share all the amazing African animals we saw on the savanna - often times up close! We enjoyed three days in Masai Mara National Reserve and criss-crossed the savanna and crossed paths with so many wild animals - right out in their element doing what they do!

In April, I was lucky enough to present some photos of our trip to our son's first grade class - I will use some of the slides from the presentation to introduce the animals. I will also try to add in some interesting things we learned and witnessed as well as additional breathtaking photos!

I'm going to start with elephants! They are part of the Big Five - elephant, rhino, lion, leopard, and cape buffalo - these were originally named by game hunters as these animals are big, dangerous, and prized (for various reasons). Now safari companies have claimed the Big Five as a draw to their camps and guarantee you will see them on the game drives. We saw all five - except the rhino was only spotted in Nairobi Natl Park (and I'll tell you about the other big five animals and some different groups later - think of this as a mini-series of blog posts and photos).

As for elephants, we saw the cute babies at the elephant orphanage on the 1st day in Nairobi - I already shared some photos and videos of that cuteness! We did not see any elephants in the Nairobi National Reserve because they are just too big and need more land than available in the national park that is within sights of the city. However, once we got to Masai Mara - we saw so many elephants!

It started by spotting herds of elephants from the small plane ride into the park - we flew low and our pilots were purposefully flying us closer to get a view of the herds they scouted out (we were the only two passengers on the plane at that point). Then, after waiting an our and a half at the airstrip for our ride to camp, we were rewarded with a mama and baby elephant on the drive

Over the course of a few days, we spotted elephants in herds, solo, pairs, spread out and huddled together - it was quite amazing to be in the presence of these gigantic creatures!

Thanks to Kifa, we learned that elephants can be right or left-handed - you can tell by looking at their tusks. Whichever side is more worn down is the dominant hand/side - they will favor that side when eating (and they walk accordingly in circles while feeding) and fighting. We were pretty good at identifying the elephant's dominant side by the end of our safari drives.

Stay tuned for more stunning African animals... (and adding more photos soon)