We're celebrating our 10th birthday at Escape Worldwide,
and looking back at 10 years of globetrotting in the name of bringing you great
holidays - at least that's our excuse! We're having a look at our personal top
10 favourite travel experiences of the last 10 years.
Mark gets far too close to a cheetah!
"It’s an early start this morning for a game drive from our home on the Masai Mara, the Mara Serena. We've been on safari for four days now and I'm getting in to the swing of things, with early starts to see the wildlife first thing in the morning when its all quite active, before the daytime temperatures start to rise and the big cats head for a snooze. After a quick coffee we’re leaving the lodge at 6am, but it’s not long before the excitement starts. Within a few miles of the lodge we’ve already seen a herd of around 30 elephants crossing the plains, and a pack of the somewhat ungainly looking bat-eared foxes, but there's so much going on it's hard to know where to look. That's the thing about the Masai Mara - there's always so much activity going on, and being a relatively small national park you never seem to be too far away from the action.
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| Mark came across this amazing Cheetah and her cubs |
After a few minutes of us staring at her, and her assessing us, the cheetah comes down from the hillock and heads in our direction. She decides to use our vehicle as a lookout, and jumps on the spare tyre on the back to get a better view of the area, popping her head over the roof of the vehicle – I'm not sure who was more surprised, us at having a cheetah stare at us, or her finding a whole load of 'wildlife' in her new lookout point! We’re all pinned to our seats in awe, but the driver seems quite relaxed. He tells us that this kind of thing happens some time, although it’s only once the cheetah has gone that he admits it’s never happened to him before! After a few minutes of us staring at her, and her assessing us, the cheetah comes down from the hillock and heads in our direction. She decides to use our vehicle as a lookout, and jumps on the spare tyre on the back to get a better view of the area, popping her head over the roof of the vehicle – I'm not sure who was more surprised, us at having a cheetah stare at us, or her finding a whole load of 'wildlife' in her new lookout point! We’re all pinned to our seats in awe, but the driver seems quite relaxed. He tells us that this kind of thing happens some time, although it’s only once the cheetah has gone that he admits it’s never happened to him before!
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| Mark with a Cheetah on the back of the vehicle |
We’ve just spent the last few minutes watching a cheetah with two cubs,
and we’re the only people for miles around! The cheetah is perched on a small
hillock with the cubs, using the raised ground as a vantage point as the sun
comes up over the Mara. Our driver (who knows everything there is to know about
wildlife in this part of the world) tells us that she'steaching her cubs, who
seem relatively young, some of the techniques of hunting, from finding a good
spot to survey the local area to protecting yourself from other wildlife.
Throughout the area it seems that the wildlife takes very little notice ofvisitors
in the park in their little metal boxes - in some national parks it seems
that the local wildlife isn't as used to visitors as they are on the Masai Mara
and other areas such as the Serengeti, and its not unusual for a lion to have a
quick snooze in the shadow of a vehicle - there's not much you can do about it
other than to wait for the lion to move on!
Escape Worldwide - Home of Long Haul Holidays
http://www.escapeworldwide.co.uk
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