Wonders of the Mara

• The lodge has a great view of the plains, and you do not have to drive far to see the animals

It’s the great savanna of Africa. Within a few minutes of flying into the Mara, I spot an elephant and giraffes on the plains below, and on the banks of the Talek river, a pair of hippos out of the water.

It’s the season before the great migration and the plains are filled with tall grasses of different patterns in shades of gold and green.

There’s little to tell there’s anything in the vast grassland that spreads to the horizon, touching the magical Mara Thomson’s gazelle. The mother cheetah’s belly is nicely rounded, and there’s very little left of the antelope. Meantime, the cub is still enjoying the meal, its nose red with blood.

“Cheetahs are diurnal animals. They hunt during the day,” explains Joseph Gichuki, the driver guide at Mara Intrepids. “They are not as strong as the lion or the leopard, so they have to eat fast or else their kill will be stolen by another animal. They can even be chased away by hyenas and vultures.”

We think we’ve done well by spotting the cheetah within a five-minute drive of the lodge but we’re in for another surprise.

Literally another five minutes away, we come across another cheetah with two cubs on an anthill. The trio watch us lazily but the mother’s ears pick the sound of the cowbells and she sits up alert, scanning the plains. The herd of Maasai cows is far in the distant and not sensing any danger to her cubs, she flops down again, relaxed.

A Jackson’s widowbird grabs our attention as the black bird with a long tail hops in and out of the tall stems.

“It’s a male in its breeding plumage trying to attract a female,” explains our guide. It seems to be the season as we spot other on the same mission.

“Between May and June, the plains are full of long grass,” says Paul Kirui, the head guide at Mara Intrepids. “It makes it difficult for the smaller animals to browse. It’s mostly the big animals like giraffes and elephants and the bigger antelopes that you can see around.

And it makes hunting difficult for the cats so they come up with strange strategies. You’ll see lions and cheetahs trying to climb trees and anthills to get a high vantage point.

Cheetahs don’t usually climb trees because their claws do not retract like those of the other cats’ but because they need to locate prey, they’ll try anything, even hunting zebra.”

Cheetahs are not strong so they hunt smaller antelopes, which they chase to exhaustion. This helps the diminutive cat to go for the jugular of the exhausted prey to make a quick kill.

This is really unusual. Twenty minutes after our sighting of the second cheetah, we meet the star of the BBC Cat Diary Live. Shakira — not to be confused with the pop idol — and her three cubs.

At this point, if l could get a paw print as an autograph of the movie queen, l’d be thrilled. But no such luck. It’s “Shakira had five cubs but two were killed,” Gichuki tells us. “Cheetah mothers keep moving frequently when they have cubs so that lions and leopards don’t get them.”

Just as the sun begins to fade away in the horizon splashed with gold, a pride of lions appears — 11 of them — the males with their long manes, females and cubs. The male roars and rolls over on it back with all four paws in the air. The females stir from a long siesta ready to prowl the plains.

“This is my favourite time in the Mara,” says Kirui, “because there’s not much traffic so it is easy to spot animals and have them to yourself.”

A tawny eagle perched on a lone balanites tree scans the vistas for a hunt as a wattled plover, the largest of the plovers, feeds on the ground.

We stop under another lonely tree on the plains for a sundowner. “In another few weeks it will be July, and the plains will begin to fill with the wildebeest as they cross in from the Serengeti,” Kirui narrates the seasons of the Mara.

“There will be 1.5 million wildebeest entering from Sand River and going to the far end of the Mara before turning around to make the cyclic round journey. By the end of November, all the grass will have been eaten by the wildebeest and the 400,000 zebra and other animals.

We’ve seen plenty of animals in one afternoon within a 10-kilometre radius of the lodge. The following morning, the plains are quieter as the great orb ascends from the horizon and warms the day. We’re looking for rhinos and leopards but they remain elusive, so we settle for a hearty breakfast by the banks of the river, with hippos grunting below in the muddy waters of the Talek.