Masai Mara National Reserve

Beatiful Park but watch out for corruption

We flew into Masai Mara and were held up for some time from entering the park as the agents said the network was down and they could not verify our pre-paid fees. When our guides refused to pay the bribe the network suddenly was back up and we were allowed entry. Almost immediately upon entry we were pulled over by a "ranger" who stated we had driven in an area where we should not have. Even though there were at least 7 other vehichles doing the same thing and one that was still stuck in mud, we were the only ones stopped. Our guide was threatened that we could lose our access to the park for the entire time we were to be there (2 days). In the end our guide paid the bribe and we were on our way. I stongly suspect that the officals at the airport contacted the ranger to extract our "Fee" since we hadn't paid the bribe at the airport.

We stayed in 3 other parks and never saw anything close to this corruption. It made us not feel safe in this park. While the park itself was amazing I would not go back to this park and would advise anyone wanting to visit Masai Mara to reconsider or just know that there will be "Fees" to pay.

In October, there were very few animals around. Migration had already ended. However, the amount of lions we saw was very big, and we had the opportunity to watch how they behaved. The fact than migration wasn't on, reduced the number of vehicles around and we could see some lions and other animals alone.

Not a bad place to visit but Disappointing

The driver/Guide and myself left Nairobi at 0700 in the morning and drove to the Sarova Mara game Camp. We stopped on the way at the Rift Valley Lookout and a then a Souvenir shop a bit later on. Both places have clean toilets and expensive souvenirs, you can get them for a third of the price in Nairobi. The Game Camp was very nice with fast Wifi and comfortable luxury tents. They turn off the power during the day and there is no air-conditioning in the tents which get quite hot in the afternoon. Our first drive through the park started in the afternoon and we saw all the various deer, lions, elephants, giraffe, buffalo, hyena, fox and some birds. The food at the Camp was excellent with a huge buffet but they charge you for a bottle of water ridiculous but juice is free. The next day we started early at 0700 and drove around the park until 1300 when we ate a packed lunch, continued driving until 1600 at which point we returned to the Camp. We saw the same animals today and a Cheetah. We never saw a Leopard or a Rhino which was disappointing as this was one of the promises made which I think are false promises because if these animals had been in the park we would have seen them. The next day a later start at 0900 and we visited the Masai village in the Park an additional cost of $20 quite interesting and then returned to Nairobi. I would not come back here or recommend this park, there must be more interesting Parks in Africa where you can see the famous Big 5 in the wild.

After all this park was made out to be we were fairly disapointed. We saw a good variety of wildlive but only small isolated groups. Mush of the terrain was burnt and void ao anything. This was not due to natural bush fires but controlled burning and it completely ruined any feeling of bush atmosphere.