Captain Spaulding Chronicles: Photodump II - Great Rift Valley and Masai Mara

    The Great Rift Valley and Masai Mara featured as prominently in my animal obsessed childhood as any fairyland. My conception was for years a children's book primary color illustration which it would be almost impossible for reality to live up to.

      Almost

The Rift Valley is inconceivably large. It runs most of the eastern length of the African continent from Ethiopia to Tanzania. Standing on one of the bordering mountainsides, the land stretches endlessly into the horizon

Through exactly no planning on my part, these three images actually stitch together fairly well as a panorama

Masai Mara is the northernmost extent of the Serengeti Plains. It is just as vibrant and teeming with life as you might expect. I only wish I was quicker on the draw with my camera. I have no pictures of banded mongoose or several of the other smaller birds and mammals that live here.

Gray crowned cranes

Sunset on Masai Mara

Young warthogs having a tussle while their mother grazes nearby

Topi

It took me several attempts to get this shot of a swallow swooping in front of a herd of elephants

The marker at the Kenya/Tanzania border. Technically I've been to Tanzania now.

A hippo pressing the boundaries of what is too close.

Possibly the Vervet monkey who stole my sandwich

The Mara bridge. Our guide told us that this is where National Geographic stood to get Wildebeest migration footage

Male red-headed rock agama

Lion cub

Newborn wildebeest

Fortunately this cape buffalo and his herd eventually moved out of the road.

Helmeted guinea fowl

This was going to be a picture of the lion's golden eye peering through the grass, but she kept blinking.

Lilac breasted roller