And Now For Something Totally Unexpected: Lions – Porini Lion Camp Part 1

When you are someone who is extremely afraid of lions common sense would tell you to avoid camps with ‘lion’ in the title, because there’s probably a lot of lions around! The problem was that we really wanted to see leopards and this camp was also known for them. Since we hadn’t seen a leopard yet in Kenya, it was #1 on our wish list. There was a famous leopard in the territory named Fig that I had seen in a few films/stories that I knew I wanted to see in person, if possible. I was excited when we knew we were going to be in the same vicinity as her, so of course I chose the camp (even with lion in the name!) to increase our chances of meeting this legend.

Well. A few months after booking, a lion killed Fig. I was so sad and disappointed to learn she’d been killed…and of course it gave me another reason to hate lions. At this point we were committed to going to this camp, so I was hoping to: a) see a relative of Fig, and b) avoid lions if we had a private vehicle.

Because of the rain at Rhino Camp we couldn’t leave from the close airstrip again and ended up at this large airstrip that was actually quite nice. I was very surprised when our plane showed up – it was a big one!

No masks were enforced, however most people were smart and sexy and wore one, except for two dummies who sat across from us (of course). I didn’t say anything, but my eyes told them they had low IQs and were ugly. Just kidding – they avoided eye contact with everyone. Ha ha.

Once we made it to our stop, the Olare-Motorogi Conservancy in the Maasai Mara, we were picked up by Wilson (our driver) and Wilfred (our spotter), both silver stars. Impressive! This is where my recorder really came in handy, because why did they both have to have W names? We met so many new people at each camp that if I didn’t record the names I probably would have never remembered. Anyway, these two men couldn’t have been nicer. The first day or so Wilfred, the spotter, did a lot more of the talking. This was unusual to us because at the last camp the spotter rarely spoke except to occasionally point out an animal we had already discovered ourselves 3 seconds beforehand. Ha.

Wilfred was fantastic and he had the absolute best smile. The odd thing was that his smile really reminded me of our nephew, just the brown version of him. I wasn’t going insane – Sal said he could see it when I pointed it out to him. I’ll post a pic of them both further in the report. Wilfred was very smart and shared so much information, which we appreciated much more than just pointing out an animal. I made the mistake of saying something to Wilfred when I first met him like, “so you are the spotter and Wilson is the guide?”. He quickly corrected me by saying, “We’re both guides.” Wilfred definitely proved that time after time. Honestly, I thought he was better than our last driver, who it turns out was the head of the guides at that camp! I could tell right away that the situation at this camp was going to be completely different. Hurrah!

On our drive to camp we got to see a few animals we hadn’t seen yet – ostrich, wildebeest (antelope) and topi (antelope). We also got to see a cute family of ellies. No pics, but believe me… you will be absolutely sick of elephant pics by the time this trip report is over as the second 1/2 of the trip is focused only on them!

We were greeted warmly by Daniel, the head of the camp, and James, one of the wait staff. Daniel was fantastic as he loved to joke around – particularly when I asked him which tent was ours and he said the furthest. When I responded, “oh no”, he told me our tent was something like a half of a mile away. In my head I figured a lion was definitely going to eat me there. Then Sal told me he was joking. They both got a chuckle out of that one. Our tent was the furthest, but it still was pretty close to everything. And like last camp, our first night we were the only guests there!

They had a nice surprise for us with lunch by the river. The food was really good. It was quite windy and we weren’t sure if the weather was going to cooperate as it looked like – you guessed it – rain! The rain held off until it was time for dessert, so we went to the back porch of the mess tent that had comfy couches and protection from the elements and enjoyed looking at our new surroundings, even in the rain. They had a media tent here, so we went there afterward to connect a little bit and charge things up. Sal took a bucket shower after, courtesy of Nathan, our tent keeper, and I exercised. The rain had stopped at that point. We relaxed a little bit, and right before our drive the rain started again. Argh! It was only a little sprinkle to start, but once we were driving it started pouring. So our first game drive there was raining the whole time – sometimes pouring and other times sprinkling so you could at least keep one side open to see things. Again, everyone (except us) was happy to see the rain because it was very dry there, too.

So can you guess what the first thing we saw at lion camp was?

Yes, we saw seven of them. Two of which were adult males. We had to drive up this big hill with very large rocks to get to them. In the pouring rain. Now I know I had told these guys I didn’t like lions, but it’s like nobody believes you until they see your face. Ha. Obviously the lions weren’t doing anything because of the rain, so I suggested maybe we go somewhere else. I’m not going to lie; part of me felt more comfortable looking at them being zipped up in the vehicle since it was pouring at that point, and the other part of me was afraid we were going to get stuck up there because of the rocks and the rain. We didn’t get stuck, but it was very tricky for him to get back down. I’m just really thankful no other vehicles were around. One sort of funny thing is he accidentally beeped the horn a few times when he was moving the steering wheel trying to get us out of there. It was only sort of funny because those were the times the lions didn’t ignore us and actually looked at the vehicle. Hey, man – let’s not point out to the lions where the food is, OK? Of course I had to tease him. It was maybe 50% teasing and 50% really not wanting to draw attention to ourselves.

We didn’t see much once we got down the hill. Eventually we saw about four other vehicles so went to investigate. Guess what we saw? Yeah, yeah. The camp was really living up to its name. This time the rain had lessened so we could take some pics.

So we were watching these two sub-adults as seen in this video.

Now we were close to these younger ones, but Sal was on the side closest, so it was OK. LOL. Sorry, Sal. You signed up for this.

When I think about lions, I think the ones I am more afraid of are actually the sub adults. These are the ones that are actually more interested in , or at least look at, cars. The fully grown ones usually ignore all vehicles. In the video above, there was a noise at the end of the video, which was actually a different vehicle. It startled the sub adult and he started walking towards it. Eek. It drove off and ll was fine, but those sub adults are a little too curious for my liking!

We got back to camp and Daniel told us we were a blessing for bringing the rain. At this point on our Kenya trip it had rained so much that Sal looked at me at one point and said, “Hey hon? What if we are indeed rain gods?”.

We had a little intimate dinner inside the smaller communal tent. All was lovely until we had a visitor that kept flying back and forth.

Luckily Sal didn’t get a picture of me trying to eat dinner with my napkin on my head. James did come in while serving food and saw it. Lord only knows what he thought. Probably, “Too much gin!”.

On my recording I mentioned that this camp was definitely a step up – the tents were nicer as were the vehicles and the communal spaces. We loved it there (well, except for the vast amount of lions). It was slightly bigger than Rhino camp, and usually I prefer the smaller camps, but it didn’t feel large and everyone was lovely. And boy did we have some adventures there! Stay tuned!