Day 3 - Tuesday

Thankfully I slept from 1030pm til 540am - felt a little groggy, but the African plains soon blew that away. We set off at 620am and saw little until 730am when we stumbled upon a Giraffe about to give birth - what a find!
Captured the whole thing including the bump as the baby hit the ground from a fair height as the mother was standing the whole time! Took the kid 12 minutes in total to learn to stand - incredible...graphic, but incredible all the same.
Just as she was about to deliver the placenta, when a radio call came in with a Leopard sighting... we didn't hang around. Sadly by the time we got there the female Leopard (called Fig) had retreated into the bushes and the sun was truly roasting so we decided to go take some scenic shots of the truck in the beautiful riverine lugga.

We ventured a little further and found some more lions with cubs before heading back for lunch - the sun was too harsh to shoot anything anyway and we were getting burnt. It was so hot that I broke my habit of a beer at lunchtime and ended up having two instead. Which meant I was fairly dozey by the time the lightning storm started at 330pm and we were gearing up to head out again. The rains started just as we found a pride of lions with 9 cubs playing in the mud - hilarious to watch. Then we decided it must be beer o'clock and I leant forward to the front cab and noticed the cool box was missing - "George..." I started... "where have you put my beer?". He stumbled for an answer before suggesting that one of the other trucks from Kicheche must have it, he said he would radio the others and we would have to go find them to collect it!? very unlike George, but I didn't twig at all.
A few minutes of travel later and we arrived out on the open plains where all the Kicheche trucks and guests we were waiting for us with a blazing fire, nibbles and champagne on ice!!! Caroline had arranged a 40th birthday party for me in the Masai Mara! How amazing is that!?!? :-) The icing on the cake was the thunderstorm that started with a downpour of torrential rain to which Caroline and I, in typical camping fashion, simply grabbed the ponchos from the truck and sat back down - everyone thought we were mad, but they eventually did the same and we guzzled another couple of bottles giggling away under the African monsoon. Brilliant. Then when we had packed up and all the trucks were making their way back to camp in the dark George let me express my thanks over the CB radio which started a hilarious conversation amongst the slightly tipsy passengers of each vehicle. What an end to an amazing game drive.
A much needed hot bucket shower and we were back in the mess tent for dinner and more drinks, followed by an awesome birthday cake - accompanied by Masai staff dancing, drumming and singing. Then of course, more drinks. We crawled into our tent at 2:30am! I will never forget my 40th.