Day 11: Changing a Tire with Lions

We woke up early enough in the tree house to see the earliest hint of dawn spread across the Mara. We drank hot coffee and watched another African day begin. We slowly hiked back toward Serian Camp. We were really able to look at and touch the thorny Acacia trees with their ridged stout spines nearly three inches long. The yellow and white Acacia, we found in a moister area have equally long spines, but they are softer so elephants and giraffes like to browse on them. We also found another type of thorn tree that looks very similar called the whistling thorn tree. It had a hollow ball at the base of each spine. If you rattled the branch small insects came streaming out of holes in these structures. The tree gets it name from the fact that wind blowing through the holes will cause whistling.

We were back to Serian Camp for a late breakfast and then off for the evening game drive. At the end of the day while watching a pride of lines in the fading light, another Land Cruiser joined us from our camp. As we prepared to leave, we noticed that one of their tires had gone flat. Dixon pulled the Land Cruiser between the lions and the truck with a flat leaving just barely enough room for the men to work. The speed with which the four Masai guides could change a tire when parked only a few hundred feet of a pride of 13 lions rivals that of a highly trained NASCAR team during a racing pit stop. Tire replaced, we were all now on our way back to camp when we were surprised by a large camp fire and an elegant bush dinner under the stars just outside of Serian Camp – It was a perfect day.