Mara river crossing

After a 3 hour drive from Klein’s camp we finally arrived at the Mara River in the northern Serengeti, we immediately drove along the riverbank searching for a herd of wildebeest that looked as if they wanted to cross. The river was littered with dead wildebeest that had drowned during previous crossing attempts, there were hundreds of vultures circling overhead and also sitting on the carcasses in the river feeding, we passed about 6 large crocodiles sunning themselves on the rocks, they had eaten so much that none of them were feeding on the dead wildebeest in the river, after about 20 minutes we found a small herd of wildebeest close to the river suspiciously watching the water. The wildebeest moved to the waters edge and just as we thought they were going to cross they turned around and walked off, after doing this 3 times one of the lead wildebeest was finally happy with the chosen spot and she leapt into the water with her calf close behind, this was what the rest of the herd had been waiting for and suddenly hundreds of wildebeest appeared from the bush on the riverbank and jumped into the river following the lead female across, for the next 30 minutes we watched the amazing spectacle as wave after wave of wildebeest arrived on the opposite riverbank and jumped into the river and started crossing, it seems as if the noise created by the wildebeest crossing the river attracted more wildebeest to the crossing point and in the end we must have seen thousands of wildebeest crossing the Mara river, as suddenly as it started it stopped again, we were unsure why but one wildebeest on the opposite riverbank got startled by something and refused to cross, panic spread amongst the animals waiting to cross and they all turned around and left the crossing point. During the crossing we only saw 2 casualties, one young animal was caught by a crocodile and another was trampled to death at the exit point.

Posted: Klein's Camp by Andrew Schoeman, Date: 5 July 2008