David Attenborough, Eat Your Heart Out!

What a day!!!!!  My brain hurts just thinking about everything we saw and witnessed in the past 24 hours, but the absolute most astonishing thing was that we witnessed a Cheetah kill from the very start to the (very sad) end.

We had stopped by the side of the trail because there were two male cheetahs relaxing in the grass.  After a short while, one of them suddenly became very alert and very focused on something only he could see off in the distance.  His brother noticed and began to look off in the same direction, and then they both took off at a fast lope across the trail, and up a long hill.  They must have traveled about 1 kilometer, and we were able to follow them.  Then one cheetah very slowly and stealthily crept down low, hidden by the grass, while the other one inched forward, coiled like a spring, shoulder muscles tensed, neck outstretched, and his eyes laser-focused on the prey -- a young impala who was completely unaware of his imminent doom.  Then, on cue the cheetahs both launched into a full-tilt gallop, and in mere seconds they had captured their prey and had it down on the ground.  They were both eating their prize by the time we drove up to where they made their kill. 

It was the most thrilling, tense, and also very sad thing to witness -- utterly astonishing, and something I never imagined I would see in real life.

We also saw a dizzying array of other denizens of the Mara -- hippos, ostriches, elephants, a crocodile, Impala, Topis, Cape Buffalo, a jackal, lions,  hyenas, a pair of eagles ... the list goes on and on.  Our driver and tracker couldn't believe how lucky we were, and neither could we.