For many people, Africa means doing a safari (which simply means 'journey'). There are numerous famous wildlife parks, and one of the best known is the Masai Mara, the park belonging to the Masai tribe. As part of our three week trip we were able to spend four days there, driving aimlessly round the vast plains looking for lions, elephants, and other 'exotic' animals. It's a half day's drive from Nairobi which takes you across the floor of the Great Rift Valley where you can see animals such as giraffe roaming free, and that's not even a national park! We opted due to cost to stay in a tented camp (Olongo Perro) just outside the eastern park boundary, which meant driving into the reserve everyday. We were lucky with our booking, as we paid for a group trip in a seven seater minivan, but we were the only two to book, so we had it all to ourselves. Bargain. If you want to see loads of animals you need to time your trip to coincide with the annual migrations and we were right at the end of that so on a couple of days we didn't really see much wildlife - lesson learned, sometimes you can cut a corner too far.