We left Naivasha early, heading to Maasai Mara (meaning “spotted” in Swahili) National Park. Joseph told us it would be a long day of bad roads. He wasn’t kidding.

We stopped in Narok for lunch; Narok is the largest Masai village in Kenya. Not sure what I was expecting when I heard that, perhaps a cluster of Maasai neighborhoods, with their customary saplings or cut branches with points at the top that form a circle around their homes. This serves as a form of protection from intruders, plus as a convenient place to hang their brightly colored clothing.

But Narok was instead a small grouping of restaurants and businesses. It may be that Maasai housing was further into the bush. The town seemed to be a convenient crossroads for travelers heading to Maasai Mara. Still, we saw large herds of cattle and goats.

The road to Narok has been newly repaved; from there (after Ewaso Ngiro), it is mostly unpaved and dusty. Calling it unpaved is a nicety: The part that was paved —the old road—was full of potholes and rocks. From there, it was pure dusty rutted roads.

There has been Kenyan concern about Chinese investment in Kenya: China brings in big money for infrastructure improvements, but also brings in all its own materials and workers. This is apparently standard for China. Working this way, providing no local income for Kenyan people or businesses, does not help the Kenyan people except to perhaps curry favor.

According to Joseph, a group of Chinese recently took several vehicles to Maasai Mara without Kenyan guides. There was great concern that there was no way to monitor what the group did in the Park. The perception is that they could have taken trophies, especially rhino horns. Again, this is the perception; it’s unclear what is the truth.

Our lodging for the next several nights was the AA Mara Lodge.

Five minutes in

To our amazement, we saw elephants, forest (water) buffalo, and lions—two lionesses and an older cub with injured paw. The wound was cylindrical but appeared to be almost healed and not infected. Joseph thought it was a wound from the horn of a prey animal.