In the Masai Mara the Wildebeest herds cross the Mara river at points which have been used for hundreds if not thousands of years. Some of these are on steep cliffs and others on less challenging gentle crossings. For our August expedition we decided to plot the different crossings we saw to see whether there was a pattern or any logic to the mind of a Wildebeest.
We invested in a Garmin hand held GPSMAP 60CSX receiver (they need to do something about their naming conventions!). Aside from the name this is a really excellent device. At each of our eleven river crossing, three cheetah kills, Lion cubs and other significant sightings we marked the position which was stored on the Garmin's memory. This was really useful for the Cheetah and her cub. We sat for a day with her and aside from playing, the mother did not do much. The next morning we went back to the location, using the GPS as a guide, and found her. That day she killed three times! The GPS also is able to track your moving position. One afternoon it started raining ... very, very hard. We closed down the covers of the Landcruiser and the driver attempted to get us back to camp. Looking at the GPS later it was clear that at times because of the rain we were driving in circles!
Another amazing aspect is the ability to imported GPS data into Google Earth. This is simply a matter of downloading a file of the waypoints, dragging them onto Google Earth and like magic the crossings we spent so much time photographing appeared on Google Earth. This is really an excellent takeaway from the trip. The extract which we reproduced above does not really do Google Earth justice. With Google Earth and our data imported you can fly up the Mara river past each of the crossing points and in some parts of the Mara, the detail available on Google Earth is astonishing.
Our conclusion on how Wildebeest decide where to cross ... completely random!
Julie and Adam
GPS and Google Maps
