It was a compulsion that seemed to suffuse the afternoon safari fleet, here in Kenya’s Masai Mara conservancy.

“Let’s find a leopard.”

It made sense, at least for the six of us riding, again, with our guides, Ashford and Wilson, because the day before we had seen four of the Big Five.

The missing fifth? Panthera pardus. The leopard.

As it turned out, a half dozen Land Cruisers left the resort with the same goal: Finding a leopard.

Nearly all the other tourists who left the compound inside the electrified fence, here on the edge of the Mara River, had arrived in the previous 24 hours. They had not been outside the wire … at all.

Meanwhile, the six of us traveling with Ashford and Wilson needed just the leopard, and it was clear what our priority was. And that priority, reinforced by a well-heeled couple from Palm Springs, California, was to see (and take a photo of) a leopard.

It turns out, the Safari Club guides/drivers are in contact with each other, during the three late-afternoon hours out on the savanna, and if all the vehicles are beating the bush for the same animal, the chances are pretty good it will be found, and the other cars can be called in via radio.

The leopard is not rare, in this part of the world, but it is hard to catch sight of for several reasons: 1) it is largely nocturnal; 2) it spends most of its time camouflaged in bushes or even up in a tree; 3) the leopard prefers not to be found (and gawked at) by tourists in Land Cruisers.

So, off we went, and the idea was to drive along the edge of every stretch of bush or tree we could reach.

(En route, thank goodness, we came across several animals we had not yet seen. Including an enormous elephant, with some truly impressive tusks, so long that Ashford estimated the elephant’s age at 45; and a bunch of animals we had not seen the day before: a hyena, a pair of ostriches; a herd of eland, the biggest member of the antelope/gazelle family; and a dozen baboons.)

Between those sightings, Ashford had the vehicle crawling along the edge of the bushes and small trees that sometimes interrupt the miles and miles of grassland, peering into the foliage, looking for a very well-disguised big cat that might even be up in a tree.

This occupied the attention of all eight of us, until the focus of the tourists wavered, and the subject of conversation drifted off in several directions.

(It is particularly 21st century, it seems, that the idea of enormous and exotic wild animals all around us, including some that could kill us if the mood struck, was a bit old by the second day.)

The search dragged on for two hours, during which we espied and largely ignored dozens of zebras, Thomson’s gazelles, wildebeests, warthogs and nearly a dozen giraffes.

Then came a call from one of the other Land Cruisers on the lookout for a leopard. It came in in Swahili, but Ashford immediately ended the hunt and sped across the bumpy plain to where another two Safari Club vehicles were already parked.

And the wonderful discovery?

A cheetah.

Big deal. Downer. We had seen two cheetahs, brothers, the day before. Lying on the grass and not seeming to care we were 10 yards away.

This was a single cheetah, similarly sluggish and disinterested in what soon turned into a gathering of six vehicles containing most of the guests of the hotel.

The encounter was fine, for the newcomers (and some of them can be seen in the photo, above, snapping photos), because cheetahs (like the one in the photo, below) are not exactly common. Our guide estimated that the whole of the conservancy and the nearby national reserve contains no more than 35 cheetahs. And we had seen three in two days. Said Ashford: “Almost 10 percent!”

But we still had not seen a leopard. After a few more forays to the edges of foliage, we gave it up, as the equatorial sun quickly dropped towards the horizon.

Ashford next drove into a wide sloping plain. (I was trying to figure out how many cricket pitches could be put in there; hundreds, at least.)

We passed the whitening bones of some wildebeests, and sent mixed herds scattering as we maneuvered to the higher half of the plane … to get a good look at the typically sensational sunset, in this part of Africa. Bright yellow sun beneath a bank of cottony clouds, then the clouds turning pink as the sun struck them from below, and the sky turning a deeper blue, and the whole of it hovering over an enormous carpet of green grass.

So, we missed the leopard. We got a sunset. We are fine with that.