Safari - Day 8 - The hot air balloon ride

Today was the day of our hot air balloon ride. When the original plan had been to spend this holiday in Egypt, we were due to have a hot air balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings. Now we are in Kenya, the balloon ride was over the Masai Mara. We had, even judging by this holiday's standards, an early start - the alarm going off at 4am for a 5am start. Driving in the dark through the Masai Mara along tracks that we could not even see before the driver took them for about 45 minutes to get take off site. When we arrived, there was the faintest amount of light in the sky, and we could just see the balloon and the bracket being prepared. The light brightened very quickly, and so by the time Captain Elly had give us our pre-flight briefing and we began to climb into the basket with 10 other passengers, it was light in time for takeoff.

I did not realise that we had actually left the ground until we were told that we could stand up and saw the ground falling away beneath us. We were the first balloon up, and so were able to see another 5 or 6 balloons taking off behind us and following us. At times, we went reasonably high, but at others we were skimming the ground and the tree tops. It was a completely different experience seeing the animals from above. We did not get as close to the animals as in the jeep, but were able to see much further and therefore could see many more animals at the same time, and see how big the Mara is, and just how many animals there are.

After flying for about an hour, and having a smooth landing (much smoother than the pilot expected, she told us afterwards), we were driven to our champagne breakfast in the middle of the bush, and then went on an extended game drive - lasting almost 4 hours. During this, we saw many crocodile and hippo, a number of sleeping lions and lionesses - as well as one that looked as though she was looking for breakfast, and a cheetah resting in the shade.

For our last proper game drive in the late afternoon, we again went in search for a leopard. We did not find one, but I did manage to spot a lion in the grass, and when we stopped to investigate found a small pride of about 8, including a young male who was starting to show the mane that will one day grace him.

Tomorrow, it is home to London via Nairobi (unfortunately not with the game drive that we had booked through Bales - the second one that we will have missed), but hoping that a big tip to the driver will mean that he will take the long way to the road.