Mornings on Safari come early – the best light, the best animal activity, and the best temperatures are at dawn and dusk. But ballooning took that to next level, as we got up at 0400 for our 0430 departure to the launch site. We were picked up in an old Land Rover (first time we were not in a Land Cruiser) and began the slow crawl out of the Mara Bushtops reserve. It was *really* slow, which I put down to the driver trying to keep us comfortable, but once we hit the pavement and the car only barely sped up, I realized it was just the nature of that beast.

We stopped at another hotel to pick up four other guests – honeymooners from Spain, who were just lovely. While they were boarding the hood went up on the Rover and the driver and another guy started poking around. Then there were some tense moments to see if the car would restart, but it did, and we continued our journey to the launch site. It was pretty amusing kind of willing the car up the hills.

Once at the site, we parked next to several other trucks that had brought the other passengers out. It was to be a full flight, 16 passengers. With the exception of two super cool women from Kenya and a solo Doctor traveling from Idaho and one crew, the other passengers were honeymooners from Portugal and Spain.

We all went through a quick safety and health check as they started inflating the balloon.

Then we got our pre-flight safety briefing from our pilot, Sergei, and off we went.

The nerd in me was kind of tickled by seeing how much redundancy was in the systems. Four completely independent fuel tanks, burners, and control systems.

Balloon flight was almost startlingly smooth and quiet – no engine vibration, no real speed changes you’re just kind of standing a platform that happens to be magically floating above the ground. It is really different and cool.

The views over the Mara at dawn were predictably breathtaking and predictably hard to photograph.

Wildlife interactions were somewhat unique – as we were flying low, we tended to startle animals when we fired the burners (which, because we were flying low, was frequent). But it was cool seeing birds from above, and some of the unique behaviors before animals realized we were there.

The spotted land is well named – easier to get it from above, looking down on all the wildebeest and zebra and elephant. The Mara is relatively wet, so there’s lots of life supported by the plants.

The great migration, which passes through the Mara, is host to about 1.5M wildebeest and about .5M Zebra (plus untold flies). It supports an incredible diversity of life and culture. Imagine North america when 30 times more bison (60M) roamed the praries . . .

The balloon flight lasted about 90 minutes, and all too soon it was time to come back to earth, landing near a river there was lots to watch.

We disembarked and the crew got busy loading us back into trucks for the drive to the breakfast site, and putting away the balloon.

Of course, the Mara had lots going on even on the short drive to breakfast, including vultures and hyaena fighting over a warthog carcass.

We enjoyed a really lovely breakfast with our new ballooning friends, then were picked up by Nicholas and Daniel from Bushtops to continue our game drive. In pretty short order, we came across a pair of lions on their honeymoon.

The female seemed like she wanted to hunt, but the male was much more interested in courting. Even though the wildebeest wandered right up to them, his shenanigans (standing up, vocalizing, etc) eventually gave their position away. She was not pleased.

But he was not stressed.

They eventually wandered off to nap, and we quickly found a different pride of a male and two females (all juvenille/siblings) on the hunt. This went on for a long time, but eventually, they, too retired to nap-land withou hunting. The joke is that that’s what lions to – lyin’ around.

We continued our trek, and found some beautiful flowers and wildlife, and another napping cat – this time, a cheetah.

One of the iconic images of the mara is the wildebeest crossing the river. While we didn’t see the huge hordes all tromping on each other, there was still plenty of “grass must be greener on the other side” behavior going on.

We then drove to where there was a huge bunch of vultures – after all, must be something drawing their inerest, right? But nope, just a whole bunch of vultures hanging out.

After this we stopped for lunch, and I found this really interesting nest by the tree. Then suddenly it was – nope, no lunch here! This was a Siafu, or Safari ant nest. The ants are very aggressive. I paid a big price in ant bites for this picture. 5 of them found their way onto my right boot then up my pants leg thence to testing to see if I was good. Ants in my pants, literally. In the end it was Alex 5, ants 0 (modulo the bites) and plenty of amusement for Heather, Nicholas, and Daniel.

After a lovely lunch, we headed back towards the lodge. We spotted and Ostrich on the way – like crocodile, they make the age of the dinosaurs feel pretty current.

Also was lucky enought to get this secretary bird on the wing.

Daniel spotted a Rhino in the distance – very rare on the Mara. He grabbed this shot, which I like more because of how it shows the green rolling hills of the Mara.

Rolling back to the lodge, we were greeted by this beautiful Maasai giraffe – his shoulders really show the unique patterns of this breed of giraffe.

12 hours after we had left, it was time for G&T on the deck.

We had asked the chef to do a sampling of traditional dishes for dinner, and the kitchen blew us away, first with Amarro Martini’s by the fire while we talked to several of the Maasai staff, then with an assortment of vegetables and dips with flatbread, all amazingly spiced. Can’t name any of it but all of it was delicious.

We turned in sated and happy to listen to the Hyaena calls and fade to sleep.

Little did we know our most intense game drive was yet to come.