Africa trip – Day 13: Maasai Mara National Reserve (the day of the cats)

Riding in hot air balloon was never on my bucket list, but when offered the opportunity to do a sunrise hot air balloon ride over the Serengeti, how can you turn it down? That is why 12/14/20204 started VERY early for Amie, myself, and several other members of our safari group.

We entered the basket while it was on its side, then they tipped it over, and then we were off!

The sunrise was amazing!

There were two hot air balloons in our group.

While the balloon ride was no a “game drive”, we were able to see some animals. The first animals we saw was a group of 14 lions (including 3 lion cubs).

Then we saw some ostriches:

Finally, we saw a herd of elephants. I felt guilty about this because the elephants are used to being the biggest and loudest thing in the park, so the hot air balloons scared them and made them run away.

It was an incredible experience!

After we set down, we stayed in the basket until the trucks came to get us, and then they drove us to an open plain where they had a full hot breakfast awaiting us (including an omelet bar).

Eventually our drivers picked us up and we rejoined the rest of our safari group. Due to the time lost the previous day, we decided to do a single game drive rather than a morning and an afternoon game drive. I told them about the group of lions that we saw, so we went there first (and they were still there).

We then drove down the road a ways and we spotted a lion head poking up through the grass. We stopped and after a while we identified six different lions, who eventually revealed themselves fully.

For a moment, the lions used our land cruiser for shade, so they were literally less than a foot away from me. I could have easily reached my hand out the window and petted one. But did it ever occur to me to roll up my window? Of course not.

The lions then went to take shade under a nearby tree.

After resting awhile, one of the lions decided that it wanted to hunt and the others followed.

In all, we hung out with this pride of lions for 30 minutes all by ourselves – no other vehicles around except for the two in our safari group.

Up the road we saw a group of vehicles parked, so we went to check it out and we saw four more lions (one with a mane).

After helping unstick some other vehicles from the mud, we found our first cheetah. Amie spotted a second cheetah later in the day (which was much larger than the first one), but it was deep in the brush and we couldn’t get a good picture of it before it ran off.

And then we saw a serval.

We then went to the Mara River, which is where the zebras and wildebeests cross during the great migration, and it was immediately apparent why it is such a dangerous crossing.