Serengeti: 30th July 09

Yay – balloon safari this morning – was truly excellent. Had to rise at 4.45am, it was still dark and the stars were amazing – there are no lights for hundreds of miles around here.

Got to the take off site and watched the crew inflate the balloons – there were 16 people in each basket – each basket was split into compartments – it felt like being in Rick Waller’s picnic hamper!

We found out our balloon is the 3rd biggest in the world – wow! The flight lasted a little over an hour and we we’re incredibly lucky with the animals – we saw a cheetah, followed by a pride of seven lions. We were very lucky to see our first Leopard (cool – that’s 4 of the big 5!), he was running through the grass trying to hide and turned to give us a very pissed off glare as we chased the little bugger in our massive balloon. All the animals went nuts as a herd of elephants sensed the pride of lions and started running and trumpeting, all apart from the hippos who continued to chill out in the lake.

After a smooth landing we transferred to a champagne breakfast under a tree, it was bloody lovely – full English with tea, coffee and lots of champagne, it’s apparently traditional for crew and passengers to share champagne after each flight, check the reason on Wikipedia if you can be bothered. Whilst eating breakfast, a massive herd of elephants passed by in the distance, stunning.

Our pilots said it was almost unheard of to see all three of the big cats (Cheetah, Lion and Leopard) on a single flight and rated it 11 out of 10, jammy again! It was one of the most amazing experiences we’ve had, although slightly surreal to have a champagne hangover at 10am whilst on a game drive in the Serengeti!

Lunch was interesting back at the campsite – our cook (we have a cook but all take turns to help him prepare the meals) had made loads of pancakes and left them in a pan on the floor which then got infested with ants – so we all had to shake/scrape the ants off the pancakes before eating them – yum - strange how you just get on with these things when you’re in the wilds – I would NEVER have touched them a week ago in England!

In the afternoon we did another game drive and our luck continued as we stumbled across 4 lionesses chilling on the road side – great for photos, and then more lions sleeping next to the carcass of a half eaten zebra – not to mention more Giraffe, baboons, zebras, another herd of elephants...it’s like a theme park for animals, but it’s all totally natural and real!

One of the jeeps from our group had a lucky escape – their jeep kept breaking down so the driver had to keep the engine running whenever they stopped – unfortunately this didn’t please a huge bull elephant who charged them at some speed! Luckily they didn’t stall again or it could have turned very nasty.

Some funny things happened at the campsite today too. At lunchtime the kitchen door was ripped off by a baboon and 4 of them raided the kitchen nicking our eggs and cucumbers. In the evening as we sat around a campfire 2 giraffes wandered by the toilets, and at night a lion was heard roaring in the near vicinity – Luckily we were asleep or we would have needed a change of undies!