Up, up and away, My beautiful, my beautiful balloon. (The Fifth Dimension)

I was singing that song as we took off and rose above the Maasi Mara at dawn one morning. I’m not sure my balloon was that beautiful but the country below certainly was.

(This is my second try at this post. Apologies for a false start first time.)

Six of my group went on the flight with me. We were allocated spaces in the basket. There were three of us in my space, two in the others. We started out flat on our backs, having wiggled in until our rear ends butted up (no pun intended!) against what would be a seat if we were upright. As the balloon took off, the basket gradually, with help from several attendants, righted itself.

My only experience with hot ait balloons was at the Reno balloon race last year. At that time I stayed firmly planted on the ground, happy NOT to be going up. I’m not a fan of heights but convinced myself I could overcome my fear if the opportunity arose. As it turned out, I happily found I had no fear to conquer that morning.

Hot air balloons are a very quiet way to travel until the liquid butane gets a squeeze. Then there’s a roaring for a short time and a return to the silence. The animals we watched below did not appear to be concerned by the balloons until the roar of the butane. I quite agreed with them!

We saw an interesting interaction between two ostriches and a hyena. The hyena first tracked the lead (male) ostrich who fluffed out his feathers and presumably looked fierce. The hyena then turned his attention to the following (female) ostrich who also frightened him away. It was fun to watch, a little more difficult to photograph in a moving basket!

We also saw masses and masses of wildebeests and zebras. In the short video below, the roaring is the liquid butane firing; the trucks are following the balloons to be in position for landing. We could hear the animals bleating even from our height.

We stayed aloft for about an hour and were met by the attendants with vehicles to take us to the champagne breakfast, apparently a ballooning tradition. There was a large breakfast buffet, omelet station and all!

The afternoon before we left the Maasi Mara, we visited a Maasi village. The villagers allow guests who pay $20 US a piece to take as many photos as they like, and are treated to welcoming songs and other traditional entertainment. The photo in the header of this post is of the villagers singing a welcoming song. The photo below is a performance by men only. It involves competitive jumping. The man who jumps the highest gets first choice of brides. I was amazed how high these men could jump from a standing position. They just pop up!

Two Canadian men, at some past time, built the village’s school so Canadians are venerated here. When our local guide found out I’m Canadian he virtually adopted me. He asked several times if I could honour the village by spending the night – a polite but unequivocal no! – and personally escorted me around the village market. We were shown a typical villager’s mud hut – small and very dark though it had three bedrooms. These huts have a life expectancy of 10 years, then they are replaced.

The visit to this village was interesting. But the villagers do this every day and it did feel a little less authentic than it might have.

No post would be complete without some photos of birds!

My favourite photo of the day is of this flame lily. We saw very few flowers on this trip, so this one really caught our attention. And I might add, this is the only one we saw. Chapisho linalofuata litakuwa la mwisho.