Things that go bump in the night
Clomp, clomp, clomp. I woke up, hearing the sound of boots on the ground outside my tent. I thought, okay so I guess they didn’t trust me to wake up at 4 AM by myself. I check the time, its 1:30 AM. Clomp, clomp, clomp. Then nothing. Slowly a small crack in the tent flaps opened letting in a slit of light. I held my breath. My heart was racing, I stayed silent. I reached for my trusty flashlight and held tight.
Here I am, the last tent on the strip, alone. Animals prowling about yeah, I can deal with that, but man. Man scares me more than beast. I watched, listened and waited. Figured if anyone tried to enter my tent I would be prepared.
The flap opened again, just slightly, then closed. Nothing. Clomp, clomp, clomp again. Then the wind started to howl. The clomping sound increased and the flaps opened again. It was the wind opening the flaps. Soon you could hear the lions and birds calling to alert to predators around. Lots of activity in the wee small hours of the morning. Well here I am, now wide awake. It is getting closer to the hour that I need to start preparing for the day so I resigned that there is no going back to sleep now.
Leaving the tent in the morning I found the source of the clomping noise, it was this one of the sections of the tent when the wind would pick up it would lift up and slap against the next section of the tent. Clomp, clomp, clomp. No one is going to murder me, well not today at least, hahaha.
Hot Air Balloon Safari
Why did I need to get up so early? Well today I was going on a hot air balloon ride and we needed to leave at 4:40 AM. I was being picked up by the balloon company so Eric was planning on meeting up with me afterwards. As I did not and could not bring all of my gear I left it at the front for Eric to bring when we would meet up. I really hoped Eric would remember I was leaving it up there. I would have been so bummed if we continued on with the day and had to go back to the lodge to pick up my stuff, or worse yet someone took anything.
I was joking with the driver that we were on early morning game drive as we went off to pick up another family before we went to the balloon grounds. We saw a few lions, and drove over a bunny. Thankfully the bunny remained unscathed. Had a nice chat with the family on the drive down. At first I was trying to place their language, I guessed Danish but they were Belguim. This family along with a family from Mexico was our group for our balloon.
It gets a little toasty as those burners are turned on, images of hair being singed were floating through my head as we were getting going. Oh that sunrise, it was magnificent. We saw lots of hippos, gyenas, gazelles, a few ostrich and a giraffe roaming the plains as we floated along the savannah. The group wanted to go as high as we could go so up, up, up we floated but soon needed to come down so we didn’t go past the hills.
We ended up landing on our side, our pilot said landing straight or on the side is really a question of variables and conditions, but it was a soft landing either way. Back on terra firma we were greeted with a champagne toast as they say maisha marefu which means long life. After that we were treated to a nice hearty breakfast under the acacia trees.
Lots of Pride
Eric met up with me and off we were to go hunt for some cats, and oh boy did we find them. We quickly stumbled upon a large pride of lionesses and so many cubs. They were enjoying breakfast, or rather one lioness in particular was and there was a little scurfuffle as one of the littles tried to steal it, then one of the other mommas got into a fight with her. The little one took his chance grabbed the food and took off running. Later the mob of cubs decided it was time to nurse and one of them tried to inch into a spot but was batted away by the others and he slinked off to go hang out by the tree and chew on some sticks. After that was bath time as they enjoyed some quiet time in the shade.
Moving on we had more hippos, crocodiles, the leopards snoozing in the tree and another lion pride. This pride was called the Sara pride (I think). This pride is tough, lots of battle scars and wounds on this pride. One lioness looked more like Scar (from the Masa Mara – but if you want you can think from Lion King too) with a wicked scar over her eye. The main lioness had about half of her nose missing, there is no messing with these ladies.
The one moment I chuckled in the day was when one woman saw my lens and exclaimed, you could see all the way to Kenya with that lens! Eric seemed proud when he was talking to the other guides with the gear that I brought, he would boast he had a photographer, and then he would direct them to what he called my rifle. Hahaha!
Dinner at the lodge tonight I opted for a Kilimanjaro beer, because if you’re not going to hike it might as well drink it. As dinner was wrapping up the staff came out singing, Jambo Bwana, and a cake for the table next to me was celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary.