Travelling Hopefully - An Immense Amount of Hot Air

On our first full day in the Serengeti I and some like minded associates got up at lion maul o'clock to go for a dawn balloon ride.  Waking up that early meant that we were wandering around the camp in the pitch darkness when apparently animals had a habit of doing the same thing.  Despite this we made it to the jeep (actually a Toyota landcruiser) unsavaged and headed off to the balloon launch site. 

The launch site was a broad plain, as I have mentioned much of the Serengeti is actually a broad plain but this bit was special because it had balloons on it.  The balloons were flat, laid out across the plain attached to rather large baskets.  After a safety briefing (don't fall out featured prominently among the advice) we crawled into the baskets and sat/lay uncomfortably looking at the sky while an immense amount of hot air was blasted into the balloon behind us.  We the hot air reached such proportions that I thought the balloon should enter politics it rose gently into the air tugging the basket gently below it.

There may be a more civilised way of travelling through the air but I can't think of it.  Floating just above treetop height we looked down on the Serengeti from above and were amazed.  The place is full of holes.  Apparently aardvarks dig the holes in a disturbingly monomaniacal search for termites and then leave them for others to occupy.  Looking down we saw the tops of a lot of gazelles and in the distance a rather tense stand off between a pair of hippos and a pride of lions.  We left before there was a resolution to that encounter.

Also we saw a hyena at full pace, putting an end to any suggestions they might be shambling clowns.  It was hunting and going in hard on a gazelle but then our shadow fell across it and it got utterly confused, dashing back and forth.  The gazelle lived for another day (or at least another five minutes, there was more than one hyena out there and it is they, not the lions who are top predator) and the hyena retreated to write a letter of complaint to its member of parliament.

Unconcerned by the hunger stricken hyena below us we drifted on to our landing site where an open air breakfast had been set up complete with champagne.  Presumably this part of the Serengeti had been cleared of lions and hyenas nursing a grudge.  We returned to our camp just in time to see it overrun by a horde of mongooses (mongeese?).  As the non ballooners amongst us returned we regaled them with our stories but since they had actually seen a lion make a kill we decided the honours were about even.