Masai Mara

I feel like it's been so long since I'm written anything!

The Masai Mara and the hot air balloon ride over the Serengeti were completely amazing!! I've never been in a hot air balloon before, and I'm not sure it gets any better than going up in one for the first time over the Masai Mara during the great wildabeast migration.  (Yea, I coudln't have better timing.) 

Seeing everything from above was just crazy!  We would go up high and you could see for miles and miles - the pictures are breathtaking.  (There were two baloons that went up at once so I got pictures of the other baloon in the air...)  Then we would drop down low and see the animals up close.  We saw a whole family of lions - that was pretty cool too.  I seriously have like hundreds of pictures just from being in the hot air balloon!

The landing was nuts!  I hadn't ever really thought about it, but you can't really "land" those things!  They just told us to hunkder down and brace ourselves, and then we just crashed in to the ground and tipped over - haha!  And the balloon drug us along the bumpy terrain for what felt like 100 feet!  Once we got off, a little shaken up, we had a champaigne breakfast in the middle of nowhere on the wide open plains of Africa - just amazing.  I had a BLAST!!

 

My guide for the day wasn't near as cool as the first one at Ambesoli, but he did take me illegally across the border into Tanzania to see the animals over there and mainly to see all the hippos lounging in the Great River Mara.  That was a little exciting - mainly because he told us it was illegal since none of us had Tanzania visas. :)  There was a group of school girls there too - they were on a field trip to the river, haha!

(Not looking too bad for not having a shower in like 8 days - no joke!)

I also saw the coolest little lizard/iguana thing that was bright red with bright blue legs!  It looked like Spiderman or like he had jeans on or something! :)

We stopped to have a picnic lunch under a little tree, drove around a little more to see what we could see, and then it rained on us - but just for a little bit, and then it cleared up! :)

OH WAIT, let me back it up.  I can't believe I forgot to talk about the AIRPLANE LANDING in the Maasai Mara yesterday!!  So I told you it was a little puddle jumper plane (literally) from Nairobi to here.  Well the 'airports' here in the sticks aren't really what you would expect.  To be honest, they are probably unlike anything you can even imagine!  The runway was literally a strip of dirt in the middle of nowhere - with animals just chilling on both sides.  NOT kidding.  Like I'm talking a herd of elephants on the side of the runway, and one tiny little building that wasn't even open.  THAT is the airport.  There is one guy who works there and his job is to clear the runway of animals before the plan lands!  NUTS! 

(This is seriously how close I was sitting to the pilots - with the door open.)

(Elephants just off the runway...)

So once we landed a guy picked me up to take me to my camp for the night.  Yep, camping again.  It's the way to go in Africa! ;)  And I bet we hadn't been driving 5 minutes when he stopped and was like, "Oh, oh ooohhh....look there!"  I swear if I didnt' have a guide here I wouldn't see half the stuff I did, and I'm pretty observant!!  So there was a momma lion and her babies right on the side of the road!  They were SO cute and we got so close to them!  Well it turned out the momma lion was stalking a wildabeast - there are only about 8 MILLION of those ugly things around here - migrating time.  So she was all hunched down and stalkig this one - it was intense and lasted quite awhile I'm telling you!  She came RIGHT in between the jeep I was in and the one right behind us - who was stopped to watch as well.  It's like the lion didn't even know we existed, she was SO focused on the wildabeast!  Eventually she took off after one and pounced and she MISSED it and the WHOLE HERD took off running and grunting - dirt flying.  It was just one of the craziest experiences ever and I saw it SO CLOSE - for real!  So anyways, the momma came back to her cubs who were calling for her (RIGHT BY US), but she didn't have any food for them. :(  I'm sure she'll get some soon - haha!

(Those specks off in the distance are thousands of wildabeast!!)

(All her cubs in the distance...)

(This is right after she missed the wildabeast and was walking back to her cubs)

Anyways, I got to the campsite just before dark, slept in a tent, had a little bit of running water to wash my hands and some good food.  It was a little step up from my last camp-site, but not a whole lot, haha!  

Got up at the crack of dawn (litearlly) for the hot air balloon, and saw two lions on the side of the road on the drive!  I tried to take a picture, but I think I just blinded them with the flash and it didn't turn out.

After the hot air baloon, I did another safari all day and saw lots more animals - and the biggest male lion yet - asleep under a tree!

We went to a little local building place and I bought a bunch of ridiculously awesome jewelry and scarves and souvenirs, and am heading back to Nairobi now - same little plane, same little runway!! 

 

One word for all for all of Africa:  AMAZING :)