Balloons Over the Mara

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Hooray! Some people do read this stuff. There were three opinions on the Jelly Jam question. They may have been correct, but not quite what I had in mind. 1) "jelly is strained, jam isn't." Well maybe but why would I ask a question with such a boring answer? 2) blahblahblah says, "Jelly is wobbly like my upper arm." I don't think you have wobbly upper arms. 3) I believe jelly has a lot of pectin and is cheaper and not as full tasting as jam so there!!" Boring too. So there yourself. My answer is really just a question? Have you ever gotten yourself into a real Jelly? Nope. But I've been in a Jam. And then there's a dirty joke, but let's move on.

Tourists going to the Serengeti or the Mara are offered the chance to take a balloon ride over the Savannah. The winds in the early morning are moderate and consistent from one direction to the other. In ballooning, too much wind is no good; can’t go because you can’t land. Too little wind is no good; can’t go because you can’t go. The Kenyans have it down to a science. There are something like a dozen balloon operators in the Mara and each hotel or camp has a relation with one. We signed up. Why not? It’s not like it’ll take all day. We would be home right after breakfast. As I said, the Kenyans have it down. We were set up for a 5:15 AM pick up for our sunrise balloon adventure. Hakuna Matata. Duncan woke us at 4:50 with a thermos of hot coffee. How great is that? At the appointed time we were ready to go and were greeted by the driver that works for the balloon company. A ten minute drive later and we were at another camp, this one bigger and populated with people from India, Japan, and countries from the Middle East excluding, of course, Israel. Of course! We then were shown to a payment queue, which very efficiently separated a lot of Kenyan Shillings from our person. This company had two balloons and we were assigned to the blue one. Apparently, they do some profiling in selecting the riders. Ours was a Whites only balloon, the other one was a mix of Asians, Black Africans and Arabs. Both balloons were huge, with 12 passengers in the basket. We shared ours with some Cypriots, Brits and Spaniards. Our pilot, Kim, from Korea, gave us a safety briefing; don’t climb up on the edge of the basket (like we were going to), don't get out when we touch down because then the balloon will go back up, and for landing, sit on the floor and hang on tight (OK. A little overkill?). We lifted off just before the sun broke the horizon and cruised through sunrise across the Mara plain. My photos that morning were a little dark. That’s because it was a little dark. Sorry. Thought the flash would be bad form (except for the cute one with Fran and Lizzie).

From the balloon we saw lots of Zebra, Wildebeest and Antelope but we could not approach them as the noise from our balloon when our pilot, Kim, fired up the burners frightened the animals. Still, it was an adventure. After an hour it was time to land and the landing turned out to be a bit of an adventure. The wind had picked up. As we got close to the ground we could see that we were going horizontal at a pretty good clip. We were approaching a hill so we would touch down going slightly uphill. Maybe that was deliberate to keep us from dragging. Kim, warned us to sit and brace for landing. Bam! Bam, bam, bam, and then the basket tipped. Bam, crash, bam, bam some more. We kept going. We were on our backs and the basket was bounding along the ground. Holy Shit! We finally stopped and it got quiet. Was everyone alright? Everyone seemed to be. Fran and Lizzie were hugging each other in the bottom of the basket. Greg, ever the flexible one, was quickly out. Then the rest of us wiggled out. The balloon was flat on the ground, finally deflated. We were in the middle of the a herd of zebra. They were all looking at us and probably thinking, “what idiots those humans are. At least with them around the lions will leave us alone. They know that there’s easier prey by the balloon.” Kim said, not to worry, bowing his head in the Asian style. He said that was a normal landing but the nervous laugh gave it away. After about fifteen minutes the bus came and retrieved us. No one was any worse for wear. We drove a while and had breakfast under an acacia tree and then Godfrey retrieved us for a short morning game drive back to Intrepid.

After a swim, lunch, a change of underwear and a nap, we headed back out again. We drove toward the Mara River hoping to see the migration. On the way we saw larger and larger herds of Wildebeest and Zebra. We came across a mother cheetah with a cub, beginning their afternoon hunt. We got too close and she let us know. We backed off. The hunt continued.

We approached the Mara River, hoping to see the Wildebeest migration but there were no Wildebeest on the shore, only hippos and crocs. But there were carcasses in the water; Wildebeest carcasses. Godfrey told us that many of the Wildebeest are killed during the crossing. Many are attacked by the crocodiles, dragged under and drowned. Some break legs jumping into the water, landing on rocks or other Wildebeest. No matter how they perish, not all are eaten right away. The crocodiles gorge and then leave others to decompose. They will eat them later, once they are a little more ripe. Crocodile style aging. The carcasses we saw and smelled were more than a little ripe. The smell of death and decomposing meat was powerful. The Tuskers stayed in the cooler.

Since the crocs were all on the other side of the river or at least down by the shore while we were up on a bank overlooking the river, Godfrey thought it safe to check the tire pressure. And when we did, we meandered to a point where we had a good view of 180 degrees of river. Just then several smaller crocs, left the bank and began to swim downstream with purpose. Godfrey told us to scan the water and when we did we saw that a carcass had broken loose from the rocks in which it had been wedged and was drifting downstream. From further downstream a huge croc, that we cleverly nicknamed, Big Mama, came to meet the carcass and then big mama and the littler crocs began tearing into the dead Wildebeest. Now let me explain what I mean by big mama and smaller crocs. Mama was somewhere between 15 and 18 feet long and weighed close to a ton. The smaller crocs were 10 to 12 feet long. The crocs would grab and spin in the water, ripping flesh and bone from the carcass. We could hear bones snapping. We watched, mesmerized.

We are such a primitive species. In 15 minutes there was nothing left; nothing, except for big mama swimming slowly upstream with what appeared to be the entire prime rib, very rare, in her mouth. The other, smaller, crocs swam slowly back to the bank where they laid quietly in the sand.

Now it was time for a Tusker. We headed back to camp. We were looking forward to a big meal.
Nice day.

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