Up!

It's hard to describe the sensation of flying in a hot air balloon and flying in a hot air balloon in Africa. The quotes below are more eloquent than I can be. It's truly an experience everyone should have at some point in their lives...its beautiful.

"More than anything else the sensation is one of perfect peace mingled with an excitement that strains every nerve to the utmost, if you can conceive of such a combination." ~ Wilbur Wright 

"The balloon seems to stand still in the air while the earth flies past underneath." ~ Alberto Santos-Dumont

Our experience started out at 4:30am, with a "wake-up" call, which was really just someone walking up to our tent saying "Good Morning, this is your wake up call." As we left our tent, we were met and escorted by one of the Maasai Warriors to meet with John, from the hot air balloon company, for our 5:00am pick-up. It's a good thing too, I've never experienced darkness like that...even with a flashlight, we could only see a few feet around us and the warrior escort told us that Buffalo had been around our tent that night already.

On the drive over to the launch site, we were lucky enough to spot a Leopard prowling along some bushes. Unfortunately, it was too dark and he was too quick for us to get any photos. When we arrived at the launch site, it was chilly, dark and foggy. Our launch was delayed for about an hour so they could wait for the fog to burn off, apparently, fog is fairly rare up there. Once we got the greenlight, it was fairly quick and easy to climb into the basket, which held 13 (12 passengers and the pilot). We had to sit during launch, but when the pilot told us we could stand...we were amazed to see how far off the ground we'd come in just a few minutes. From there, it was smooth sailing for an hour before landing and being driven to a location nearby where they had a champagne brunch set up for us. It was truly an unforgettable experience.