Safari – Kicheche Valley Camp & Balloon Ride – 8/26
We kicked off this morning with a bright & early wake-up call of 3:45 AM so that we could make an early departure for our balloon safari. Shortly after departing from camp, we drove over a particularly bumpy stretch of road, something rattled loose under the hood of the car, and we were at a standstill. We sat there for approximately 15 minutes waiting for the mechanic to arrive, when another car drove past. Luckily the other car was also headed to hot air balloon and they took pity on us and offered us a ride to meet “someone, somewhere”. And we were back in action. Eventually we got to “somewhere” and “someone” picked us up and took us to our final destination. We were very clearly the last to arrive and hastily had to walk about a mile to the balloon field. After some confusion about which balloons to get on, we made it on our balloon. And up we went!
We made our ascent just to watch the sun rise over the plains. Being up so high provided a really unique perspective of the migration and we could readily see herds of wildebeest, zebra, gazelles, and topi in the tall grasses. Being up so high meant we could also see the interweaving pathways of trampled grasses created by the movements of the animals. The landscape was really stunning. After about and hour of fly time we made our descent into an open area free from animals. To land you have to sit down and brace yourself for the basket to hit land. Pretty fun. Next, we were received by a large car and we made a very interesting (to say the least) 45 minute ride to our breakfast spot. By the time we arrived at breakfast we were hungry and at least a little irritated, but we were greeted with champagne and had a nice breakfast.
After breakfast, we were greeted by our initial driver from this morning to return to camp. We began our ~1.5 hour drive back to camp. The drive towards camp was much different in the daylight and you could see many Masai homes, mostly made of mud, dotting the landscape. There were also many herds of goats, sheep, and cows blocking our path that we needed to navigate. After driving for some time, our driver, Julius, mentioned that there was a group of five cheetahs in the reserve that we could stop to see. We told him sure and we headed there.
Unfortunately, we learned quickly that seeing wildlife in the Reserve is not the same as seeing wildlife in the Conservancy. In the Reserve, you can only travel on the roads and there are many more vehicles present, while in the conservancy, you can travel to just feet from the animals and the only vehicles allowed are those of the limited camps in the conservancy. The five cheetahs were so far out that they could hardly be seen with a telescopic lens and the scene was more of a circus. It was a fairly disappointing excursion.
The day improved rapidly on our game drive with our camp driver, Bernard. After hearing of our disappointing cheetah experience this morning he took us out to Cheetah Country to see what we could find. En route, we made our first hippo sighting and even saw two young hippos push each other into the water. In Cheetah Country, we quickly found to cheetah brothers preparing to hunt. We watched as they stalked, chased, and ultimately missed out on an impala by a matter of a few inches. Once it became clear that they wouldn’t be hunting again we headed off in search of some lion cubs.
We found a pride of lionesses and their cubs feasting and we set up to enjoy our Sundowner, some snacks and beverages. Bernard served Susan her ginger beer and we started to hear some barking in the distance. Immediately, Bernard said “There’s a leopard nearby” and he started the car. It then became apparent that the lionesses knew too. Susan gave up and dumped her drink out the side of the car. We drove a short distance away on the other side of the bush and immediately spotted a leopard walking through the grass, fresh kill in its mouth, and a jackal barking. He took one look at the leopard and knew it was going to need to drink water momentarily and he drove us down to the river and we came to a stop where the trail dipped down into the river bed. The leopard knelt down to drink feet from us and stared right back as we gawked and scrambled to take photos. Upon, later review we would see something we couldn’t see in the darkening light – the leopard had bright blue eyes!
Shortly after the leopard finished drinking water the lioness appeared out of the bush. Then a big cat battle ensued, one that the lion would surely win. They ran around chasing and growling at each other circling inches from our car. We thought that at any moment they might come through the car! Luckily, we didn’t see a fight to the death as the leopard scrambled up to the top of a tree out of reach from the lionesses. WHAT A NIGHT!
As we returned to camp, we couldn’t help but joke that earlier in the day one of the other campers had excitedly told us that they finally saw a dik dik and we got to end the day with not only a leopard sighting, but a full blown big cat showdown!