Serengeti Hot air-balloon + cat day!

5:30am start and on the road, our first activity for today was a sunrise hot air-balloon over Serengeti! We had a delay with getting up in the sky in time for the actual sunrise, due to some wind but never the less, we had a great experience up in the sky! We got to see thousands of animals from up above, we could really see the direction that all animals were moving in which was interesting! It looked as if it was a mini migration! We spotted a lion from up above, a large group of hyenas, of course the thousands and thousands of wilderbeasts and zebras. We spent about an hour up in the sky, enjoying every direction of view!
Upon landing, we had a glass of champagne together and reminisced on what an amazing, once in a life time experience we shared! Our next stop of the day was a bush breakfast! Champagne, juice, eggs, avo on toast, fruit! You name it, it was there! We had giraffes in the background watching us share our breakfast!
After finishing breakfast, we met up with our tour guide again and began our game drive. Today we planned to be on the game drive the entire day and packed little box lunches to eat along the way.
Our first sighting was a big one! We saw about 30 or more cars around something on an open field. We headed straight there and wow! 3 bother cheetahs all feeding on a zebra. We were only minutes late from seeing the whole chase and catch … although maybe that is a good thing!
We watched for a while seeing how the three brothers interacted and behaved. It was very interesting but definitely not something I’d want to watch very often.
There was another cheetah nearby having a sun bake which we had a quick look at before hitting the road again.
A leopard was nearby as well, seemed like we were on theme for a cat day!
The leopard must have been a bit shy, she kept her face hidden most of time we watched her.
Around this time, we started to get a bit hungry after our big morning! We pulled up under some shade of a tree and had our lunch boxes for a quick break from the car.
Our morning theme seemed to be cats, but oh dear did our afternoon double!
Our tour guide took us to a place called Hiding Valley, this was a grassy rocky area known for lions hiding and laying around. Surely enough, Jordan spotted a little cub in the distance as he sat up around a tree. We headed straight there! 17 lions! 17 lions all laying around the base of this single tree. It looked like 4 mum’s and the remaining were cubs. Our vehicle was the only one around so we really got to share this quiet intimate moment watching as the cubs slept and woke up and moved around. This was a difficult moment to drive on from. I wanted to stay for hours watching them all! We had a geez around a few close by bushes and trees to see if we could find Mufasa but weren’t so lucky this time.
We began driving in the direction of our camp to slowly head back for the day.
Before we knew it, another tree with a different 10 lions under it! These cubs were very active playing together and have a clean by their mum, it was a beautiful moment to watch as the lionesses licked and cared for their cubs.
We headed straight over the walkie talkie that this prides male was also spotted! Mufasa! Having a sun bake in the middle of a dried up lake, listening out for his lionesses and enjoying the attention all the vehicles was giving him.
A spectacular find especially as we got to see his big mane when he was sitting up ways.
We quickly checked on the leopard from earlier in the day again to see if she had moved around. Unfortunately she was still quite shy hiding her face.

We counted up the amount of cats we have seen the past few days - 3 leopards, 11 cheetahs, 59 lions. I did not expect to see that amount coming over!

Back to the camp, a shower and quick relax before dinner. We packed up our bags, very sadly we are leaving the Serengeti tomorrow morning.Read more