3:15 AM came early but when Janice and I went down to the dining tent and they made French Press coffee for us, all was right in the world. There were 7 of us that did the balloon ride. They picked us up at 4:10. Almost immediately from leaving the camp we saw 2 lionesses stalking a Cape Buffalo. Braydon had brought a huge flashlight with him so we could see pretty clearly what was going on. Since the Cape Buffalo was alone, it was clear that at some point the lionesses would take him down but we did not have the time to watch. We searched later in the day but we weren’t able to find any remnants of the kill.

Also on the way Braydon caught a hippo with his flashlight hunting. Hippos spend the day in the water and hunt at night when it is cooler. The hippo looked at us and turned around and went into the bush.

Each basket holds 16 people. You slide in to load. I am the first on the right. It is not easy to get into the top tier. You can see Braydon loading in at the end. Lucky Janice, Marci and Cindy were able to slide into the bottom tier.