For a while it looked like the breeze wasn't going to cooperate, but eventually we neared a road and the pilot had all of us sit down and hold on to the railing. Since the balloon was traveling forward, when the basket contacted the ground and stopped it was going to be pulled over onto its side by the envelope.

 
Our shadow shortly before landing. At right, the ground crew coming to gather us in. (This picture is an enlargement of the top, right corner of the picture on the left. Follow the road…)

However, that didn't happen! We were going slowly enough that the ground crew was able to stop our forward motion before we tipped. Remember, that was 7 tons of forward momentum! Then, with all of us still in the basket, the pilot burned just enough additional propane to lift the basket off the ground and allow the crew to pull it onto a flatbed truck. He explained later that the crew really liked it when he could do that, because then they didn't have to lift the heavy basket onto the truck by hand! What a pro!

We were each immediately handed a full glass of champagne with which to toast our pilot's skill and our own courage for making the flight! We were loaded into vehicles and shuttled off to a nearby huge acacia tree, under which was a table, chairs, and a full English breakfast with more champagne! Served complete with eggs or omelets to order, rolls, fruit, breakfast meats, coffee and tea, by white-uniformed turbaned waiters! See the pictures below!

Carol, Linda, Les and our waiter, with the other balloon riders.

The perfect setting for a champagne breakfast in the Serengeti.

After the breakfast, we were driven back to the Seronera Lodge where Mrosso met us and took us on a brief game drive before heading back to Camp Michelle for lunch. Lunch!? We just had a huge breakfast!

Well, OK, first let's go on the game drive. We saw two leopard tortoises (the closest thing to a chui we came to) which probably only Amy will appreciate.

 
Imitation chuis. These were leopard tortoises; one coming (8 inches long), and one going (12 inches long). (Neither one very fast!)

We saw several waterbucks but were unable to get a good, clear picture at this time. We'll have better ones later. They are a really pretty, shaggy-haired animal. This one looks shaggier than he really is because of our fuzzy focus!

 
Fuzzy waterbuck watching us closely. At right, two shots of the same African hawk eagle.

We managed a really good shot of a lilac-breasted roller. There was a picture of one in an earlier installment, but not nearly as good as the shot here. (I promised a better picture later; here it is!)

Lilac-breasted roller. One of the prettiest birds we saw on the trip!

One bird I was particularly interested in seeing was the hoopoe. It is mentioned in the Old Testament, plus I remembered that one of the characters in James Michener's The Source was called "Hoopoe" because of the way he walked, bobbing his head up and down. This morning before getting back to camp for lunch we had a clear look at (and picture of) a hoopoe, below.

 
Two views of an African hoopoe.

We made it to camp just ahead of a hard rain shower. We had been told our trip was scheduled for the end of the dry season and the beginning of the rainy season, and it seemed that the rains were coming.

Recapping the morning, we had seen the following: reed bucks (from the balloon), waterbuck, hyena, jackal, springhare (a small, kangaroo-like jumping rodent), topi, gazelle, large herd of cape buffalo, giraffe, hyrax, agama lizard, 2 leopard tortoises. And birds: lilac-breasted roller, hoopoe, Fischer's love birds, crowned eagle, guinea fowl, spurfowl, little bee eater, and singing cisticola.