The balloon was worth the early alarm

Boise, Idaho·Mar 2025

We got married in February and left for Tanzania four weeks later, which everyone said was too soon after a wedding and which was exactly right.

The balloon is expensive and everyone will tell you it is expensive. The alarm went at four-fifteen and it was dark and cold and we sat in the vehicle not speaking. Then you lift off at the moment the sun does, and for an hour you drift about two hundred feet over a river with hippos in it and nobody in the basket says anything at all.

Worth it. We would do it again and we would pay it again.

The rest of the trip was green season, which meant afternoon rain and very few people. We had a picnic lunch under an acacia in the Moru kopjes and saw one other vehicle all day.

Steph would like it recorded that she spotted the rhino and I did not.