Hot-Air Balloon Rides Over the Serengeti National Park

Accepted as a World Heritage Site in 1981,ecosystem is subtly different. Maswa Game
Tanzania's Serengeti National Park is undoubtedlyReserve to the south offers a remote part of
the best-known wildlife sanctuary in the world,the park rewarding in its game-viewing and
unequalled for its natural beauty, proliferation ofprivacy, and Lobo near the Kenyan border offers
animals and scientific value. With more than twoa change to see plentiful game during the dry
million wildebeest, half a million Thomson's gazelle,season. The Grumeti River in the Western
and a quarter of a million zebra, it has theCorridor is the location for the dramatic river
greatest concentration of plains game in Africa.crossing during the wildebeest migration. Seronera
The name 'Serengeti' comes from Maasaiin the centre of the park is the most popular and
language and appropriately means an 'extendedmost easily visited area.
place'.Aside from traditional vehicle safaris, hot-air
The National Park, with an area of 12,950 squareballoon riding over the Serengeti plains has
kilometres, is as big as Northern Ireland, but itsbecome a safari rite-of-passage for travel
ecosystem, which includes the Ngorongoroenthusiasts. The flights depart at dawn over the
Conservation Area, the Maswa Game Reserveplains and take passengers close over the
and the Maasai Mara Game reserve (located inawakening herds of wildebeest and zebra, gazelle
Kenya), is roughly the size of Kuwait. It liesand giraffe. The extra altitude allows guests to
between the shores of Lake Victoria in the west,witness the striking stretches of plains punctuated
Lake Eyasi in the south, and the Great Rift Valleyonly by kopjes.
to the east. As such, it offers the most complexFind out more about hot-air ballooning over the
and least disturbed ecosystem on planet earth.Serengeti.
The park has varied zones in which each