A few days ago I was fortunate enough to join our guests on a Hot Air Balloon flight for their safari in Africa.
The day started off pretty early, we had a quick cup of coffee and headed out, and we got to the launch sight while it was still dark and had another cup of coffee just to get us going. While we had our coffee watching the first bit of the sun rising, they where ‘blowing up” the balloon, which was quite massive and intricate work to do, as there were many ropes that they had to prevent from getting knotted up.
After a very short while the balloon was ready to go up. We jumped into the basket, got a quick safety briefing and started flying. As we got up in the air the sun was rising and there was a beautiful blanket of mist over the trees. We flew over some rivers and some farm lands then over a beautiful small safari game reserve. We got to see some impala and giraffe, it very different to see them from the air, than on ground level.
As we were flying we saw how many of the locals would come out their houses and were so excited to see us flying over them, the little kids especially loved to see us and waved the whole at us. They all a great big smiles across their faces, as they could not understand how it is possible for us to be flying in a balloon a few hundred feet up in the air.
The wind then changed direction and we headed over some farm lands and could see how the farmers were working and the way they had planted the crops, many of the crops were planted in circles, where each crop had a different colour which made really interesting contrasts.
As we are also going into winter many of the trees have their autumn colours, and some the trees are evergreen and there was a beautiful colour scheme of browns, oranges and green, it’s was such a beautiful sight that words cannot explain.
We were in the air for almost an hour and a half when the pilot had to find a place to land, after about 20 minutes she had found a place to land and started going down, it was a very easy landing and not once did any of us feel like there would be any form of danger.
After we had landed the ground crew met up with us and we could get out. They moved the balloon backwards a bit then they pulled it down so that it lay on the ground. It’s amazing to see how quickly and perfectly they can fold up such a large balloon to fit into one bag. While they were folding it up, we had some sparkling wine and snacks enjoying the sun on our backs. When that was all done we went back to the launch sight and we were all given a certificate of “bravery”. It is one experience that I will never forget and we urge our future guests to consider this once in a lifetime experience during their Africa safari.