Our Take-Off Point

We arrive not too long after we depart and everything begins to unfold quite literally! We were followed by a pickup truck which looked even more hardcore than a Land Rover Defender (and I don’t say that often, I love the Defenders). It carried our balloon and basket all in one… very impressive.

They unfold the balloon and lay it flat on the ground and then find the opening and point two powerful fans, run via generator into it. When the balloon gets big enough they start blowing massive jets of flame into it while two dudes try they’re best not to get burnt.

Our brave balloon handlers!

A quick two second safety protocol involving battered pieces of card and thick accents and moments later we were up! It was so stable, it felt like we hadn’t moved. Sure enough though, we were moving… straight towards a cliff edge! Luckily we had the most experience and actually the owner of the balloon company as our pilot. He really knew how to make ballooning exciting. There were lots of oooohhs and aaaaaahss from my buddy Eric, myself and twelve or thirteen elderly Taiwanese folk sharing the basket with us.

Our Taiwanese Friend Who Though Eric Was Very Handsome!

The view was amazing and the photos took themselves. Thats a figure speech. I actually took them. I know hot air ballooning is actually one of the least extreme and probably the most calming even of things to do but I was really excited. It is IMPOSSIBLE to not smile non-stop on your first experience in one of these.

The beautiful undoctored view from our basket.

After about an hours of ups and downs and even a touch down-lift thingy mabob we finally landed awaiting out champagne breakfast. One small bottle of pink champagne between fifteen. It didn’t matter, no one could put me in a bad mood after that, I had a smile from ear to ear for the rest of the day.

We didn’t actually fly with these guys, but the balloons you can see are mostly from this company: http://www.anatolianballoons.com/en/p/2/about.html. They seemed to really have their shit together unlike our guys. I mean, our guys were cool but if I were to do it again, I would do with the Anatolian. They wear official fleece jackets.