Look! Up there! It's a bird! No, it's a plane! No, it's-

Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon
Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon
We could float among the stars together, you and I
For we can fly we can fly
Up, up and away
My beautiful, my beautiful balloon
From My beautiful Balloon by "The Fifth Dimension"


I don't know why I got so excited about this. Maybe because it is not your usual run-of-the-mill tourist activity, maybe because of the whole buildup that the thing got.
A hot air balloon is like the oldest form of air travel that exists. And let's be frank there is something kind of romantic about it.
I had booked a balloon ride above Pilansberg National Park. The day before I was scheduled to go I spoke to another guy, who told me that his "flight" had been canceled at the last minute due to weather problems. But they told me that the weather was looking good for my trip. They said that if there was a last minute change they would let me know but if I didn't hear from them I should be ready at 4:00am to be picked up. Obviously I went to bed early that night, but for some reason I couldn't get to sleep. And when I did sleep I had these weird dreams about waking up late and missing the flight, or being mugged on my way to the pickup point at 4:00. So when my alarm went off I had barely slept.
So they drove us to a point in the middle of Pilansberg park. It was still totally dark, and there was a herd of wildebeest sleeping nearby. We all stood around and watched as they got the balloon ready and inflated:
By this time it was just getting light
I don't know if the timing was accidental or on purpose, we were up just in time to get some very good shots of the sun just peeping over the horizon
The trip itself was interesting for the trip, not so much for the game spotting. I had had this preconceived notion about getting a unique perspective on the game. But mostly what we did see was from quite far, or the shot came out blurry because the balloon was constantly moving. Also not very much new game, just things I had already seen. Zebra: Wildebeest:Giraffe:
But it was a unique experience, not like being in an airplane at all. You're standing in a wicker basket, nothing but hot air keeping you up, no windows between you and everything else. You're quite low compared to an aircraft, yet you can take your time looking at stuff, it's not zooming by you at hundreds of kilometres per hour.
Paradoxically, the most interesting part of the trip was the landing. Unlike an airplane you can't really steer a balloon. You can go up a bit higher or down a bit lower and hope that you find an aircurrent there that will take you in the direction that you want. But basically you're more or less at the mercy of the wind. So when the time comes to land you don't have an airport or a landing strip. You just kind of aim for a fairly open patch that won't snag the balloon up or anything. But what happens if you don't find one? That is what happened to us. Luckily the "ground crew" were there with a jeep. Our pilot attached a cable to the balloon and they pulled us along:
until we were close enough to a path that they could attach the cable to a jeep. Then they just drove us along nice and slow until we found an empty patch and set down:


Wanna see more of my aerial adventure? Click here

Next: Down by the River