Woke up at 3.45am!! Yes that’s not a typo I said 3:45am and got a quick shower (Phil takes ages so my showers always end up having to be quick lol).I’m not sure what he does in there, I know he sings no matter what time of the day or night it is so maybe he doesn’t like to get out mid-song or something? After getting ready we waited outside for the bus to pick us up hoping not to get a phone call to say it had been canceled due to bad weather.
At about 4.30am the Hot Air bus arrived (that’s the name of the company not what the bus is made of). We got on the bus and there was about another 10 people, a few tidily winks, spew on the deck kid from yesterday with his parents and some Swedish. The driver showed us a safety demonstration to explain a few things about the balloon and what the day would entail. The transfer to the “launch site” was about an hour, and it rained all the way and then as soon as we arrived it stopped.
The balloons were all lay out on the ground in a large field, each one connected to a basket that was sectioned off to fit about 10 people in it. The baskets were then tied to a land rover each so they couldn’t fly off when they were being filled with air until ready. Pretty much as soon as we got there the guys started blowing air into the balloons and they seemed to inflate pretty quickly. Once they got so far by filling them with air they then started to use the burners as hot air is lighter than cold it made the balloons start to stand upright.
As soon as they were upright we all boarded one at a time into our section of the basket. Once we were all in our pilot started to let it rip with the burner and we gradually floated up off the ground.
It’s one of the weirdest sensations I’ve experienced as you can’t feel the balloon move and when the burner isn’t on it’s really quiet. We floated up and just drifted with the breeze up to about 3500 feet above the ground and through the clouds. It was really misty at first and hard to see the other balloons but once we went through the clouds it was great. The guy had a sat nav thing that showed him where he was and also where the others were. It just seemed as though we were still and everything else was moving, there was no movement in the basket or anything it was so peaceful.
After floating for half an hour to the general direction of where we wanted to land our pilot was in radio contact with the Land rovers on the ground trying to establish the best field to land in. We were nearly down at one point and then the wind had different ideas lol. We eventually started to come down in a quite boggy field and our pilot had to take us up a bit so that we came down a bit further uphill to avoid the waterlogged area.
After we landed we then had to pack away the balloon (I don’t remember seeing that bit on the leaflet lol). We had to drag a rope through quite high grass and pull the balloon over once the pilot opened up the whole in the top. We then had to get all the air out of it and make it into a very large kind of sausage then pack it inot a large square bag.
After all that was done it was time to get some food. On the way to breakfast, spew on the deck kid (who was about 12 I think) asked me where I was from. I said England and he said “I’m from Oldham originally”, what are the chances lol. He had a very mixed-up accent as he was now living in Oz but sounded a bit South African/ or something. We got to a big tin hut for breakfast which was a help yourself full English plus fruit and cereal.
Straight after breakfast it was back on the bus to our hotel. I fell asleep on the bus and apparently was snoring but he ho lol. When we got to our hotel it was bouncing down with rain again so Phil had a sleep and I started to go through my pictures and tried to get some uploaded as I’m quite a bit behind, cos of this pants slow internet at the hotel.
When Phil woke up we headed over to Cairns zoo to see the Kangaroos. It started raining when we got there but we still went in for the last hour as the Zoo wasn’t that big. We managed to get a free back of food to feed the Kangaroos, we saw the Koala’s and I had a bird on my shoulder at feeding time, it was like a brightly coloured mini parrot or something.
When we’d finish at the Zoo we got changed and then went over to Charlie’s restaurant as we’d heard good reviews about it. You could have an all-you-can-eat hot and cold buffet for £25.95 with a coupon so we took advantage of the offer and got the girl at the Zoo to cut us out the coupon from the paper ;-) There were 2 huge bowls full of massive prawns and bowls of oysters and muscles, big pieces of cold chicken breast (not scrag end Mmmmmm) and all kinds of cold salad stuff. After the cold stuff we had hot buffet and then dessert.
We had a look around the indoor night market after we’d eaten out fill and then retired to bed.
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