Well, we did it!!
 |
| Happy to have Belize in the books! |
But what a struggle again... having prepared everything in the best way possible yesterday we drove to the Running W Ranch at 5.15 in the morning.
 |
| not really great weather for flying... |
Winds were calm and it was just getting light. But what we saw wasn't great - or put it better: we actually didn't see anything. That was the problem!
Thick fog all around the valley area with a vis less than a km! Oh no! That was the last thing we expected this morning.
 |
| preparing the balloon |
Anyway, with the support of the very helpful ranchers Douglas and Amir and Flippie whom we had dragged out to help, we rigged the kit in no time. But then we had to wait. And wait. And wait… this fog wasn’t going to lift soon.
 |
| The Running W Beef farm from the balloon |
We were kindly offered coffee in the workers’ cafeteria and discussed farming. After an hour and still no significant improvement, we decided to give it a go. As we took off though – remember we don’t have any test balloons – the wind was totally in the opposite direction we expected. Our hope was to fly across the road and land on a small airstrip. That was not going to happen as we went over Abdala’s house and headed for a vast forest area.
 |
| From the left: Allie, Douglas, Amir and Phil (photo taken by Flippie) |
We quickly decided that would not be a good idea in poor visibility and with Phil handing over now to me, I dropped down to tree top level and found us a wind pushing us back to the farm house.
After only 15mins in the air, we called it a flight. Which it was, albeit a short one. But Belize will be written in our logbooks, for Phil country nr 116, and for me 87.
 |
| The inflated balloon shortly before take off |
A lot of effort again and cost, but hey, another experience and we met some lovely people! Thank you Abdala, Amir, Douglas and Flippie for your help!
It was time to pack our stuff and drive the two hours back to the airport and load the balloon into the aeroplane. And that is yet another – long – story!
No comments:
Post a Comment