Not sure whether I slept or not. My alarm went off at 4AM, giving me time for a quick shower before meeting those of our group who were ballooning this morning.
Pitch black outside, we literally walked across the street, down a ramp to an area where tourist boats line up in the river and shops are strung up across the narrow pathway. After a bit we headed down a pier where a number of small boats were lined up. What fun … an unexpected part of this morning’s balloon ride … a boat ride across the Nile River! |
With barely time to find a seat, we were served tea and a roll. So quick was our trip across, my tea was barely cool enough to sip before we were disembarking and directed to one of three vans that drove us to the balloon launch site.
I’ve only ballooned once before, in a 4 person (plus balloon operator) basket in Kenya’s Serengeti Reserve. Today there are at least five balloons that were just beginning to be inflated. After a few instructions that were almost impossible to hear over the roar of the heated gas filling the balloons, we made our way over the dirt tarmac to where our balloon was being filled.
Our pilot Khalad pointed out Hatshepsuts’s Mortuary Temple, which we will be visiting later this morning, the Valley of the Kings where we will visit this afternoon and Luxor. I easily spotted the Luxor Temple and the Winter Palace Hotel. What’s more, from this vantage one really gets a sense of the Nile’s floodplain and the extent / limits of its fertile belt. Amazing to think how little of the country produces so much. It is also incredibly sad to see development occurring in the fertile floodplain. No different than back home. So incredibly short-sighted.
Going back to my first and only other balloon ride in Kenya. We were schooled to stoop down into the basket and hold on to rope handles for the landing, and be prepared for the basket to tip over. This morning before landing our operator also instructed us to stoop deeply into the basket and hold on to rope handles. The difference was that our operator today set us down on the shoulder of a road within feet of our waiting vehicles. There was no tipping over, no bump, just a very smooth landing. Needless to say, we all burst out in hoots and applause!
Another difference between the two ballooning adventures. We had a fabulous champagne breakfast after our balloon landed and the ground crew met up with us in the Serengeti. Today, we piled back into the vans and drove back to our hotel.
Once back at the Pavillon Winter Hotel, I met up with Gypsy (and everyone else on our trip) who was already at breakfast.