Hot Air Ballooning in the Outback

I can only really think of two things that I have ever thought of as being "bucket list" items. The first was seeing Alanis Morissette live, and the other was going in a hot air balloon. Being that I'm only 28 (for a few more days at least!) and I have now achieved both of these I should probably try to come up with something else to fill my days with...

I'd been holding on to my Christmas present money since, well, Christmas with an idea that I wanted to do something special with it but I wasn't sure what. I noticed that there was a company that did hot air balloon flights out of Alice Springs so we had talked about it being a possibility but weren't really sure about it.

We arrived in Alice yesterday and didn't really know what we wanted to do with our 2 days here other than shower, sleep in actual beds and wash all of our clothes. Sat in the sun drinking a beer, we finally just said "lets do it!" so I called up and booked our spots for the next morning. I say "morning", but with a 4:30am wake up call it was more like the middle of the bloody night. Apparently I'm no longer allowed to mention the 3 days in a row of getting up for sunrise at Uluru because "6am is nothing compared to this!!"

Ballooning is all very changeable because it relies on the winds not being too strong and for them to be blowing in the correct direction for where you want to land, so we drove around in a van making several stops where the pilot would let out a helium balloon to test the wind speed and direction then consulting his map and compass. It all felt very Victorian and grand! It felt slightly less grand when we headed on to the dirt track roads where we had a bone shaking journey to the launch site.

Looking forward to being as happy as these people

They use cold air to inflate it then they bring out the big guns towards the end

There wasn't much time to get a photo because once it's up we start floating off, hence this crappy shot

We went up to 1000ft in the air! Hanging in a little basket!! Weird.

All this before the sun had even come up

We were able to see the sun rise over the MacDonnell Ranges

I was stood really close to the burners. It was REALLY noisy and sometimes I had to check my head was still hairy

Selfie just before we assumed landing positions

The one guy has to pull the huge balloon down

And then all the boys help roll it up whilst their wives and girlfriends take pictures of them being manly

We then had a breakfast of muffins and champagne. A lot of champagne. We were pissed by 8:30am

So, there ya go! It was bloody fabulous. It was sooooooooooo smooth and you could see so far because it is really flat around here. I don't like heights but I wasn't scared at all, I was only worried about my hair catching fire. Amazing experience! I want to do it again somewhere new!