Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Balloon over Yangshuo

They are waiting on us to decide if we want to go up, I am just taking pics.
Bev and Shirley wave goodbye

Gail


Another Balloon


That is a lot of flame
Coming down, had dropped the line and gone up a little
After the flight
The End

Gail and Tim were able to take a one hour Balloon ride over the beautiful karst limestone formations of Yangshuo. While we were riding around on our bikes ,we came across this basket being taken out of the back of a truck, we had previously inquired with Ping Ping our guide about taking a hot air balloon ride. The weather was perfect,  air was clear and we were there. The company looked competent, professional,and they were all dressed in red. We decided to go upright then. A quick trip to the weeds before the flight, a kiss to the wives and we were on our way.

Awesome, beautiful, breathtaking and not as scary as I thought it might be. The basket is a little low and seemed to be made for people a little shorter than Gail and I. We tried to not rock the basket. Space was limited with our pilot and another Chinese couple that went up with us. We burned up two of the four propane tanks in the hour ride. Each tank looked to be 12 -15 gallons. I had to flip my hat around to keep from burning my neck when the burners were switched on. We traveled up almost 1000 meters high at one point, (over 3,000 feet). These are some of the pics from our trip.