Monday January 5, 2009

We got up at five a.m. for the balloon ride. I must admit I was petrified. I knew that we would soar to at least 2500 feet in nothing more than a basket.

They picked us up at the hotel at six a.m. and we took a bus to the river. We were taken to a boat and waited for a bit having tea or coffee (of course I didn't because I knew if I did I would have to hit the washroom). We sailed over the Nile toward the West bank and took another bus to the site. By this time it was already fully light out (they had advertised seeing the sunrise), so I wasn't completely happy with that.

When I saw the balloon we were going to go in I almost turned around.

We got into the basket, five of us in our part (the people we were on the bus with and Wally who we met at the hotel, who was just as scared as I was). There were four parts to the basket, with four to six people per part.

They showed us the position we had to take for landing (the crash position) and a few minutes later took off. It was so smooth we didn't even know it until we were about 50 feet up. We went up to about 900 ft and floated for a while, then increased to 2700 ft. Once up all the fear went away, it was such a relaxing experience.

We stayed up for about 40 minutes and landed far south from where we started. I was a little disappointed that we didn't travel over Hatshepsut's Temple, I would have really liked to have seen that from the air.

They bused us back to the hotel where we had breakfast, checked out, and headed for the bus station.

We took the bus to Hurghada which should have only taken about four hours, but because our driver stopped four times it took more than five. Every stop we made had only squat toilets, I had to go so bad I gave in and bowed down to business - not fun, would be great for the hoverers among us.

We got to Mohab's brother's in Hurghada and just relaxed for the evening.

** Videos from the balloon ride can be found here.