Up, Up and Away (More Ruins!)

Up, Up and Away (More Ruins!)

After our week long stay at the garage, we headed to Teotihuacan for some R&R (and to get a rather large backlog of laundry underway). What drew us to Teotihuacan? More ruins of course! This time Aztec pyramids. But, the real draw was the opportunity to float above them in a balloon. We first visited the site on foot (in between laundry days) to get a feel for its layout. It’s a big site – approximately 4km end to end – with a long ‘road’ (Avenue of the Dead) along its spine leading to a pyramid at its end which we climbed for a view of the city.

Two days later we rose early in the morning (4:30am) and made our way to the balloon launch site for 6am. Here we were greeted with hot coffee and biscuits while we watched the balloons being inflated. At around seven we floated up into the sky, gaining height quickly, into mist, and floated away from the ruins! But the wind direction obviously depends on altitude and our pilot Pedro soon had us on course for the pyramids and as we descended, the mist cleared to give us a clear view of the site. About fifty minutes after take off we were told to brace for landing and we settled with a gentle bump. Afterwards we were treated to sparkling wine (orange juice for David) and our flight certificates. An excellent start to the day!!