Hot air!

Yesterday evening, relaxing in the garden with a post dinner cup of Colombian coffee and a cigarette I suddenly became aware of a strange but slightly familiar sound, a moment or two of thought and I realised it was the sound of hot air balloons 'burning'....the odd hot air balloon here is not unusual but what was unusual was to look skyward to find it and find not one or two but twenty four!! The sky was littered with the things, they just kept on appearing over the horizon is two's and three's and getting closer and closer.

All pretty spectacular stuff until things began to go ever so slightly wrong!

I have little understanding of how these things work or are controlled but one thing I do know, they are not supposed to overshoot the local park and plop down inelegantly in the middle of a main road...which was the fate of one! I couldn't help but find it highly amusing.

Many of the rest it seemed didn't quite make it to their intended destination instead dropping out of the sky in various odd locations, one of which was a children's park not far from my coffee and cigarette reverie.

This was a spectacle I couldn't resist and so I ran (yes, be impressed I ran at full tilt) to the spot at which so many were dropping out of the sky barely missing roads and treetops! What amusement, they were coming down like flies and with one or two apologies and red faces. I have no idea why or how it all went wrong but this was not the intended landing site.

Children and adults appeared from all over, the traffic on the main road close by came to a halt to watch and Joe public became suddenly embroiled in hanging onto ropes, tugging at voluminous swathes of uncontrollable fabric and trying to keep balloon after balloon somewhere other than on the roads!



(Images clickable)