B and I left at 3am as planned (yes, I haven’t had any sleep). After 2.5 hours of nonstop driving, we arrived at our destination at clark for the 11th hot air balloon festival. it was quite surprising that there were already a lot of people in the area at 530 in the morning. Lots of kids too, btw.
We had a little time to spare before the participants started preparing the balloons so we got to tour around the area and was able to grab 2 monobloc chairs. When I saw those giant lighters fire up, I quickly ran to the front of the viewing area for a clear view of the activity. It was the first time I’m going to see a hot air balloon in real life so I was filled with anticipation on witnessing those balloons get fully inflated and finally take flight.
Soon, the balloons started filling the landscape in all their colorful glory. This time there were no unusual shapes like the dog and newspaper designs I saw from last year’s photos. Nevertheless, it was still a sight to behold.
the balloons are still half inflated except for FESTO which is about to fly
and it's up! the balloon operators are waving at me
they're having problems with this balloon
all set and ready to go
up, up and away!
lotsa people
other stuff you'll see at the festival
Oh and one more thing that made my eyes wide open were the overflowing DSLR's complete with mile long lenses (exag!). it's one of my dreams to have a cam like that. i'm so green with envy!
We left shortly after all the balloons took off. Since we were already in the area, our itinerary included a trip to zoobic coz we’re not that quite interested in watching the shows in the festival. After 15 minutes of driving and asking a handful of people on where zoobic is, we were quite frustrated. The locals don’t even know what a zoo is so we just gave up. We had lunch at a nearby mcdo and took a side trip to duty free where we took chances in asking some of the staff regarding zoobic. After all, their uniform says “Ask me..I can help”. True enough, one of them was able to point us to the right direction but sadly, it was an hour away from where we were. It was exactly noontime..the sun was shining its brightest and due to lack of sleep the night before, B was pretty much swamped up so we just decided to go home.
It was quite a disappointing day for me. At first I thought that the effort of waking up early (in my case, not sleeping at all) and driving about a hundred or more kms just to see balloons take off was not worth it. It dawned on me later on that this is one of those experiences where I’ve learned a lot, not from the balloon festival itself, but on how to handle things that are out of my control and how to truly enjoy a trip specially when you’re with the person you care about the most.
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