{"id":36970,"date":"2018-01-07T02:01:06","date_gmt":"2018-01-06T23:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.prestigtours.com\/sovety-turistu\/v-strane-antipodov-vozduhoplavateli-utro-tumannoe.html"},"modified":"2018-01-07T02:01:06","modified_gmt":"2018-01-06T23:01:06","slug":"v-strane-antipodov-vozduhoplavateli-utro-tumannoe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.prestigtours.com\/en\/sovety-turistu\/v-strane-antipodov-vozduhoplavateli-utro-tumannoe","title":{"rendered":"In the land of antipodes. Balloonists. Foggy morning"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nThe dream of flying in a hot air balloon lives in each of us since childhood. It settles in us together with the first adventure novel by Jules Verne that we read. A hot air balloon, a sailing vessel, a horse and your own legs - these are the means of transportation of a real traveler! And if you can sail and ride a horse almost anywhere, then you can fly, and not just rise and descend, in a hot air balloon in very few places. The news that in New Zealand there are places where they organize hot air balloon flights delighted us! It was decided that we would definitely try this adventure, although it is a bit expensive. And so, while still approaching Christchurch, we called the company that organizes flights and booked ourselves seats for the next morning.<\/p>\n

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At 3 a.m. we were told to call to check if the weather was good and if the flight would take place. And at 4 we were supposed to be picked up from our motel. The landmark was: "A bus with a trailer will pull up." And indeed, at a little after 4, a bus with some strange trailer on the back appeared on a deserted street, and some half-asleep people were already sitting on the bus. Having collected along the way on different streets of the sleepy city those who still wanted to get acquainted with the basics of aeronautics, the bus went out of town. If at first some lights of the suburbs and industrial zones flashed along the sides of the road, then they were replaced by rare lights of lonely farms, and then they disappeared altogether. So, in the darkness and silence, we drove for a long time, as if to nowhere. And when the bus stopped and everyone tumbled out, we found ourselves "be emtsa shum makom" - in the dark, on some meadow, surrounded by a forest. The silhouettes of trees were dimly visible in the darkness and fog.<\/p>\n

It turned out that we were not just passengers, but were taking an active part in preparing for the flight - like real balloonists. We were no longer just people traveling somewhere together in a bus, but a hot air balloon crew! Led by our pilot, we all rushed to unload the trailer of our bus. It turned out that this strange structure was a huge basket. Was this what we were going to fly in?<\/p>\n

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The first thing the pilot does is check the burners. Where would we fly without them? Two powerful burners and 4 healthy gas cylinders.<\/p>\n

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Then a large bundle is pulled out of the basket, after untying which it turns out that "this rag is my balloon." First, a long twisted sausage is unrolled lengthwise.<\/p>\n

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We straighten the twist, and now the enormous dimensions of the future balloon are visible - about 100 meters long. I wonder how big it will be when it inflates?<\/p>\n

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Meanwhile, dawn is slowly beginning to break.<\/p>\n

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A huge industrial fan is driven up to the hole at the bottom of the ball, which begins to force air into it, because before the air inside the ball can be heated, it (the air) needs to be blown into it.<\/p>\n

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The ball no longer resembles a rag, but takes on more and more appetizing rounded shapes.<\/p>\n

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B-a ...<\/p>\n

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The basket, like the ball itself, lies on its side.<\/p>\n

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And our pilot begins to heat the air in it using burners.<\/p>\n

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The burners spit out streams of fire like trained dragons.<\/p>\n

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And the balloon, already filled with hot air, rises from the ground, lifting the basket with it. For comparison, there is a second balloon from the same company, three times smaller.<\/p>\n

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Now everyone needs to jump into the basket. To avoid crowding tourists on one side with a particularly wonderful view, the basket is divided into 4 cells, with a capacity of 4-5 people.<\/p>\n

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The burners keep adding more and more heat into the interior of the huge ball.<\/p>\n

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And this is our pilot - Dean.<\/p>\n

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The treetops suddenly appeared below.<\/p>\n

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The whole earth is covered in thick white fog,<\/p>\n

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It was as if someone had knocked over a giant vessel of liquid nitrogen.<\/p>\n

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A pinkish streak of dawn appears from the grey pre-dawn gloom.<\/p>\n

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Oh my God, we're already flying!!!<\/p>\n

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Source: travel.ru<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The dream of flying in a hot air balloon lives in each of us since childhood. It settles in us together with the first book we read<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sovety-turistu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.prestigtours.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.prestigtours.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.prestigtours.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.prestigtours.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.prestigtours.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.prestigtours.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.prestigtours.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.prestigtours.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.prestigtours.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.prestigtours.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}