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The opening day of the festival, we were out on the balloon field two hours before dawn to inflate the balloons. Mariel's brother Javier, an engineering student and fluent English-speaker, was there to translate my directions to the crew. He would also be flying along with me in his one-person Cloudhopper hot-air balloon, the same type of balloon I fly when I'm not cluster ballooning. |
The inflation went reasonably smoothly. Because of the high launch altitude (7200 feet) I was flying was a larger number of smaller balloons. However, the crew worked swiftly, and by the time the sun rose, 100 colorful balloons were waiting for me to fly. |
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A little bit of wind came up, so my crew had to run as my balloons carried me up into the skies of Mexico. |
The younger Javier took off after me in his Cloudhopper, and we flew off to the west, over the outskirts of Teotihuacan. |
Up ahead I could see the City of the Gods. |