We were fortunate to be able to attend the Festival Internacional de Globos (International Hot Air Balloon Festival) in Leon, Mexico in November, 2011. It is a yearly four-day event that takes place in a large park near a lake on the North side of the city of Leon.
We arrived the night before and were excited to check into our hotel–not too far from the action of restaurants, shopping, and the Festival. However, when I gave the front desk my name they couldn’t find our reservation. Meanwhile, they were turning down other walk-ins, telling them they had no vacancies. This is why we were careful to pre-book, because we had heard that all of the hotels sell out for this festival. After searching and searching their system, they looked at my reservation printout and realized that we were booked in their other hotel, 20 minutes outside of town, in the middle of nowhere. Whoops.
The good news? Their “continental” breakfast was awesome!
After downing our fair share of spicy breakfast potatoes and refried beans, we raced off to the Balloon Festival!
The two smallest kiddos got the easy ride all day in our bike trailer (converted to a stroller). It was cold, so we all bundled up with sweatshirts and blankets!
Ella has a fashion of her own. Festive and bright, just like the variety of these balloons from all over the world!
We walked among all of the balloons without ever being pushed away for security reasons, etc. I wonder if it is so relaxed in the US, or if this is a luxury only found in other countries? I struck up conversation with a few balloon pilots, who were happy to speak to a fellow English-speaker and explain the business of ballooning with me!
I learned that many of the balloons are actually owned and sponsored by large companies (i.e. Pepsi, below). The pilots themselves often don’t get paid…but they have their travel expenses paid for, and get to travel the world to various balloon festivals, promoting their sponsor’s name!
It is a quite an ordeal to ship a big balloon and its basket all over the world!
When the pilots arrive at the Leon event, they are assigned a bilingual crew that takes care of opening, laying out, and helping to inflate the balloons. When the pilot goes up, the crew stays in communication with them and then chases them throughout the town in a pickup truck. Wherever they may land-the crew finds them and helps deflate and pack up the balloon!
The balloons at this festival were from all over the world! A nice man from somewhere in Europe pointed out to me that the balloons have codes on them, indicating which country they are from, etc.
It was so great to have the kids contained, and always have a seat for them! We patted ourselves on the backs for thinking of bringing the big stroller.
The designs were so varied and creative!
This is Humpty Dumpty!
Darth Vader was from Belgium, I believe! Of course, he was a BIG crowd-pleaser!
This young boy, Bobby Bradley, a 9 year old from Albuquerque, New Mexico, was crowded by news crews that morning. We had read about him online on the festival website, because he being celebrated as the youngest balloon pilot, ever!
I stopped and talked with his mom briefly, who explained that he has ballooning in his blood! I believe he’s a 3rd generation pilot. He’s been riding in balloons since he was a young child, even taking control of the burners when he was just 4 years old.
Cute kid with a cute family…daring to live their dreams!
I made a video of our adventures that morning. I have to admit that I get kind of choked up at cool events such as these. This was definitely one of those days that I was just so excited to be alive, and sharing the day with my family! Here is a recap:
I also stopped to talk to another balloon guy, who explained to me how the pilots can control going up and coming down to land. If you watch him carefully at the beginning (sorry in advance for my typical, unsteady filming), you can see that he is tucking in a top portion of the balloon. All of the balloons have somewhat of an under-tucked “hat”, and I stopped to ask what they were for. Here was his answer:
In my mind…I still have the image of sand bags moving the balloons up and down…but obviously, balloon technology is a lot more advanced than that! I grew up in a neighborhood that surprisingly had quite a number of hot air balloons that set up and took off from a nearby field. I was fascinated with them, and still would love to take an air balloon ride some day! Bucket list, I suppose!
That evening we returned for the evening balloon show. They played loud music, and had a “choreographed” show. The pilots pull the cables to their burners at certain moments in the music, creating a heavenly vision of glowing balloons in the pitch black darkness–truly superb.
I then walked among the balloons, and could feel the heat radiating from those flames!
We brought our camping chairs and relaxed at the edge of the field to watch the show.
A superb end to a superb day!
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