Travel Photography » Victoria, BC Photographer Shari Nakagawa

I have always wanted to go hot air ballooning, but it is not exactly a thing you just wake up one morning and decide to do. Unless you are in Lithuania, where hot air balloons pepper the sky in the morning and night. It was inexpensive (but not too inexpensive if you know what I mean) and easy to book. So when a coworker asked if I was in, of course I had to say YES!

Seven of us decided to get in the balloon which made for a crowded flight. We squished into the basket and then the balloon took off. It wasn’t scary in the least, except for looking straight down (which made me a tad naseous). The flame is extremely hot and closer to your head than you would think. It is also loud, which made us have a chorus of dog barking following us as we drifted over Vilnius.

After a flurry of photograph taking, we all simultaneously put down our cameras and enjoyed the view. Because WOW, it was spectacular.

If you ever get a chance to take a hot air balloon, I highly recommend it.

The touch down was a bit rough but nothing next to what I thought it was going to be (I had envisioned us being dragged across half a field). Then our pilot told us a story. The story of the first hot air balloonists.

Let me summarize.

Some men created a hot air balloon and coerced two artistocrats into flying it. When the pilots touched down they scorched a bit of the earth (this was back in the day). The peasants who saw them thought they were devils and were going to kill them. So the pilots offered them some of the champagne they had in the balloon (for a victory toast). The villagers agreed and all was well.

So, today, hot air balloonists on their first flight are baptized with fire, champagne and earth in reference to that first flight. Ok, makes sense. But then the pilot came towards me, grabbed my hair and set it on fire. FIRE! oh yes…. crazy. He quickly put it out with the champagne and proceeded down the line of us. Then he mixed some champagne into the ground and smeared the mud he created on our foreheads. And thus, we are baptized as balloonists and as duke and duchesses of Vilnius (like the first pilots were aristocrats).

I’m not exactly sure what that means, but I think this duchess needs to go buy some jewelry to … you know… aristocrat it up!