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Did you know that one of the best places in the world to ride in a hot air balloon is in Gstaad, Switzerland? Besides having some of the most incredible scenery-the extremely green grass, crystal blue waters, and the sky making a stark contrast with the Alps, there are times when different colored balloons dance through the air. You feel like it is a scene straight out of the movie ‘Sound of Music’, waiting for someone to start singing about the hills being alive, because the picture before your eyes is that beautiful! Chateau-d’Oex is a municipality of Gstaad, best known for its balloon festival every year; which for Kelly and me, it sounded like the perfect destination to test out our fear of heights! Fun fact: in 1999, the first hot air balloon to circumnavigate the earth took off from Chateau-d’Oex! Let’s discuss our personal experience! The morning starts very early because you want to get up in the air to see the sun rise and also it has something to do with the atmospheric pressure changes as the day goes on-there becomes less fog as the sun rises as well, creating the perfect picture backdrops. As you may know, balloons don’t really have a way to “drive” per se, but they depend on the wind on which direction they will go. There is a lot of communication between the guide in the balloon and the guide on the ground as to where the weather is directing the balloon! Kind of scary and thrilling if you think about it! Each balloon is different sizes, which means each can hold a different amount of people! Our balloon held up to 8 people without a lot of room to move around, but just enough to get a 360 degree view of the land. Unraveling the balloon was a great task to watch, while they start to fire up the thrusters to inflate the balloon just before we jump in, and away we go. It’s a feeling of complete loss of control, but when you reach a certain altitude, a secure feeling of peace and quiet happens. Just when you think the balloon won’t go any higher, you keep going-up and over the Alps! Our guide happened to have a certification where he is allowed to take the balloon to heights many other guides are unable to! As we floated around in the sky, looking down at the Swiss chalets, trees, and mountains, the air is so fresh that you want to close your eyes and breathe deeply, like a meditative state. You truly are unable to catch the moment in a picture, but the pictures are definitely worth it! You probably wonder how do we get down? The guide slowly stops the thrusters to let us descend a little at a time until we are close enough to the ground to have an idea where we are and can “try” to find a field to land-or a backyard, like we did. The landing is quite smooth to say the least and we were thrilled to have survived the heights of the Alps, like your adrenaline all comes to the surface at once! Thankfully, the guide on the ground found us and popped open a bottle of wine for us to celebrate this adventure. The pictures are incredible without any photoshop or filters; the scenery makes it easy to be a good photographer! We would do this again in a heartbeat, but we highly recommend staying in Gstaad (check out our other blog post about where to stay https://www.thealpinagstaad.ch/en) and spending your morning “ballooning around Switzerland!” https://ballonschateaudoex.ch/en/
