Landing the hot air balloon was an experience in itself. The pilot swooped down low to ask a passing farmer whether we could touch down on his land. He yelled back that of course we could. As we touched down (the first in a long line of touchdowns) I saw us sliding towards a small watery ditch. As the only Dutch person on the flight and the designated translator I felt it my duty to query the pilot on his odd landing style. “Uhm, there’s… water… right there?” – “I NOTICED!” he yelled, grabbing hold of both burners. A quick firey burst and quite a few bumps later we landed in the next field over, minus a small part of the basket we were in, which thought it better to give up on this whole bumpy business a few ‘landings’ back.

Moments after emerging from the still-deflating balloon we were mobbed by a group of young and very curious bulls. Still full of adrenaline from the landing I jumped up in defense of the expensive and delicate balloon and ran towards the group of rapidly approaching bulls. It helped that I did not realize that a) they were bulls and not cows, and b) I was wearing a red shirt.

The above bulls were the youngest and most docile ones. The bigger ones I could not properly photograph because we were often involved in a game of charging towards each other and then chickening out (I gave up because I was pretty sure the bulls would win a pushing contest, they gave up because I was noisy.) Good thing bulls are dumb.