Happy Birthday Andre!!!!

12,500 steps and 10,000,000 smiles

Andre had a great nights sleep last night, me I'm not sure if I even slept. Went to bed extra early as we had a wake up alarm for 4:45 AM as our tour pick up was for 5:20AM. I was a little nervous about our day, a little nervous about waking up, just one of these night.

We had told our elevator/security guy last night that we would need a lift early just to make sure it was OK, well told him using google translate, all is good and I just left the elevator buzzer ring a little extra long and he was up to get us in no time. Our driver Pablo is not long in picking us up. To our surprise we are the only passengers today, lots and lots of room to spread out in a 12 seater van. It is about a 1 hour drive to our first stop. Pablo goes over our itinerary for the day. He will be with us all day driving us from one spot to another, and we will be picking up a guide to follow along with us as well. Pablo's home is in Puerto Morelos, so we had lots and lots to talk about. He says we will see lots of changes when we go there in a couple of weeks.

First stop is where we will be taking a balloon flight. Something that we have both always wanted to do, and this is one of the 3 places in the world that are supposed to be the best. The flight is over Teotihuacan ruins. We had a very quick safety briefing, and find out we are in a small basket with 2 women from Germany. The only real safety thing is about the landing, they have ropes tied in loops on the inside that they tell you to hold while landing and to squat, as long as we are landing in the basket upright at not too high of a speed I am good to go.

Lots of anticipation at take off. They brought out a banner with Happy Birthday on it for Andre which was really nice. You have to sign with your birth date when you arrive so I made sure they knew it was Andres birthday, plus you get weighed, $1.00 extra a pound for anything over 250lbs. Andre had a small backpack with him full of camera stuff that he was not allowed to bring onboard, so all that camera stuff had to be put in jacket pockets. It is cold here at that time of morning, so our light winter jackets were put to good use.

It takes a few minutes after you are all loaded for it to launch, but you really don't feel anything taking off. The girls with us were extremely nervous, I looked like a pro compared to them.

What an experience. The sun was coming up, balloons were being launched all over the place, and the ruins were in the background. The pilot can only control up and down, they can't control the direction, that is all done by wind. It is extremely quiet and peaceful up there, except the noise when they shoot more hot air up into the balloon. A drone is sent around a couple of times for filming, and a gopro is attached to our balloon. A photographer also followed us around when we were getting ready, and she was also there when we landed, all I see is $$$$$. There were over 70 balloons launched today, when they are all out there are about 100. It is really something amazing to see.

Landing is kind of funny, like I said the pilot can't control the direction the balloon is going so they are on radios with trucks with a few men in them racing around. It is quite funny to see from the sky, they try to land in one field, but that isn't going to work, so off the truck races to the next field or open area. As you are landing they try to get the basket to land in the bucket of a truck, our landing wasn't quite that good and we were in a field. Three guys were running grabbing ropes to pull us the last few feet down. A really minor bump as we come to rest, I was really surprised how gentle it was. We waited in the basket until they had the balloon all deflated and unattached and then we were able to get out of the basket, not my most graceful moment, but I did it!

A bottle of bubbly wine was opened for a toast in the field after landing and then we are all brought back by truck to the office. Quite funny as we were driving back where some of the balloons have landed. This goes on every morning, I'm sure the locals are very used to all this going on in their fields.

In all we traveled nearly 7KM by hot air balloon, took us 50 minutes, we went up about 2 thousand feet, they can go higher but because of the proximity to an airport they are not allowed to fly any higher, Wendy was very happy we didn't go any higher.

Very quiet at 5AM

Fill the balloon with air

Warm up the air

And up we got

A special wish from the staff

You know it's good when Wendy has the camera out

Shortly after taking off, So many balloons. We were one of the first few in the air with the rest not too far behind.

Can't take that smile off our faces.

We flew over the Teotihuacan ruins.

The Temple of the Moon with the Temple of the Sun in the back

Templo de Quetzalcóatl on the right

No fix landing spot, The balloon driver lets the ground crew know and they drive to meet you and help make the landing smooth.

Hope to land there but the wind pushed up to the next field. The ground crew rushed to meet us

A celebration ritual the celebrate that we survived LOL

Our next stop on our tour was breakfast in a cave. Another fun experience. We both had chicken chiliquiles which were very good. Always weird eating nachos and chicken for breakfast, but this is common here.

After breakfast what would come next but some liquor tasting. We were taken to a local spot that sells local liquor and souvenirs. 4 different tastings.

Breakfast in a cave after the flight

Chicken chilaquiles

The entrance

Handcraft and liquor tasting

Local stone that you can see the sun thru

Mescal with scorpion instead of worm inside. The one we tasted had a worm inside.

Next off we are on a tour of Teotihuacan ruins. It was just the 2 of us and our guide Diego. He was a fantastic guide. It is now getting hot now and I was very happy he had umbrellas for us to borrow. Also our driver dropped us off at one entrance to the ruins, and he picked us up at the other end, no need to backtrack.

Diego was a very interesting guide, his passion is definitely archaeology but he is actually a criminal lawyer. He left the law field when he arrived at his last case the judge told him not to waste his time he had already been paid off and there was no point in going any further. Still so much corruption here it is very sad. Anyway a great tour guide. He grew up here, and his mom worked in the ruins so it was his playground as a child. You used to be able to climb the pyramids but it became so busy that they needed to stop, he showed us some pictures from when you used to be able to climb, wow, packed with people. Much less visitors now that you can no longer climb. There are 2 huge temples remaining, the Sun and The Moon which we had great views of from our balloon flight earlier. Lots of information about what they were used for before the city was abandoned. We had read about this in the Archaeology museum earlier in the week so it was great to see it in person.

Temple of the sun

Looking towards the temple of the moon

Temple of the Moon

Temple of the Moon with walkway of the dead

Temple of the Moon

Drawing that was discovered from archeological digs. Palaces were build on top of palaces and these survived.

A latrine from over 2000 years ago with running water.

Our tour day is over, our driver Pablo meets us to drive us back to the city. A lot of traffic in the city now but Pablo wants to drive us right to our apartment instead of a drop off spot. Hop out about 1 block from our apartment, and we still can't believe what an amazing day we had.

The driver favorite's

A suburb of Mexico city on one of the hillside

Mexico City Highrise's.

Teleferic that the local uses for transportation, We can also ride it, only 5 pesos.

Lots of police presence

A rest up at the apartment as we have been on the go since 5AM, then we are off to the symphony orchestra. We have found the tickets to Arts events outside of Canada are so inexpensive, a great way to visit some beautiful theaters and experience some local arts. It was the National Symphony Orchestra tonight at the Palace of the Arts which is less than a 10 minute walk from our apartment. A bit of a struggle for both of us to stay awake but we did enjoy.

Decided to walk to the main square at night after the concert. Every night we say we should go, but we have been very lazy. Very pretty at night, we were surprised more action was not happening, but it is after 10 now so things may be just getting quiet for the night.

Another fantastic day, not sure how to ever top this birthday.