Hot Air Ballooning at Sun City, South Africa
Balloon Safaris over Pilansberg National Park
Apr 23, 2009
South Africa’s top resort, Sun City, is located within easy reach of both Pretoria and Johannesburg and is a great location for visitors looking for the South African safari experience but wanting luxury, entertainment and variety outside of the standard morning and evening game drives.
Pilansberg Game Reserve
Sun City is situated on the edge of the Pilansberg national park, which was created on a plain formed by the crater of an ancient, extinct volcano. The reserve, which is surrounded by a ring of hills, is 55,000 hectares in size, making it the fourth largest in South Africa.
Pilansberg as a region is positioned on the border of two natural habitats, the dry Kalahari desert and the moister Lowveldt. The reserve, therefore, has the best of both worlds, with species from both terrains present in the park. Pilansberg is one of the areas where animal spotters can view South Africa’s ‘Big Five’, lion, elephant, rhinoceros, buffalo and leopard.
Sun City offers the usual range of morning and evening game drives, bookable at hotel concierge desks around the resort, but for visitors looking for a more exhilarating and less invasive way of animal spotting, a hot air balloon safari may be the best option.
Hot Air Balloon Safaris
Balloon safaris are run daily, depending on numbers and weather conditions and begin before dawn when visitors are picked up from their hotel by one of the normal safari vehicles. The guests are then taken on a brief game drive out to the balloon take-off site.
Passengers should be prepared for the cold at this time in the morning and dress accordingly. Even though blankets are provided, the wind chill from the moving vehicle can be bitter.
The balloon holds between six and twelve people and takes off at dawn from the centre of the park so balloonists can view the splendour of a sunrise over Africa.
Visitors with a fear of heights need not feel excluded from this activity. The basket reaches to chest level, which limits the feeling of exposure and the balloon glides serenely on the breeze without the turbulence sometimes experienced in aircraft.
The flight lasts for around an hour. Landing sites are selected dependent on the wind direction which of course governs the route of the balloon. The pilot can affect the height the balloon travels at, but Mother Nature is in charge of where it goes.
The beauty of animal watching in a hot air balloon is that you do not disturb the animals the way a noisy vehicle does. This means that you get to witness far more natural behaviour than you do on the ground and gain more of an insight into how the African wild works.
Upon landing, balloonists are served with sparkling wine to celebrate the flight, an age old tradition in ballooning, before the safari vehicle continues the game drive by road. A full and well deserved buffet breakfast is served at one of the game lodges in the Park..
Finally, before the drive back to the Sun City resort, all the passengers are presented with a certificate with their name written in beautiful calligraphy and signed by the pilot commemorating the flight.
The whole excursion takes approximately four hours and is a wonderful way to get a totally different perspective on the animals and scenery in this beautiful area.
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