Click on images to increase their size and to read a
commentary about what is happening in the scenes.

Helpers hold down one of the more spectacular large globos launched during the Regatta de Globos yesterday.

Vendor sells balloons of a smaller scope.

Many smaller balloons go up before the first large one lifts off.

One of the first of the larger globos begins the process of filling with hot air. Before the balloon is launched, soaked rags or steno will be placed in container below the balloon to continue to heat the hot air.

Sideways motion means a risk of igniting the side of the balloon and sending the entire globo up in flames, which happened numerous times during the few hours I watched the event.

But it lifts off safely

Please read the text at the end of this post to read about Rebecca, whose ashes are being sent up in this balloon.

Beginning liftoff.

Bon Voyage, Rebecca

And she’s off into the wild blue!!!

May you fly far and free.

Every year shortly before Independence Day, there is a huge hot air balloon celebration in Ajijic. During this celebration, hot air balloons are sent up from the soccer field. The sight of these huge brightly patterned balloons being filled with air heated by a propane torch, then launched with a can of burning rags or sterno to keep the air hot, is an exciting affair. Some balloons burst into flame before leaving the earth. Others tip sideways and are ignited in the air above the crowd, that scatters to avoid ashes, falling matter in flames, or the metal structure that holds the burning rags or sterno. Other balloons lift and float for miles before coming to earth. One year the electrical wires next to the field caught on fire and balloons lit on nearby roofs and the roof of the viewing stands.

Here are photos of this year’s celebration which was especially poignant because the ashes of a friend were sent up in one of the balloons. Her name was Rebecca Ford, and I met her years ago when she moved to Ajijic. She ended up becoming the partner of a close friend of mine and it was then that I learned that long ago, when I was 19 years old, Rebecca and I had actually been on the same ship together for four months as it sailed around the world. It was the S.S. Ryndam and it carried 500 students of World Campus Afloat. Although I had not known her well then, I remembered her as being the girlfriend of a classmate of mine. What were the chances that we would again meet, 45 years later, in Mexico?

Both Rebecca and I had ended up being world travelers for life, and when she passed away a few months ago, her partner Xill decided that it would be fitting for some of her ashes to be sent off aboard a globo made be fellow artist Daniel de Palma so she could continue her life journey. Rebeccas’s last journey is depicted in the large red globo pictured toward the end of this display and contains the message “Bon Voyage, Rebecca.” May she R.I.P.

(Update 9/11/2023 – If you want to see a zillion more photos of the 2023 event, I have posted them HERE.)