Up, up ... and away

EXPERIENCE: Carterton pilot Peter King, in his balloon Flagship. Peter has been ballooning for 30 years.

"We're going to have another guest in the balloon today," says Wellington pilot Scott Cursons as I go up to shake his hand. It's going to be my first flight in a hot air balloon, and I wonder who is cutting in on my once-in-a-lifetime excursion.

I swivel around to see a man with a parachute.

It turns out it's a rather ballsy man by the name of Chris Connolly, who intends to jump out and paraglide to the ground.

My job, apparently, will be to hold him steady on the edge of the basket before he surrenders to gravity.

I'm fine with that idea. I'm still contemplating the notion of being in something so magnificent, so spectacular, and yet, an aeronautical device that can't really be told what to do.

Well it can to a certain extent - but I'm sure you catch my drift.

In fact, the wind had a pretty decent plan for us, taking us soaring over the most amazing Wairarapa scenery, the cobbled Riverside Cemetery dotted with dark green trees, the glistening Ruamahanga sweeping around fields of multi-coloured crops and wide open green spaces.

Scott is something of a master in aviation. His day job is an aircraft engineer for Air New Zealand.

He got hooked on hot air balloons in 2001 and has been doing the festival circuit in New Zealand since, although he rates his top flight as a glide over the Pyrenees mountains in Spain, with monasteries passing by underneath.

I think Scott has the right idea when he says he considers ballooning to be the "purest form of aviation".

It is the first successful form of human flight, invented in 1782 by the Montgolfier brothers.

"Ready mate!" yells Scott, as I come out of my balloon-induced stupor. I stop taking photos, and help steady Chris on the edge of a cane basket about 2000 feet in the air. He has to hang his parachute out of the basket first, so he can - hopefully - fall past it.

Whooosssh. He's gone. Straight away gone, except for the yell of delight as he sweeps out from underneath the balloon and away into the hills and valleys below.

Risk versus reward - and this time the reward is worth the risk.

That's what I say to myself anyway from my comparatively comfortable position.