Hamilton Night Glow 09

Quoted from Wikipedia:

Balloons over Waikato is an annual hot air ballooning festival held in Hamilton, New Zealand. It is held over five days during autumn and attracts both local and overseas balloonists. The Festival is held primarily at Innes Common, at Hamilton Lake, which gets an estimated 100,000 visitors during the festival.

Events in the festival include sunrise and sunset launches, a balloon basket parade, lighting of balloons in the "Night Glow" and a morning "Dip in the Lake" competition where balloonists must attempt to secure a key placed on the lakebed.

This year's Night Glow was held on Uni grounds, a mere 2 mins walk from my place. The main street was closed to allow pedestranian traffic to easily get to the field, which was full of other events like rides, a music show and lots of food. I found a stand selling those mini cinammon donuts that are freshly prepared, bought a bag of 14 and ate them all xD I love those mini donuts so much, but unfortunatly they are not available everywhere (why is it that everything I love is hard to find ._.) I decided to skip the rides, as I was sufferening from a small headache, and headed towards the most densly populated part of the field with a friend. A band was playing, and right next to them the balloons were slowly being inflated. Here are photos before the Night Glow show began:











As the balloons were inflating, the music continued blaring on the speakers around the field. Suddenly the music stopped, and all the flood lights were switched off. Kids began to sing (Happy Birthday to you) since it's the 10 year aniversary of the night glow. As the kids came to the end of the song, the made a huffing and puffing sound, like they were blowing out candles. Suddenly the night a-glow with several gas fire stands located around all the balloons. Many people in the crowd gasped in fright, including me as I was pretty close to one of these fire stands xD Then music started and all the balloons as well as the fire stands began to glow in time with the music. It was so so so pretty!










And, ofcourse, what's an outdoor night show without some awesome fireworks =P