Time passes, but the idea remains in his mind. In mid 1999, it's when the Kon-Tiki team felt able to try the challenge. More than one year of preparations will give body to the so called “Expedicion Turpial” in honour of an espectacular amazonian bird from which we want to imitate its pleasant flight over the virgin forest.
Finally, in January 2001, and thanks to our sponsor Fotoportal and Flashnetshoping, and also other collaborators like Tainco and Petromiralles, the Expediton Turpial starts their way through the Amazon.
13 people, all of them enthusiasts of ballooning, Nature and adventure, are the human team. Three hot air balloons, two of them from Catalonia and one from Brasil, will be the aerial resources. A regional 15 m. river boat will be the base camp to transport all of us and all of the material, for eating, sleeping and, definitively, for living together in a reduced space without many intimacy and a lot of “brotherhood”. Two outboard speed boats of 15 CV will be the rescue vehicles. Two thousand kg of “kitchen gas”, the most similar to propane we found, was distributed between the boat and different points along the river. All this were the ingredients to make up our adventure.
The objective: to fly the maximum time and distance over a never before overflown area in a balloon. The reasons were obvious from the first moment: until where we could see, all was only virgin forest or water.
The relief was flat, the winds were constant, no powerlines, ...until here perfect for ballooning but ... and what about landing? The result: 24 flights with the 3 balloons. Landings into the water, in the beaches, into the forest, over the boat, ... A great succes!
