Guest Bio
Dale de Klerk is the CEO of Bill Harrop’s “Original” Balloon Safaris, a premier hot air ballooning company in South Africa. With a lifelong passion for aviation that began at the age of 7, Dale has dedicated his career to the skies, embracing new challenges and opportunities in the industry. Under his leadership, Bill Harrop’s “Original” Balloon Safaris continues to offer unforgettable ballooning experiences, providing guests with scenic flights over breathtaking landscapes while upholding the highest standards of safety and professionalism.
Show Summary
In this episode, Dale de Klerk shares his journey in aviation and how he became the CEO of Bill Harrop’s “Original” Balloon Safaris. He discusses the art and science behind hot air ballooning, the challenges of managing a premier aviation tourism company, and the meticulous planning that goes into ensuring a seamless and safe ballooning experience. Dale also reflects on his passion for flight, the importance of customer experience in adventure tourism, and the future of the hot air ballooning industry in South Africa. Listeners will gain insight into the behind-the-scenes operations of a successful ballooning company and what makes this experience so unique.
Key Takeaways
- ✓ Leading an Aviation Business – Managing a premier ballooning company and ensuring top-tier experiences.
- ✓ The Art of Ballooning – The science, planning, and skill required to execute safe and scenic flights.
- ✓ Adventure Tourism – How hot air ballooning fits into the broader landscape of experiential travel.
- ✓ Customer Experience – The importance of hospitality, service, and creating unforgettable moments.
- ✓ The Future of Ballooning – Industry trends and innovations in aerial tourism.
What You’ll Find on Bill Harrop’s “Original” Balloon Safaris’ Platform
- ✓ Hot Air Balloon Flights – Scenic flights over the Magalies River Valley and the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage site.
- ✓ Packages – Various flight packages including game viewing at Mabula Private Game Reserve, team-building events, and group bookings.
- ✓ Clubhouse Pavilion – Post-flight sparkling wine breakfast at the well-established and beautifully appointed clubhouse.
- ✓ Specials – Information on current promotions and special offers.
- ✓ Gallery – Image and video galleries showcasing the ballooning experience.
👉 Visit Bill Harrop’s “Original” Balloon Safaris’ Official Website to explore their offerings and learn more about Dale de Klerk’s contributions to aviation and adventure tourism.
Learn more about Bill Harrop’s Original Balloon Safaris and connect with Dale at:
http://www.balloon.co.za/
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Podcast Transcript
This transcript is auto-generated on recording, and has not been edited by a human. It may contain lots of mistakes, crazy words, and stuff that makes no sense. The host and the guest are not responsible for the accuracy of the transcript.
Okay, welcome back everybody to the Big World Made Small podcast for the adventure travel podcast. I’m going to edit that out. Okay everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Big World Made Small adventure travel podcast. Today we are super excited to have Dale de Klerk here with us with Bill Harrop’s original balloon safaris. Dale, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Super super excited to have you here.
As many of our listeners may or may not know, I grew up in a hot air ballooning family. So this is a subject that’s very near and dear to my heart. So I’m super excited to have this conversation with you, Dale, and you lead one of the most respected ballooning companies, organizations in the world. And so it’s just a real pleasure to have you here with us. Dale, where are you? Thank you.
Yeah, where are you located right now? Where are you sitting as we record this? Okay, I’m sitting at home in an area called Hartepierspoort Dam, which is a dam very close to the area of the Machalies Valley, where we actually fly, operate our balloon company from. It’s about 30 kilometers north of Johannesburg, South Africa. Okay, great. Because I’m not gonna try and repeat any of those names. I’ve been to South Africa,
I can pronounce Johannesburg, Cape Town, and many of the others are a little bit of outside of my lexicon, I guess. So thanks for sharing that with us. And Johannesburg is kind of in Northern South Africa, right? Correct. So central North, yes. Not quite up in the North, but more North than the middle. I definitely wanna get into your story, but since we’re on the subject of where you are, and since I asked that,
I’m curious around Johannesburg, for those people that aren’t familiar with South Africa, what other types of activity, obviously you’ve got the ballooning there and that area was chosen for a reason, but what other kind of activities are right around where you fly? Okay, around Johannesburg, probably in about a hundred kilometers circumference, there’s quite a few game parks, Lion and Rhino parks.
Jason Elkins (03:29.55)
There’s also activities of mountain climbing where we are, there’s a nice mountain. South of Johannesburg, there’s the Baal Dam where there’s a lot of boating going on. And then where I live is the Hartepierspoor Dam where there’s boating. And then the capital, which is Pretoria, is slightly northeast of Johannesburg. That’s the capital of South Africa. And then the further north you go, the more bush and wildlife we have. And of course, south we have the
Karoo, which is a very dry area before you get to the coast where Cape Town is, of course. Hey, wonderful. And so now let’s jump. This is a good time to jump in your story, because first question I was going to ask you is, where did you grow up? I grew up in a little town called Brackpan, which is about 20 kilometers east of Johannesburg. The Johannesburg area is quite a densely populated area.
for the last 200 odd years because of the gold mining, which was discovered here, the gold reef. And that’s partly why it’s the more densely populated area of South Africa. Okay, wonderful. And I know that, you know, in conversations I’ve had with you in the past, I know that you have not been involved in ballooning your entire life. So help our listeners kind of get a feel for how you got from where you were,
growing up there, you know, close to Johannesburg, to where you are now, very, you know, similar proximity to Johannesburg, and, but your life has changed a little bit. So tell us a little bit about how you got from where you started to where you are now. Okay, I’m an aviation nut, if you want to put it in plain English. I’ve started flying model airplanes when I was about seven years old. I had my first flight in an aircraft when I was about eight years old.
Then I started hang gliding when I was, I think, 12 or 13. And I’ve just been flying ever since. Flying is my life. And one of the people that I met during my flying career, her name is Tracy Robb. Now she’s considered to be the highest our female balloon pilot in the world. And we were very good friends and she used to fly for the company Bill Harrop’s original balloon safaris.
Jason Elkins (05:55.802)
And when sadly, Bill, the owner or the guy who started Bill Harrop’s Belusifiers, when he passed away, Tracy looked after him when he had COVID and she got COVID as well. And my wife and I looked after her and the discussion came up as to what’s going to happen to the company. And slowly but surely, we got involved, contacted the state and eventually here we are.
who and I have taken over the company. Wow. Okay. There was some really cool stuff there. I want to dig a little deeper. You said you started learning, got into aviation with model airplanes when you were seven, had your first flight at eight, and got into hang gliding around 12. So I think most people listening to this can realize that’s a little different trajectory than the typical 12 year old is taking.
sailing off of mountaintops in a hang glider. So I want to hear more about that. I want to know, like your parents, who was it that encouraged this type of behavior and what was behind that? Okay, my older brother, sadly, he’s also passed away now. Him and I saw an advert in a magazine for plans to build a hang glider. And we literally bought these plans, built the hang glider out of
And the covering was a plastic cover those days. And we built this thing and literally went to a mine dump and started running off the edge of the mine dump and taught ourselves to fly. And the funny thing is my mother didn’t object. She just said, as long as we don’t ride motorbikes, we can fly anything we like.
Oh, okay. Yeah, because that was gonna be the next question is, where was your adult supervision as you were doing this? And I guess you just, you answered that. And I tend to agree. I sometimes correlate flying to maybe motorcycle riding and I’ve been flying most of my life. I started learning to fly when I was 12 as well. So in a balloon and had the full support of my parents and I came to the conclusion as well
Jason Elkins (08:16.234)
It’s much safer than riding a motorcycle down pretty much any street. Um, so I can, I can appreciate that. So, but did your parents or family or anybody other than just you and your brother have this interest in aviation or that’s, it’s just fascinating. Yeah. The model aircraft came from my dad. He used to build model aircraft and fly them.
Not very successfully in those days because the electronic equipment in the early 60s was not all that great. But we all learned to fly model airplanes with my dad. He never flew any full size aircraft. But that’s where I think the bug bit once we’ve gotten into the model airplanes and the hang gliding, it just progressed from there. OK, so did you go from so what came after the hang gliding? I’m just fascinated by kind of the series of events.
Did this lead you directly into a career in aviation or did you do something else for a while? You know, the quote unquote real job or what did that look like for you? Okay, from hang gliding, which I did for, ooh, can’t remember exactly how many years, but quite a number of years. And then we met a friend that introduced us to sailplanes or gliders, you might know them as sailplanes. And then I started flying sailplanes.
I also did a short stint in the Air Force, which was at that stage mandatory in South Africa, but I did some flying in the Air Force as well. And then I did my fixed wing private pilot license and later on became an instructor. And I also run a fixed wing flying school, which has been going for many years now. So have you ever had a job or a business that was not aviation related?
Yes, I did. For 20 years, I was actually involved in furniture manufacturing as well, but I also flew at the same time. I didn’t ever stop flying. But I did have to make a living elsewhere because aviation doesn’t seem to make enough money to support all my crazy ideas. I understand. I think there’s a few kind of careers in the aviation space that maybe pay the bills, but
Jason Elkins (10:37.742)
possibly don’t give you the flexibility that I’m kind of sensing you probably enjoy. Because I think there’s people that fly because it’s a good job. Maybe if you’re one of the airlines and you’re just doing that consistently, but I sense you’re a little bit more of a kind of entrepreneurial type and more of an adventure. I shouldn’t say more of an adventure, but I definitely sense that in everything you’ve told me so far. So.
So that’s very cool. Do you still have the furniture business or is that in the past? No, I sold that in 2003. So that’s quite a while ago. But yeah, you’re quite right. I think I am more of an adventurous type of person. I’ve never flown for the airlines. I’ve never had the inclination to fly for the airlines. I’ve always enjoyed the smaller aircraft, aerobatic flying. I was very competitive in my gliding career. I won several competitions there.
And then when I went into fixed wing flying, I did a lot of what they call rally flying. I was South African champion for 10 years in a row. And in 2003, I was together with a very good friend of mine, Nigel Hopkins, I was world champion in rally flying. Okay, so tell us, help for those of us that, including myself, that don’t really know what rally flying is, is that I’ve seen videos
of the Red Bull type of races and stuff like that. Is that similar? Tell us more. Yeah, the Red Bull races, I would love to have done something like that, but that’s very intensive flying from a high speed and very prec What rally flying is, is very similar to rally car racing, where you get a map that you have to fly.
to various turn points around about a 200 nautical mile course. But instead of racing, you nominate your own speed. So you can nominate any speed you like. But you can’t exceed your speed or fly any slower. And you’re not allowed to slow down by circling or weaving. You have to simply maintain your speed. And they log your speed with an electronic logger to check that you don’t cheat. And
Jason Elkins (12:59.582)
Along the way, you need to identify certain objects where they give you clues to identify these and mark where they are. And you’ve also got to obviously find all the turnpoints and do all this while you’re maintaining a very, very specific speed. You’re only allowed three seconds grace. So you can go three seconds ahead of your time or three seconds behind your time. If you exceed that, then you get penalized. So it sounds like a mix of scavenger hunt,
and precision flying exercise and patience and all kinds of things are mixed together for that. Very much so. And I promise you it’s hard work, but I loved every minute of it. Did you know kind of the route and I’m curious how much time you have to plan something like that? Do you just kind of show up and they say, okay, here are the checkpoints.
Which is speed, you’ve got five minutes to figure it out, or is this more, a lot of strategizing to make this all work? Cause it does sound like there’s a lot of moving parts. You get a map and you get a clue sheet and you have 15 minutes to work it out. And sometimes you don’t finish working it out and you’ve already got to get airborne. So while you’re flying, you’re still doing some of the calculations, but that’s what makes it so interesting. Cause it’s high pressure.
And of course you’ve got to make damn sure that you’re on track. Cause if you do go off track, that’s the end of your flight for that day. Is this typically, you’re flying this solo typically, or do you have a co-pilot or what does that look like? No, that’s a pilot and co-pilot. So there’s two of us on board. Okay. And maybe you mentioned that, I apologize. I’ve got so many things rolling around in my head. This is really, really fascinating. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Okay. And are you still doing that or is that?
Have you moved on? No, I’ve moved on. I still fly, obviously, but I don’t fly the rally flying competitively anymore. And I’ve also stopped aerobatic flying. I’m 65 years old this year. Not that I think that that’s old, but I need to sort of calm down a little bit and do something sensible like flying balloons. Like flying balloons. Yeah, I get it. And…
Jason Elkins (15:19.766)
And I do want to share with you a story. I worked in real estate for a while and I had a client who is in the Air Force in Arizona. He was like a 35 pilot. I’d been doing it for a while and I’d mentioned to him that I was also a pilot and started that conversation. I said, well, I have a commercial hot air balloon pilot
Jason Elkins (15:48.366)
And I had a few other conversations with people that are like, well, why would you do that? You can’t control it. And there’s something to be said for ballooning. It’s slower. Maybe I can see why it might appeal to you with the rally flying, because it’s quite a bit different than the speed and the intensity. It’s a lot of planning, a lot of planning ahead for those listeners that don’t know, every time you impart some sort of
you know, maneuver into a balloon or you take action to create a change in altitude or that, you know, there’s a lag. It takes a little while. So you got to plan ahead a little bit. So it sounds a lot like the rally flying. That lag has caught me out a few times. Yeah. So you’re learning to fly balloons now.
Right? So you got involved in the business and I’m not sure where to start that part of the conversation but I think it’s important that you’re expanding into flying balloons and getting licensed in balloons because there’s a lot of similarities but obviously it’s a slightly different skillset. So tell us a little bit about your journey as you’re learning to fly and then we’ll connect that back around with how do you have a hot air balloon ride business?
If you’re not licensed as a commercial pilot, who are you working with? Who are your partners? How does that all work? Okay, I am starting, or I am learning to fly a hot air balloon. Now I don’t know what the regulations are worldwide. I think they’re pretty similar, but you’ve got to get a hot air balloon private pilot license first, which I haven’t quite got to yet. I’m working my way towards that. Then once you’ve got your private pilot license, you need to build a hundred hours of piloting command.
before you can fly commercially in a hot air balloon. Now, as you know, with ballooning, especially in South Africa, we only fly very early in the mornings because it gets extremely hot and windy. So we can’t fly many hours in one day. So we average maybe one or two hours a day. Also with managing the company and pulling the company into, call it production again, since COVID, which we’ll get into a bit later, I’ve spent a lot of time
Jason Elkins (18:10.502)
in running the business. So I haven’t actually got involved in the flying side of it yet. However, I’ve got, as I said, my partner Tracy Robb, who’s a 5,000-hour balloon pilot. Then I have another lady by the name of Felicity Clegg, who’s in the region of 3,000-hour commercial balloon pilot. And I have Eugene Schultz, who’s also 3,000-hour balloon pilot. And Nick Duffield, who’s also around 3,000-hour
commercial balloon pilot. And then very recently, we’ve started a balloon school. And we have trained the first South African black or black South African commercial balloon pilot, his name is Michael Maja. And how that came about is before my time, his mother worked for the Harrop family. And as a kid, he started as a crew member and learned all about ballooning.
in his younger days. And when I got involved in the company, I just heard about this little guy that was always there, but he’s now gone and he’s off on his own mission. And I contacted him and said to him, well, what are you doing? And he said, well, I was studying law, but I ran out of funds and I’m not getting to where I wanna get. And I said, well, would you like to carry on with your ballooning career? Which is exactly what he did. And he’s now recently about.
three months ago, qualified as the first black South African commercial balloon pilot. So we’ve got five pilots flying for us. And that gives me a chance to actually do the management side of it. Very cool. I’m happy that this conversation came up because in my experience, I grew up around ballooning. I’ve been around balloons my entire life. And there’s a few questions that I frequently hear. And one of them comes from a place of surprise. It’s like,
Oh, you need a license to fly those? You know, so I’m happy that this came up because if listeners are thinking, well, geez, I didn’t even know you need a license to fly balloons. It’s important to know that. So if you’re going out somewhere and you wanna go for a balloon ride, I think it’s valuable to know that the pilot flying for you, with you, taking you on the flight, that there are requirements and certifications you mentioned, minimum 100 hours.
Jason Elkins (20:34.466)
That might not sound like a lot to some people. I get that. And ballooning is an interesting thing because we only typically fly about one hour at a time. You know, which is another question that comes up. You mentioned that we fly early in the mornings. Some places we’re also able to fly late in the evenings. And as you said, that has to do with temperature. And the temperature plays an impact on the winds because anybody that’s listening that isn’t aware of this,
Winds are created by variations of temperature on the ground. So as the sun comes up and heats the atmosphere, heats the ground, you start to get uplift and down lift and all these things. It’s like water boiling. I used to describe it. Imagine you put a pot of water on the stove and when it’s cold, the water’s just calm. And as you start to heat it up, the bottom of the pan starts to warm up. Eventually you start to see the water kind of circulating and boiling.
That’s a good visual. You can see that and you can imagine that in a pot of water. It’s a little harder to imagine it in the middle of the day when it’s noon and it’s like, okay, it’s hot out, but you don’t see the air moving around the way it really does. So that’s why we fly in the mornings and evenings. And like you said- That’s a very good example. That’s exactly what happened. Yeah, yeah, it is. And it’s like, until you visualize that, it’s like, oh, now I get it.
Sometimes, if you’re out in the desert somewhere where it’s really dry, you might see those dust devils in the middle of the day. That’s a visual representation that we don’t often see. But if you see a dust devil, those currents are usually still there whether there’s a dust devil or not. So yeah, and with balloons, we can’t just point at where we wanna go and hit the throttle and go. So we’re pretty much gonna go wherever the wind is going. So if the wind is…
bouncing around like boiling water, you can imagine how difficult it might be to navigate and control the balloon. So I love that came up. And then the hours thing, every flight is about an hour. So every hour you get, you’ve got the whole planning process, the launch, the inflation, the flight itself, which is not always the technically challenging part. It’s…
Jason Elkins (22:52.19)
It’s the launch, the inflation and the landing. So for every hour you have, you have a full cycle of that. So it’s not just I get my balloon on a fly for eight hours a day for a couple of weeks, and then I’ve got my hours built up. It takes a while to accumulate that time. Most pilots, it might take them six months.
to a year before they’re able to accumulate 100 hours and then you’ve got 100 launches, 100 landings. We’re in a balloon or an airplane, you can just fly around for, you know, I don’t know, I’m not an airplane pilot, but it’s quicker and easier to accumulate hours in an airplane. So definitely. And we find for every balloon hour that you fly, it’s a cycle of about three to three and a half hours. And I’m also, as I said, involved in fixed wing flying as an instructor and have
Jason Elkins (23:46.546)
intensity of the balloon training is as much or slightly more even than what we do in fixed wing. I believe that our standards are very high in South Africa, fixed wing or otherwise, and our balloon training is definitely just as high. So I can safely say that any of our balloon pilots are highly qualified. So anybody that does get into a hot air balloon with a commercial pilot can rest assured that it’s not a…
just some guy that’s found a balloon somewhere and flying it, it’s definitely very well trained. And there’s also a lot of recurrency training and checks and balances that we have to do. So that does put people’s mind at ease that it’s not an unsafe sport at all. I can ask you one of the questions I’ve been asked many times before. It is how do you know where, how do you
I’m just gonna ask, how do you steer a balloon? You don’t, simple. Okay, no, you do steer a balloon simply by monitoring the weather and winds. Now, when I say winds, it’s obviously early in the morning, not strong winds, but there are breezes and there’s winds or drafts or currents in different directions at different altitudes. And we have often found that within…
a 2000 foot level, you can have currents in three different directions. And that’s basically how you steer the balloon. So you move from one current into the other one, go in one direction, then you change direction by changing altitude, and then you go in a different direction. And if you’re very good, and you’re very lucky, you can actually land where you took off. But that takes quite a bit of skill. And a little bit of cooperation from the wind currents.
Because the one definite thing is you cannot take a balloon in a direction that the wind is not going. Now you might go up and find a wind that may be going that direction, but like you said, a lot of things have to come together. So if you don’t land at the same place.
Jason Elkins (26:00.782)
How do you get back? OK, well, we’ve got seven balloons in our company, of which three of them are 415, which is 410,000 cubic feet of air. They carry about 16 people at a time. So that’s the interesting thing about ballooning. There’s a lot of crew for one single balloon flight.
you have a vehicle, which is normally a four by four vehicle with a trailer that has to retrieve the balloon, because when you land in a field and a farmer’s field somewhere, you can’t just carry the balloon out, because your basket alone weighs about close on a thousand pounds and your envelope of your balloon also weighs about a thousand pounds. So that’s quite heavy. That needs to be recovered and loaded on a trailer and brought back.
And then we have a little mini bus, a 16-seater mini bus, which also goes out and collects the passengers and brings them back to base. But we have a tradition, which I’m sure is a tradition everywhere in the world, coming from the Montgolfier brothers, is when we land, we first serve everybody with some champagne for a successful flight, which we do in the middle of the farmer’s field. And we…
make sure that we don’t mess up his field. And sometimes the farmer even gets invited and they enjoy that. That’s a super fun part of it. And, you know, as that came up, I wasn’t intending for that to come up, but I’m happy it did because that, you know, that’s something, it’s an interesting story that I’m sure most of the people listening to this have never heard, maybe if they’ve been on a balloon flight. But yes, it was the Montgolfier brothers back in 17, was it 1783? 1783. 1783, was it?
on the 21st of November, which is only two or three days ago. Yes, yes. So we’re recording this November, so we just passed that celebration. But it goes back to France, the Montcalfier brothers, that nobody had ever flown before. No man had ever actually left the ground in any way that you would call flying, other than maybe jumping off of something. But not even, I don’t even believe in any sort of hang glider that was successful. But anyway, these two brothers, they own a paper manufacturing company in Paris.
Jason Elkins (28:20.73)
And the version of the story I heard is the one brother was sitting there next to the fire making his notes one night and his wife’s knickers were hanging up on the line drying next to the fire and a little kind of waft of hot air had come out of the fire and lifted her knickers up off the line. He got this idea. He thought, you know, we own a paper company. Let’s make a big bag and we’ll maybe we can get the hot air or the smoke actually is what they thought it was, was the smoke. So they thought we’re gonna make a big bag.
fill it full of smoke and when it has enough smoke in it, we’ll cut it loose and it’ll float off into the air. So they started experimenting and eventually they were able to build one big enough that they were able to lift some animals off the ground and then eventually even people. And so they had this idea that they wanted to put a person into the air and they’re trying to figure out, well, who should this be? Because they weren’t sure what was up there. If it was toxic gases, what was gonna happen
you know, went off into the air, would you die? Was it going to be safe? And I, the story I heard was that they were trying to decide if maybe they should send some condemned prisoners because if it didn’t work out, then you know, no big deal. But then of course, there was the other camp that said, well, why would we want to give that honor to a prisoner? So there were two brave men, Jean-Pilote de Rosier and I cannot think of the other guys now.
Yeah, I didn’t think of it as soon as we get past. What’s that? Do you remember? I don’t. Of course I don’t. Anyway, these two French kind of scientist adventure types, they got the big bag, they filled it full of smoke. When it was ready, they threw on a bunch of rotten wood and carcasses and all this stuff because they thought it was the smoke really that helped it rise. So they funneled the smoke up into the big bag.
And when they thought it was ready, the two guys jumped on board, they cut the ropes and they flew off into the countryside in this big orb, billowing smoke. And you can imagine this was back before they had radio, television, internet, and all that stuff. So you can imagine these farmers out working in the fields. You look up and see this orb billowing smoke and it comes down and lands in their field. So oftentimes they’d run out there with pitchforks and all kinds of stuff to…
Jason Elkins (30:42.658)
to confront whatever was going on and they get out there and these guys climbed out of the balloon just covered in soot from the fire and from the smoke and they looked like demons. So you can imagine that was not such a good thing. So I guess they decided, you know, if we’re gonna keep doing this, we probably better bring something with us that shows that we’re not demons and that we come in good faith. So they’re Frenchmen. So what do you think they decided to bring? The champagne, the obvious choice.
So they would carry champagne with them. So when they’d meet these landowners, they’d pull out the champagne, the landowners would realize, okay, they come in peace and they would share a toast of the, you know, toast the champagne and everybody was happy. And that was kind of, you know, what I heard was the story about why we still to this day, oh, you know, the smart blueness, always carry a bottle of champagne to present, either present or share with the landowner when they land. And
It’s absolutely true. When you land in someone’s field, hopefully it’s not a full crop, but when you land in somebody’s field and they come out to greet you and you’ve got a bottle of champagne in your hand for them, it tends to help. So anyway, that was the story I heard. I’m sure there’s a few different variations. I’ve actually heard a few different variations, but anyway, it’s kind of cool. So whenever I think of champagne, it takes me back to that story. And so it’s fun. So anybody listening to this?
for a balloon ride and make sure you ask for the champagne or about the champagne. It’s an important part of tradition. So anyway. Definitely. It’s part of the tradition. If you don’t have the champagne, you haven’t gone on a balloon ride. Yeah, I tend to agree. I know some balloonists that say, we don’t mess with that. Okay. Well, I like tradition myself and I tend to find that the
Jason Elkins (32:35.594)
Anyway, so with the company, so it’s Bill Harp’s Original Bloon Safaris. So I did wanna ask you about the name because it’s quite unique in all of the Blooning community. I can’t really think of any organization that really kind of emphasizes the word original. So tell us a little bit more about that, where Bill came up with that, or was it all?
Like, did you start with that name or did that change over time? What did that come about? OK, the first guy that flew a balloon in South Africa, his name was Terry Adams. He’s still alive today, but very old. He’s in his 90s already. And he I can’t remember if he taught Bill or if Bill just taught himself. But Bill was basically the second balloon pilot in South Africa. But at that stage, they were basically sport balloons and very small 60.
thousand cubic feet and sorry, six thousand cubic feet anyway. And Bull started or got the idea of starting a commercial operation, which he started in 1981. And as far as we can ascertain, his company was the first, most definitely the first commercial balloon operation in Africa and possibly the southern hemisphere. And he registered that name in 1981.
Bo Harrop’s original balloon safaris. He seems like that was fairly foresighted to just say, you know what, let’s just start with that instead of going back later, because I wondered if that was like, well, did other people come in and try and take his name? And so he was trying to, you know, distinguish himself as the original one, but that shows a tremendous amount of foresight into that. And you know, you mentioned something else that I would want to touch on as well, because I think it’s interesting.
is you mentioned smaller sport balloons that are usually, you mentioned 60,000 cubic feet, you mentioned the bigger balloons that carry 16 passengers might be like 400, I think you said 425,000 cubic feet. Those are big balloons. Anybody that’s around ballooning probably kind of understands what that is, but to put it into perspective, someone once meant, I think it was my foster.
Jason Elkins (34:57.846)
I was going to say someone, I’m pretty sure it was my dad. Cause I grew up with him and we flew, I learned to fly on a balloon that was 84,000 cubic feet. And you tell people that it’s really hard to get your head around it. And he used to say, imagined 84,000 NBA basketballs. Yeah. 84,000 NBA basketballs gives you an idea of just how big a 84,000 cubic foot balloon is. And that’s a small.
Yeah, and that’s yeah, so think 425,000 NBA basketballs. And you start to get your head around just how big this thing is. That’s, you know, that’s almost, well, that’s half a million basketballs. So it, and people that haven’t been up close to balloons just really have no idea just how big they can be. So it’s a pretty cool thing. And what other people don’t realize is that air has mass.
and all the air inside that balloon has mass as well. So that is why a balloon that big has got such an inertia and kinetic energy. So hence why you need to have training and start with a smaller balloon and work your way up to be able to fly and control one of those big balloons. It’s hard to imagine, but like even a big balloon like that moving it.
five to 10 miles an hour. We generally don’t fly much over 10, sometimes depending on the situation conditions. But let’s just for example, say 10 miles an hour. So you think, oh, 10 miles an hour, and it’s just full of air, it’s light, it’s lighter than air. That’s kind of what we call ballooning, is lighter than air aviation. And if you’re standing on the ground and a balloon that size is coming towards you at 10 miles an hour,
you’re not going to stop it. It’s like getting hit by a truck almost. Correct. No, that’ll knock the car flying. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, and we, we mentioned earlier, we got a kind of plan ahead. We don’t have wheels. We’re not landing on a runway. It’s quite literally, it’s just dragging. Like when we’re moving slow, we still drag a little bit.
Jason Elkins (37:18.946)
Pilots might not say dragging, but that’s really what it is. You gotta get enough friction between the bottom of the basket and the earth to actually stop the forward momentum of the balloon. And when you’re going two miles an hour, that’s not too difficult, but I think it’s kind of, one of those, can’t think of the term right now, but going 10 miles an hour, it takes significantly more distance.
to stop the balloon, you need more space and things like trees and cars and roads and power lines or there’s a lot of things out there to avoid. So anyway, obviously it’s a topic I’m excited about. So is there something about ballooning in South Africa that you feel is different than ballooning and other areas you’ve been involved in this business for a while, you’ve got some pilots that have been around for an awful long time.
Is there anything specific to South Africa that people, so maybe somebody has been on a balloon in Arizona or in Europe or something like that? What is there different to South Africa? Okay, I haven’t personally flown balloons anywhere else in the world, although I have been to various different countries and I’ve flown aircraft all over the world. But South Africa is an amazing country. We have everything from a desert to the most
plus bush felts, we’ve got mountains, we’ve got rivers, we’ve got dams, and we’ve got a massive coastline. Now, where we fly is in a valley called the Machaliz Valley, which is between two ranges of mountains. The one range is called the Machalizberg mountain, and the other one is called the Witwaters mountains. They’re not far apart, they’re only about 10 to 12 kilometers apart. But according to our history, the Machalizberg range of mountains
is either the second or the third oldest mountain range in the world in history. So there’s a lot of history around there. There are beautiful bush felts and fields and green fields and the mountain itself has got birds, bird life that you can’t imagine all kinds of bird. And then we do have some wild game as well. So
Jason Elkins (39:41.054)
although we don’t only fly in that valley, but we fly mainly in that valley, it is really, really a spectacular view to see from the air. And then of course, once we do climb up to about a thousand foot, then we can see the major cities of Pretoria and Johannesburg as well, which is a nice view for people to see. And then we do also have other areas in South Africa where we fly, for instance, Mosul Bay, which is right down on the coast near Cape Town.
We have some areas in the Eastern Transvaal, which is near the Kruger National Park, which is one of the most famous national parks in the world. And then up North, we also have another game park called Mabula Game Lodge, where we do some flying, where game is quite perfect. So you can see virtually everything from even the big five, even leopards and cheetahs and lions and that type of thing.
So we’re very, very lucky in South Africa. We’ve got off the most beautiful country sides that you can see. Well, most people, when they come to South Africa, I guess I’m trying to get a feel for what’s your, what is your typical client, passenger, it’s like, are they visiting from outside of South Africa for safari, maybe they’re going to Kruger, maybe they’re…
doing RoboSrail, maybe they’re doing something in South Africa already. And they just go for a balloon flight or do people hang out with you and go ballooning for a week or two or what does it typically look like? Okay. Typically, let me go back a little bit in history. Before COVID, if I look at figures, we used to fly probably 70% of foreign tourists versus 30% of local South Africans.
After COVID, sadly, you know, the whole tourism industry fell apart and the tourist industry was virtually non-existent. Now, since 2021, we’ve built it up again and we’re not quite there yet. But yes, we’ve got tourists from America, Europe, India, China, virtually every country in the world. And the typical tourist is somebody that comes to South Africa to see an adventure.
Jason Elkins (41:58.038)
So they would either go to the Kruger National Park or the other one is Philansburg, which is very close to us, also a national park. They would also travel around the cities and Cape Town and then want to do a balloon flight. It’s very seldom that we have somebody doing more than one balloon flight, but yeah, they do want to do one balloon flight at least to see the Africa from the air. And funny enough, we have a lot of aircrew, a lot of people…
pilots and their crew that fly for various different airlines that come and do balloon flights with us and they love every minute of it. That makes sense because it’s an activity you can do for you know a few let’s say a half day it kind of takes up a half day so if you’re in town for a couple days your flight crew you’ve got to lay over yeah what a perfect thing to go out and do.
Typically people on flight crews have some sort of interest in aviation as well. So, so that, that makes a lot of sense. Let’s discuss because I suspect this is something that comes up. I don’t know if it comes up for you in your business. It definitely came up for me in my balloon ride business around like the number of passengers in a balloon, because if you’ve never been in a balloon, it’s you really have no idea. You might have maybe you’ve got an option of, okay, I can go in a balloon where I booked.
a little spot or maybe two spots for me and my partner on a balloon flight. And then sometimes you see options to book a private charter. Maybe you’ve got a group, three or four people, whatever. So I’m curious how you help your clients figure out what’s the best fit for them and what you’d like people to know about the differences between private charters flying in a small balloon, joining a larger group in a bigger balloon. So how do you guys handle that?
Okay, we’re very lucky. We’ve got quite a big range of balloons. Our smallest balloon is a 90, which is essentially a pilot and two passengers. Then we have a 105, which is a pilot and three passengers. Then we have a 210, which can take anywhere between four and eight passengers. Then we have a 310, which takes between six and 12 passengers. And then we have the 415, three of them, which can take up to 16 passengers. But now…
Jason Elkins (44:19.658)
It’s always all easy to say passengers nowadays. What is the average weight of a person? Years ago, it was considered to be about 150 pounds, 160 pounds. It nowadays it’s quite different. So we actually when people book with us, we ask they wait and I’m happy. I’m happy you brought that up because I’m setting the stage right now. If you’re going to call Dale and the team.
They’re gonna ask you for your weight. And some people don’t like that. Some people are gonna give some pushback. Why do you need to know my weight? This is BS, da da. Are you guys gonna discriminate against me? So thank you for bringing this up. I’m punctuating this right now. So anybody that’s listening, thinking about going for a balloon ride, whether it’s with Dale or somebody else, and they ask your weight, or you see something on their website about.
If you’re under this much, if you’re over that, there’s a little surcharge. So go ahead, continue, please. We don’t charge more. We haven’t as up to date, even no matter how heavy you are. But as you know, and I’m emphasizing this for the people listening, is a balloon has a maximum weight that it can carry, depending on the conditions of the day as well. Temperature of the day, if it’s a winter’s day and it’s cold, we can carry a little bit more weight. And summer, we carry a little bit less. But.
not only does it have a maximum weight, it also has a minimum weight. So if all of a sudden, we have 16 midgets arriving, then the balloon would simply be too light and very difficult to control. So yes, it’s very important for us to calculate the correct takeoff mass and the correct landing mass for the balloon. And at the end of the day, it’s for the customer safety. Nothing else. No judgment, right?
No judgment. This is just, we just need to know. Okay. And also we have a height limit, which is in our metric system, which is 1.2 meters. I think it’s about four foot. We don’t allow kids shorter or smaller than that. And again, it’s for a simple reason. If they are too small, they tend to want to climb up on the edge of the basket and there’s a chance that they could fall over the side.
Jason Elkins (46:39.678)
And you know, unfortunately, when parents are looking out at the views and checking everything around them, they don’t see what the kids are doing. So we have a rule, end of story. If you’re under 1.2 meters or four foot, we simply can’t put you in the balloon. It’s just too dangerous. So from a weight point of view and from a height point of view, we have to have the safety measures in place. And we don’t buy. I love that you brought that up. And…
realistically in my experience, children that are under a certain height.
Frankly, I’m not speaking, this is a generalization, but typically children that are under certain height also are under a certain age and also have a slightly lower patience or… It’s called an attention span, I think. Attention span, attention span. I don’t know why my brain’s now already. Attention span. And frankly, ballooning is beautiful. I love like being in a balloon for an hour for me
Wonderful, I don’t get bored. Most people don’t get bored. But I gotta tell you, if you’re three and a half feet tall and you’re eight years old, you can’t really see over the edge of the basket. And your pilot or your mom and dad aren’t gonna let you sit up on the edge so you can see. And even if you could see, the scenery changes a little slower than maybe what kids are used to, especially if they’re into tablets and the modern world. And the burner.
over the head that heats the air has a very high pitch frequency in it that most adults cannot actually hear. But as you know, with children, they can hear frequencies quite different than you and I can hear. So an eight-year-old in a balloon for an hour, listening to that burner, that high pitch frequency, oftentimes they’re scared. Very few eight-year-olds actually really enjoy being around balloon burner. Doesn’t mean they don’t.
Jason Elkins (48:45.298)
I mean, even my kid, you know, my son, when he was, I started flying with him when he was quite, you know, five, six, seven, whatever, but he had to wear earphones 15 minutes into the flight. He’s like, dad, can we land now? I’m bored, da da. So, so yeah, if you’ve got young kids, it’s not Dale trying to be, you know, a hard ass or anything. It’s probably not the highest, you know, I would advise my passengers maybe to go do something else.
frankly, if they’ve got any children. Requesting that they bring their dog along. And although I’m an animal lover, it’s just too dangerous because if the dog does decide to jump and gets in either entangled in any of the lines or ropes or jumps over the side, I mean, that passenger is gonna be very upset with me. The dog’s not gonna enjoy it. And the burner, it’s the same thing with the burner. There’s a high pitch frequency.
And the first time anybody is listening to this first time you go on a balloon, if you fly over any neighborhoods or any areas with dogs, you will hear dogs. You will hear dogs on the ground a thousand feet below barking at the balloon and it’s because of the burner. They probably don’t even see the balloon. They hear the burner. They hear that high pitch frequency of freaks them out. Very few dogs can really be comfortable in a, it would just be a miserable ride for everybody and the dog would probably be traumatized. You know, it’s probably not going to jump out.
But it’s not worth it. Yeah, it’s gonna be a horrible experience. It’s gonna be on the news and Bill Harrop’s original Bloomsphire is gonna get a bad rap for losing our dog over the edge. So that’s enough of that. That’s not even pleasant thing to talk about, is it? Okay, so we covered quite a few things. Are your pilots, you mentioned several of them, Tracy.
Are they all South African or do they come from a variety of places or? Well, all of them South African, except one Nick Duffield, who’s a British, born in British, but he’s been living in South Africa many years. So, so they’re interesting. However, all of them have flown either in the Serengeti or in Europe or in quite a few different places. So they have got international experience, but they’re basically South Africa.
Jason Elkins (51:09.634)
So, and I think I like that, right? Because if I’m going to South Africa, I probably want to meet some South Africans. Balloon pilots sometimes are fun. You know, they’re kind of interesting characters and unexperienced. And then the crew, you’ve got that South African crew. It’s fun to engage with the crew because you mentioned some things about things you can see from the air and the areas that you fly in. But I suspect your people and your team are…
just as important as all that stuff. It probably makes it a little bit more unique than, you know, than maybe when you fly another place, not that I would say other places are boring. It’s just fun to connect with people and an hour in a balloon with a pilot. Probably telling some jokes or probably pointing some things out. It’s probably a lot of fun. So I would encourage anybody that’s considering South Africa or ballooning. Oh, another thing. Sometimes people are scared.
Oftentimes, I’d have couples and maybe one of them was like, bucket list, I want to fly in a balloon. And the other person is like, no way. How are you going to get me in that thing? So what would you like to say to people that have some apprehension about it, or maybe they have a partner that has some apprehension about it? What do you like to share with them to ease their concerns? Because if they’ve never been around a balloon, it’s really hard to even comprehend what it might be.
Okay, this is actually the easiest thing in the world for me because I have a terrible fear of ice. And when I’m in an aircraft or in a balloon basket, I feel 100% comfortable. It doesn’t bug me at all, but I can’t even stand on a ladder or I can’t walk on a veranda, which has got a railing, an open railing and I have to look down. It scares me something terrible. And we have had.
various passengers that have come up to me and said, oh, my wife or my girlfriend or my son or whoever is scared and they don’t want to fly. And I’ve coached them into it. And every single one has come back to me and said, wow, we can’t believe how comfortable it was. So I promise you, if, you know, I’ve got various references, it’s not scary at all. It’s a wonderful, wonderful experience. It’s almost mind blowing.
Jason Elkins (53:29.802)
how different it is than what people expect. They’ve never done it, but a couple of things. One is the basket comes up above most people’s waist, through the belly or so. So you really cannot fall out unless you’re trying to. Number one. Number two, there’s no ledge per se, right? And the thing that’s tricky about ladders or standing on the edge of a building or on the edge of a cliff is there’s a visual reference.
that goes from where you are all the way down to the ground. So like on a cliff, you’ve got that visual reference. It almost makes it real. There’s something about the brain that ties that together. When you don’t have a ledge, it just feels different. You just don’t have that depth perception. And I think because the moon launches so gently and slowly, everything happens.
Oh, slowly that you don’t even notice that you’re in the air and pull you all of a sudden. Oh, yeah I think in most cases you could tell your passengers. Okay before you left off you just say, okay I want you to close your eyes for three minutes As we get ready, let’s do a meditation. Let’s you know, whatever close your eyes. We’re going to do a meditation And you could say okay now open your eyes and you could be a thousand feet off the ground And nobody will know they’re like wow
We took off, I didn’t even notice. So people worry about that. There’s no like thrust running down the runway or the shaking and stuff. It’s not skydiving, it’s not hang gliding. You’re literally floating with the wind. So you don’t have that movement that freaks you out. You don’t have that ledge. You don’t feel like you can fall because you’re standing behind something that gives you a sense of security. And I used to tell people, look, come on out. We’re gonna go, we’re gonna get in the balloon.
And we’re going to take off. And if after 10 minutes you hate it and you’re like, I can’t do this anymore. I will land. I will let you out and you won’t pay me. I never single never once had anybody to take me up on that. I’ve said to people, if you’re not, just tell us and we will land. And never ever. It used to be like you drive out to the launch site and you can tell who was nervous because they were really quiet. And it was early morning. Maybe they hadn’t had their coffee yet.
Jason Elkins (55:50.678)
But you’d, or you’d have some people just talked a lot because they were so nervous. But then like 10 minutes into the flight, five minutes into the flight, their whole personality changes when they’re the nervous types. Because now all of a sudden, now I get to see this guy or this woman, it’s usually the guys that are more nervous, to be honest with you. But you get to see kind of them shift into their have fun personality. And then the ride back from the, from where you land back to the pickup spot is like, it’s like a totally different group of people.
So anybody that has the apprehension, I just say go for it. You will not regret it. We also have something unique in South Africa. When I say we, our company, we ask the passengers to be on site an hour before launch time. So they actually see really, really close up exactly how the envelope is unfolded, how the burner is tested.
how the basket is connected, the cold inflation, the hot inflation, the whole thing. And by the time they’ve seen all of that, they seem to be much, much more relaxed because they can see that there’s an organization that knows what they’re doing. The people around the balloon know what they’re doing. And by the time they’re asked to come and get into the basket, everything seems to be in place. Whereas other operators have their balloons already inflated and ready to go when the vehicle just arrives and they say, OK.
out of the vehicle, into the balloon and off you go. And we do it. That’s a different experience. I agree with you. I like the way you do it. We used to sometimes even have like, especially if it was a smaller group, have them participate in the inflation. You know, have them maybe hold the mouth of the balloon open or help you pull out the sides of the balloon, just the more hands-on because it’s like anything, the more familiar you are with it.
the more comfortable you’re likely to be. And so I think that’s great. I think if you’re choosing an operator, if an operator gives you the opportunity to be there for the inflation process and to go through all that, I would, yeah, that’s a really good tip. And that’s great. What I would say that people must realize is balloons are very, very weather susceptible. And I have on a couple of occasions canceled a flight when…
Jason Elkins (58:05.334)
the passengers are literally about to board and I’m not happy with the conditions. And I’ve said, sorry, we’re not flying. Pull the red line, deflate the balloon and we’ll give your money back or we’ll let you fly another day. But we do not take chances. It just doesn’t happen. It’s important because again, if you don’t know anything about ballooning, you might think, oh, this, what’s the problem? It’s not that windy. Well, that windy when you’re flying a balloon that’s.
the equivalent of 425,000 basketballs. And it’s, you know, 100 feet into the air. It’s like a giant sail. And on a sailboat, you can just swing the sail over to the other side of the boat. You can pull the sail down. It’s not that easy in a balloon, especially when you’re off, you know, in a sailboat, it’s too windy to drop a sail. You’re still floating there safely in the water. Correct. Balloons are a little different. So that’s important.
I understand that can be frustrating. Someone’s excited to go for a balloon ride. They’re in Africa. They get up early, they go out there and they feel like they’ve got all this emotionally invested, especially if they were nervous already. And then the pilot’s like, yeah, we’re not going to do this today. Impress me. It’s never, I shouldn’t say never. I don’t like to do it. It’s unlikely that the pilot just doesn’t feel like it. They like people that fly balloons,
fly balloons because they like people, they like to share the experience, but they also want to get you back safely because that’s the number one rule. So yeah, pilots don’t just decide not to fly because they just feel like it. We love flying and the only reason we cancel is for a safety point of view. Right, because the pilot got up earlier than you did. Yeah. And the crew, the pilot and the crew did a lot more work. You were still in bed and they were getting things ready.
So they’re, yeah, they’ve got, you know, and, and typically it’s not about the financial that’s important to know too, because you might think, oh, well, there’s a lot of people. This is, you know, if everybody paid X amount and there’s 16 of us and they must have a lot of incentive to go well, a good pilot will set that aside and not consider that part. I don’t fly. I cancel the money goes back. Okay. But then we like to fly in another guy.
Jason Elkins (01:00:30.702)
No pilot wants to be involved in stuff. Because things happen. So I’m not sure if that’s a good place to end this. But it’s a lot of fun. Do it, do it, do it. It’s just a lot of people, it’s a once in a lifetime thing. I get it. If you’re only going to do it once, doing it in South Africa would be a pretty cool place to do it. You’d probably want to get in somewhere else too. Dale, we covered quite a bit of stuff.
Super intrigued by the conversation. I really appreciate you coming and joining us today. Is there anything I forgot to ask or should have asked or anything that you’d like to leave our listeners with before we wrap up? I don’t think we’ve forgotten anything. All I can say is that the Bill Harrop’s legacy, which is a legacy. I mean, it’s a guy that built up a company over 40 years. It’s a magnificently well-organized and established company. And
My goal is to carry on that legacy and we would love to see people from all over the world come and join us and we’ve got a website very simple, Bill Harrop’s original balloon safaris, look it up and contact us, ask as many questions as you like, we will either call you back or email you or whatever and come and join us.
So before we start recording, I mentioned this because there’s a little bit of accent and I hear you say it sounds like bull, but that’s your accent. It’s different, my ears are different. And I am gonna put a link to the website so there’s no confusion. I pronounce it Bill. I know that’s how you’re pronouncing it as well, but I’m hearing it differently. Maybe it’s my headset, I’m not sure, but it’s Bill B-I-L-L as you told me.
So we’ll have that link in the show notes as well. So anybody that wants to click through and learn more about your operation, what’s going on down there. And I suspect that you also have people in the area if they would like a recommendation on where to stay or maybe Safari type of activities, other types of activities, you can kind of point them in the right direction for that as well, I suspect, right? Oh yes, we’ve got all of that. And please just ask the question. We will do our best to accommodate. Wonderful.
Jason Elkins (01:02:50.358)
Dale, thank you so much. Appreciate you taking time out of your day. You said it was 101 degrees there, but it’s kind of late in the day. So hopefully it’ll cool off this evening a little bit. And I look forward to meeting you and flying with you at some point down there in South Africa or somewhere around, somewhere in this big world of ours that we’re working on making feel a little bit, I gotta throw that in, I guess. Anyway, Dale, I really appreciate you. Have a wonderful, wonderful evening.
Thank you so much for being here. Thank you very, very much for inviting me and please do come and visit us. You’ll be pleasantly surprised. I’m sure I will. Thank you so much, Dale. Thank you. Cheers.
Jason Elkins (01:03:32.926)
Okay, I’m gonna leave the recording though and I’ll clip out this bar at the end. Just wanna say thank you. Did you have any thoughts or anything for me that you wanna bring to my attention? Anything we need to go back and change? I thought it was a great conversation. I really appreciate having you here. No, I think we’ve covered everything and I really enjoyed it. I didn’t know what to expect, but I really enjoyed this. And I think this will go far. People don’t know much about ballooning and this is the only way they’re gonna learn is if they watch this. So it’ll be fantastic.
Super fun for me to have a ballooning conversation. I like all the conversations I’ve been having, but I’m really happy that you joined us to chat about something that obviously I get very excited about and it was a lot of fun. So I’m gonna send you an email here probably later today and next day or so, just saying, hey, thanks for being on the show. I’ll have a link to where I’ve got all the guests listed. You probably have already seen that. I did do some cover work for everybody. I think your cover, like the out.
show cover, whatever that I’m gonna use on the podcast platforms. Looks pretty cool with you and your little cloud hopper. That was really cool. So take a look at that. And then I think the dates are pretty much set. So it’ll have the date that I’m expecting to air it. And then I’ll, when it’s, when I’ve got the published episode up, so you can listen to it ahead of time. I’ll send you an email so you can take a listen to it and figure out how you want to promote it and all of that stuff. So I’ll stay in touch. And if you need anything from me in the meantime, just let me know.
Thank you very, very much. Appreciate it. Thanks, Dale. Talk to you soon. Enjoy it, Ted. Thanks.
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