'It's a passion' Why balloon fanatics fly in the face of Brazilian law

Cats chased shadows through the pre-dawn gloom as the men hit the streets of suburban Rio and set off towards their objective.

- Tom Phillips

 "I've not slept," said one early riser, a bushy-bearded office worker called Arthur Araújo, as he emerged from his home to fulfill a "dream" one year in the making.

The group's convoy navigated mountain roads and country lanes, before stopping at a farmstead in the rainforest-cloaked sierra separating the city from the rest of Brazil. They got out of their cars, jumped a barbed wire fence, and hiked into the meadows. Onlookers might have mistaken them for landless activists occupying an unproductive ranch, or ravers flocking to an underground event. In fact, they were hot air balloon fanatics known in Brazil as baloeiros who gather once a year to send their enormous kaleidoscopic creations into the skies.

"Balloons are my life - they've been my life ever since I was a kid," said a 46-year-old balloon freak and kite maker called Márcio Júnior. He caught the balloon bug off his mother while growing up in 1980s Rio. She took him to balloon festivals where Júnior would sprint after the balloons as they drifted away. "I went nuts... I was head over heels in love!" he recalled.