A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY

Matias Perez was far from being the first man to ride the clouds in Cuba aboard a hot-air balloon. Before him, a few other men hopped on a balloon and eventually got a whole lot luckier. However, only the so-called "King of the Awnings", who had been born in Portugal but had settled down in Cuba, didn't make it.

This passionate sage of aeronautics who bought a balloon called "The Village of Paris" for 1,200 duros from celebrated French pilot Eugene Godard, made the first test flight on June 12, 1856 and did it again in the morning of June 29, only to never come back down to the ground.