Cappadocia Part 4 Ballooning

"Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon, 

Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon, 

We could float among the stars together, you and I
For we can fly, we can fly
Up, up and away
My beautiful, my beautiful balloon
The world's a nicer place in my beautiful balloon
It wears a nicer face in my beautiful balloon
We can sing a song and sail along the silver sky"

(Apologies to the Fifth Dimension)

May 14 - We talked about doing a ballon ride, but when it actually came time to buy tickets, I decided not to go.  We learned that you have to get up at 4:30.  In the morning.  Even the sun isn't up that early.  But then we heard that the weather would be better than it had been all week.  Perfect, in fact.  I got to thinking about all of the wonderful pictures one could take with the right light.  All of a sudden, 4:30 AM didn't seem so unreasonable............

One cannot describe the ride.  It is smooth beyond belief.  You don't feel a thing as the balloon silently starts to take off from the ground.  You have to look down to confirm you are moving.  Our driver took us to 1000', and then slowly turned the basket in every direction.  He took us over the Rose Valley, the very place we had just hiked two days before.  We could see the rope we had climbed to get up on the bluff; the place where we had lunch.  He took us down to within 3' of the ground several times.  I could have picked flowers from the basket.  We counted over 60 balloons in the air.

They carefully blow in the hot air until the balloon stands up

This was the basket they put us in.  

The crew and Achmet, the driver

You can see where they just added hot air to this balloon to get it to rise.

There were balloons EVERYWHERE.