Cappadocia

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There are no words to describe the view of the EARLY morning landscape from a hot air balloon over Cappadocia. I’ve never been in a hot air balloon. Seeing the crew shooting fire into the balloon was very exciting. The maneuvering of a hot air balloon is a lot like scuba. You try to stay neutral which allows you to stay idle even a foot over the ground. If you start to drop the pilot shoots more fire up and if he wants to drop down he pulls a string that opens a flap on the side of the balloon to let some air out. There were 16 people in our balloon and still there was plenty of room. You could not take a bad picture. We went into the canyons, over the pinnacles with windows and doors left from past civilizations and soared high up with the other dozens of balloons in the air. Every day in Cappadocia is a hot air balloon festival. After we landed the mood on the ground was as if we had won some important competition. We exchanged high fives and toasted with cherry champagne. Cherries originated in Turkey so lots of things are cherry flavored. Most things have either cherry or pistachio. The crew began to fold up the balloon and put it in a huge bag the size of a hot tub. All of the sudden the crewmembers started to pick up the women and throw them in the basket one at a time as the rest of the group cheered them on. After every women had been thrown in the biggest crewmember walked over to Gabriel and started to take his champagne and day bag. He tried to tell them he wasn’t a girl but the guy just shook his head and proceeded to pick him up. I grabbed the camera thinking maybe they were going to go through the same ritual with the men but instead the whole crew dog piled on top of Gabriel. It was awesome.



Our hotel was 20 km outside of Goreme in Nevesehir. It was called Peri Tower and the architecture was very interesting because it was modeled after the stone carved homes in the valley. We had to do a tour to see more but it was well worth it. At the open-air museum there are three different churches carved into the pinnacles with frescos on the ceiling. You can see the windows carved out of the surrounding pinnacles. They are from early Christians that lived in the area in the 10^th and 11^th century. Even so the rock homes and rock condominiums were still being used until a few decades ago according to our guide. From there we went to an underground city. The winters there are pretty harsh hence all the erosion and dramatic rock formations. When it got too cold or when intruders came the people went underground into networks of underground caves. It reminded me of the Cu ci tunnels in Vietnam.

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