Advertisement
Published: August 26th 2006
Edit Blog Post
We have Lift
This was early in the morning, filling up the balloons. Photo by Maurits. Tuesday August 22, 2006 - Another neck breaking overnight bus ride and another cranky Jenn. We arrived ın Goreme (the town in the part of the country called Capadocia) and went to the accomodation office outside of the bus station. It was 5am but someone was there. We looked at the ads and chose a place called Tuna Caves. I should explain - this region of the country is famous for its beautiful rock formations and caves. Many of the hostels and pensions have rooms in caves and fairy chimneys, a special tall skinny rock formation. We agreed to a double room with bath for 30 lyra ($20) but it wouldn't be ready until someone checked out. In the meantime they let us sleep in a different room, which was great. We went to sleep immediately (at 6am) and got up at 9am. We would only have two days to see the sights and I wanted to make sure we would have enough time, even if we were still tired. Slave driver.
Once we woke up we took showers and got ready for the day. We met the guy who ran the hotel and he helped us come up with
Balloons
Really a cool site to see them all going up around the same time. Photo by Maurits. an itinerary - we would visit the open air museum that day on our own and then take an extensive tour the following day. We also knew we would have to take an overnight bus the next night back to Istanbul, as Maurits had to fly out on Friday. To make it even busier and crazier, we decided to take a hot air balloon ride that morning in order to see the rocks from above! Expensive and elaborate decision for me.
We had to first get money from the ATM to pay for the balloon and tour and then we had lunch. At the hostel I put my money belt in the safe and we were on our way to the open aır museum. It was a kilometer walk and we were there. It basically gives you access to many of the churches carved into the rocks. This place is centuries old and was very important in early Christianity as a place people could go when Christianity was forbidden. Many of the churches have frescos inside, some of which are in very good condition. Somewhat disturbingly though, most of the eyes of the people in the frescos have been
Red and White
If memory serves, which is shaky at best, our balloon looked like the one here. Photo by Maurits. scratched out. This was done long ago by the Muslims - in Islam, idol worship is considered a great sin and there were so many paintings that they just scratched out all the eyes to make them non-human. Jesus with no eyes is a freaky site, trust me.
At the museum we ran into Rob again. We spent some time visiting caves with him and told him that we had made plans to take a balloon ride. He ınformed us that someone he knew had both ankles broken in a balloon landing gone wrong years back. But we figured that since our balloon company was new and had been running all of 20 days, we would be fine.
After the museum we walked back to town and said good bye to Rob. Had dinner and got to sleep early for our busy day to come.
Wednesday - Not a good start to the day - I woke up with a sick belly at 3am. At 4:30am, with an empty gut, I woke up Maurits and we got ready for our 5am pick up. I was worried about feeling sick on such a busy day, but we went
Views
Here's an idea of what we were flying over, and practically through sometimes. Photo by Maurits. anyway. They picked us up at 5am and took us to the office where we could have tea and cookies. I took a green tea, no cookies. Then we went out to the balloons. They were in the process of filling the balloons and it was quite a sight to see. So many - maybe twenty balloons in various states of being filled. We took some pictures and got ready to get in. Somehow, when it was time to climb into the baskets, everyone got in and it was just me and Maurits standing around. They found us room but in two different compartments. I complained and they made someone change with me. I didn't realize there would be 20 people in each balloon and I didn't want to feel sick without someone I knew. It was cold out and I had my fleece on for the first time since Madagascar. Our driver was a Belgian who has been flying balloons for 10 years, so that was good.
The balloon was held on the ground by ropes, and then by men when the ropes were undone. When the driver put the fire on, it was momentarily hot. Weird sensation.
Balloon Ride
This an another view of Cappadocia by air. Photo by Maurits. Then we were off the ground - it was very gentle and easy and comfortable. Felt like we were floating. The ride was an hour long and it was great. We saw the sunrise above the mountains and the rock formations change colors. We flew very near to some of them - we almost landed once and just missed a formation another time. But we saw all the balloons doing it - it was just the drivers showing off their skills, which are impressive. They can even turn the balloon as they want. Towards the end we even flew over some very phallic looking formations in "love" valley. It was all very interesting and I'm hoping I got some good pictures. In the end it was a great decision and I'm really glad we did it. After the balloon ride there was a champagne breakfast that was just champagne, juice, and breads. They gave us certificates for the flight, but unfortunately mine says that Jennifer Boldul completed one. Close enough I guess. As they were packing up the balloon they came around and collected people to put on the balloon for pictures. They actually picked up Maurits, who is about 6 foot 5 and threw him onto the balloon. Then they did the same with me. Weird and funny.
Afterwards we had an hour back at the hostel and we packed up and checked out and waited for our tour at 9:30am. They were a little late in coming and then we were on our way. We were 5 people in our bus but we joined up with another bus with about 10 people or so, mostly Italians. The first stop was Pigeon Valley, where they kept pidgeons for communication in the old days. Next we drove to the largest of the 200 underground cities in Capadocia. It was really impressive - there were 8 floors and it was very cool inside. These cities were mostly built for protection during war times - they housed people and animals and had a lot of protective measures to keep attackers out. This was my favorite part of the tour.
My least favorite part of the tour was our van - it was hot in there and I was sticky and sleepy every time and we drove long distances. Next we went to a beautiful canyon where we waked for 3 kilometers before having lunch at a restaurant there. There is a stream that runs through the canyon and the restaurant had some tables actually set up in the stream. So of course we ate there, along with a young Israeli couple and a nice Japanese kid. After lunch we went to a site where there was a monastery and where they filmed one of the Star Wars movies followed by a pottery place in a town called Avanos. They are famous for their ceramics and we had a brief lesson in how to make a plate and a vase and then they asked for a volunteer. Finally it was me. I had to don some clown pants to keep mine clean and then look like a fool in front of everyone. Making pottery is hard - remember that. But it was funny anyway. Last stop was at some fairy chimneys and then it was 7pm and we had to get going. Got cleaned up at the hotel and got our bags back. I had to wait for someone to get the key to the safe to get my money belt back and then we were off again. Our overnight bus was scheduled to leave at 8:30pm but was a little late, so we had time to sit around a bit. The Japanese guy had bought a ticket as well in order to come back to Istanbul for the Formula 1 race this weekend. Finally we got on and armed with my fleece to use as a pillow, we started driving.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.044s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0215s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb