From Istanbul, we flew to the lovely region of Cappadocia—Kapadokya in Turkish—in Central Anatolia. It is a famous destination for hot air balloon rides, for which Newton made reservations months in advance.
Upon our arrival on a Friday night, we found out that the Saturday sunrise ascents were cancelled for too much wind. The town of Goreme was teeming with tourists, so last-minute reservations were rare and at a premium. But we got them, thanks to our Niche Cave Hotel—pictured here (far left).
 |
| Notice the inhabited rock on the right, quite common in the region. |
That gave us all day Saturday to explore the wondrous terrain of the rocky area.
Here is the Underground City in Derìnkuyu, a vast cave system with some passages so small I had my knotted-up claustrophobic chest when we emerged at long last!
There are several Eastern Orthodox monasteries and churches carved out of/into the rock formations:
This Keşlik monastery has frescoes from the 10th Century:
 |
Here we are wandering on a very hot, but gorgeous day
|
Back in Goreme, our favorite beer, Efes, cooled us down.
The van picked us up at 5:00am on Balloon Day.
|
| Arriving |
Watching a balloon fire up...
...and rise.
|
Observing our own balloon prep
| Firing up!
The sensation of floating up weightlessly is not like any other, than perhaps a surreal dream! There's a surprising, serene silence, interrupted intermittently by the fire shooting hot air upwards. It was all other-worldly, especially over this terrain that could have been another planet!
This video shows the mysterious perspective that allowed our balloon to not impale itself!
There were 40+ people in our basket and the usual +/- 150 balloons in the air. The operation seems very organized and full of expertise...except we're not sure how that one smaller balloon was drifting really really high and far away from the others?
For an entire hour we floated over this landscape, including a highway where a car was "going the wrong way," a flat rock where Muslim women were enjoying breakfast on a blanket while greeting the levitating, and a ridge full of spectators waving wildly.
I spoke of expertise. The wind was picking up and the crew was trying to select a good landing spot. We were told we would need to assume the "crash" position passengers had been drilled on when earthbound. At the signal, we squatted and leaned back in very close quarters against the passenger lined up behind us. I was grateful for many reasons it was Newton!
It's true, the serenity of floating came to an abrupt halt for a second or two when we hit a pretty small flat rock area at what felt like too much of an angle. We did not end up on our sides—almost immediately straight and level! Too many "experts" in the ground crew had miraculously arrived in a couple of trucks and were tugging ropes against the wind with their significantly swarthy weight.
It was a pretty wonderful sight from the basket seeing so many men argue in Turkish grunts and shouts over best practices for securing us to the ground—until we started wondering when, exactly, we'd be able to disembark.
At last we climbed out to a table of little glasses of sparkling red wine and cookies. It was still earlier than we usually wake up!
We drove to Love Valley, named for either or both the wonderful little ceramic bottles they sell to attach to large heart structures, gates and fences with wishes for love in multiple languages, and the suggestive nature of the rock formations in that area:
From there, this area offered more unusual rock formations evoking animals and clerics:
Newt usually finds his way to the top of a precipice in no time, here unwittingly mimicking Christo Redentur on top of Corcovado mountain in Rio!
We cleaned up nicely after washing off the dust and started our evening in Goreme at the "Cave Bar."
My final highlight will come from Turkey's beautiful Southwest shoreline...coming ASAP because we're about to travel again!
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment