Day 24: Hot Air Ballooning

One of the biggest draws to the Cappadocia region is hot air ballooning, and we were so excited for our early morning flight! We woke up at 4:40AM (thanks to the mosque next door) and headed out for our balloon ride at 5:15AM. It was magical (at first)! We watch our balloon fill up and hopped into the basket. Our basket had 5 little compartments, 1 for our pilot, and 4 for the passengers. Each passenger compartment carried 4 people. We rose slowing into the air and floated over the pretty landscape, marveling at the fairy chimneys and caves and pigeon houses. And we saw the beautiful sunrise over the mountains. It was just perfect.

Until the woman next to us in our compartment fainted. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she sank to the bottom of our little compartment. When she woke up, she started vomiting. The poor woman. Of course we had to make an emergency landing! However, just as we were touching down and the balloon company’s cars were arriving to pick her up, she decided that she was just fine to continue on the ride. So up we went again. The compartments are extremely close quarters, and it was quite unpleasant to feel trapped inside a balloon with a sick woman puking at our feet, while her obnoxious husband knocked me in the head and pushed me into a corner so that he could take pictures of the lovely views while his wife was sprawled out sick on the floor. It was HORRIBLE. Not the peaceful and beautiful balloon ride we had pictured. I felt bad for the sick woman, but I have no idea what she was thinking when she decided to stay in the balloon, what was wrong with her obnoxious husband (who stayed for a champagne toast when we touched down, after she was driven away to the doctor), and what our pilot was thinking when he decided it was okay for her to stay in the balloon. Paul took care of the situation immediately. After the woman was safely on her way to the doctor (the consensus was she was just dehydrated), Paul talked to the office manager of the balloon company. To the company’s credit, they gave us a full refund and offered us a balloon ride on another day. We weren’t sure we wanted to give it another go, but we scheduled a ride for our last day to give us time to think on it.

Despite the horrors of our trip, we got a lot of great pictures...
Us in front of our balloon, waiting for it to inflate.
Our balloon inflating. FIRE!
Ready for takeoff!
All the beautiful balloons taking off.
The beautiful Cappadocia landscape.

The shadow of our balloon on the mountainside.


We saw a fully inflated balloon driven down the road on the back of a truck!

We walked into town in the afternoon and had a fine lunch at a little café. We had a good Turkish pizza (called pide – it had a thin crust and was cut into long thin pieces, not triangles like Italian pizza) and Turkish beer.
Post-ballooning medicine.

We had planned to walk up to a high point at the edge of town to walk through “Love Valley” and watch the sunset, but our activities for the day were just cursed. It rained for the first time on our vacation, despite the weather prediction of 0% chance of rain.

After the thunderstorm stopped, we ventured back into town for dinner at a restaurant called The Local. Paul had a steak and I ordered “beef in a pottery.” I had seen beef and chicken cooking in potteries on the street and had been itching to try it. The potteries I had seen were long narrow pots with the meat cooking inside and delicious smelling smoke wafting out into the street. So I was surprised to see a personal sized little pot arrive at our table. Our waiter had to wear heat proof gloves and take a knife to cut open the little pot. My dinner that had been cooking inside spilled out perfectly onto a bowl. I loved it. Dinner was great, so I hope the curse is broken for tomorrow…
The waiter cracking open my pottery.