Somehow, I lucked out!
This post is a day late since yesterday my tour went right up until I had to get on my night bus to Pamukkale. But it was another great day.
I was up at 5:00am to for Try #2 of hot air ballooning. There were some people that left the hostel the day before that had been waiting for a clear day for nearly a week, but didn't have any luck.
We got to the launch site, and they had coolers of hot water for tea and coffee and tea biscuits. They were inflating the balloons, so I was already much happier than the day before, when the balloons hadn't even been unloaded.
Me, two Chilean girls I have been hanging out with, and a two other women were put into one of the quarters of the hot air balloon basket. The basket was split in two by where the pilot stood, then each of those halves was split again, so there were four quarters at the fourn corners and a strip in the middle for the pilot. Each quarter held five people; I was lucky again, since the four other people were small women. The men in the quarter next to us were a little more squished.
We took off, and I could just see the pink of the sunrise over the mountains. The light was hitting the rock formations dramatically, even with all the (omnious) clouds in the sky. It is really peaceful when the pilot isn't using the loud burner to heat up the air... just floating along.
And we weren't the only ones floating. About 45 minutes into the trip, the pilot asked us if we wanted to go up or down. The basket decided up, and up we went! We reached 1000 meters, where the wind was much chillier (thank goodness for the warm windbreaker I borrowed from the hostel) and also moving more slowly and in a different direction. While we were up there I counted 22 balloons that were underneath us. Just the ones that I could see!
While we were up there, the clouds were coming towards us as well. I thought they looked like rain clouds, but someone else didn't think so... until water started to run off the balloon. It was a drizzle, then a rain, and it was fascinating seeing rain fall from above. It started to be a bit uncomfortable when it started running into the basket, and when my shoes got a bit wet, but again, happy for that jacket!
The Chilean girls thought the pilot looked concerned, and we were hanging up in the air for quite a while before descending. Our landing spot was in the middle of a fallow field, and we missed the trailer the first time (a bit too much momentum). But the second time around we landed, then hopped out and were ushered into a SUV they had nearby to huddle out of the rain while our passenger van caught up.
Once in the van, we got champagne (at 7:30 in the morning) and went back to the hostel.
I spent the morning transferring pictures (since I was running out of memory on my camera after a lot of shots in the air!) then took a tour with others from my hostel.
A delicious menemem for breakfast (like a tomato-based omelette), and we hopped in the next passenger van. Efe (also the name of a beer around here) was our tour guide, and he looked 15 (though he told us later he was 25). We first went to an overlook, where he explaned how the layers of soft rock under a volcanic top layer caused the "fairy chimney" formations, since the soft rock is protected by the harder caps.
Then, we traveled to an underground city: eight levels of passageways, rooms, a kitchen, a stable, meeting rooms, and a church (that was closed). All because of Christian persecution. When invading armies would come in, everyone would scurry underground. Some say they could live there for months; our guide thought people would go crazy after a week or 10 days of darkness.
We spent the afternoon hiking through the largest canyon in Turkey (which, if I remember correctly, is 70 meters deep... not quite the Grand Canyon). It was a beautiful poplar forest winding along a small river, with the rocks above us sometimes carved with entrances to seclusion rooms or dovecotes. At the end, we arrived at the end at a little tourist village with a delicious lunch. Nikki (the guy that I followed to Cappadocia) came along as well, and we got to swap stories with two Australian sisters.
After lunch, we were driven out of the canyon (so yes, we only had to walk downhill). However, it was all uphill at the monastry carved into a hill. I did a bit of exploring, but mostly sat and looked at the valley. It reminded me of Austria a bit, but instead of steeples it had minarets.
Some in our group decided to venture ever upwards, and ended up being over ten minutes late back to the bus. Efe punished then by forcing them to buy us all ice cream... if only all punishments could be as sweet.
We stopped at Pigeon Valley (they really like their pigeons/doves around here... though they don't eat them like in Egypt), which was right next to our final destination. We were supposed to get a demostration of onyx working, but I think the workers had left, so we got to "tour" a jewelry store instead.
I got back with enough time to grab my bags, book a hostel in Selchuk (outside Ephesus) for tonight, pay a final visit to my shopkeeper friend Mustafa, and hop on the night bus. It was a gorgeous sunset over the hills, and I think I got enough sleep to keep me charged for my day in Pammukale.
(Sorry for my lack of pictures recently, but each computer I've been on has acted a bit differently. This one is in Turkish, so I don't want to accidentally erase anything. I'll be uploading a bunch when I get home in less than a week, if not sooner if I find some good internet.)
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