Goreme, Cappadocia, Turkey – 2019 – Day 5

02/17/19

We booked a hot air balloon ride with Royal Balloon for the 16th however I got an email telling me that the Turkish Aviation had cancelled our original date for our morning flight due to potential bad weather. We rescheduled for the 17th with 18th as a backup date. We booked via Tripadvisor and booked the Queen flight (1 hour + champagne and breakfast). Turns out we hopped on a King Flight (1.5 hours) I guess it was because our original day got cancelled so they rescheduled. Normally, Royal can fit 16 people but for more comfort, they put 12 people.

We got picked up at 610AM from our hotel and brought to Royal’s headquarters for buffet style breakfast. After breakfast, we were split into our designated vans for the flight. The van is following a truck that holds our air balloon and we drive about 10 minutes to open fields. You look out the window where it is still somewhat pitch black but see these huge mounds that look like they are part of the facade to only realize that they are balloons that are slowly being filled with air and getting ready for the gas and flames. The set up of the balloon is quite quick. We all hopped in and off we went.

Our pilot was Geert who was originally from Belgium and has been flying for over 22 years. He told us that the only real control he has is turning with the balloon but in terms of speed, he just needs to find the wind pockets by going up or down in the sky. I have to say the beginning with the hazy skies before the sun rises was the best part. He was telling us that today was the first day in a week that they have been able to fly balloons so lucky us! The sky is de-saturated hues of pink to blue. Gloves and feet warmers are something you want to consider having but other than that, it was absolutely amazing. Remember to listen to the instructions of your pilot as there have been casualties in the past. If it is a windy day, for landing, you need to crouch in the basket and hold on tight to the blue ropes. It wasn’t windy today and so we braced for the landing standing.

To end off our wonderful experience, we cracked open a bottle of champagne and chocolate covered strawberries before getting dropped off back at our hotels. The whole experience finished by 830-9AM.

We also booked the Red tour for 30 euros – 930AM-430PM – includes lunch, english speaking tour guide, hotel pick-up/drop-off. We got back to our hotel in time to go back to our room to charge our phones a bit and warm our feet.

Our tour was booked with Woop Woop Travel and our guide for the day was Mustafa. We also made friends with Miguel from Guadalajara, Mexico who is a lawyer (sometimes a teacher as well) and She from Osaka, Japan.

We visited:

Uçhisar Castle – Loads of interesting areas in this place. There are 2 “hills” that over a nice view from the middle. You can climb up and down the hills to the rock formations however the castle is quite far of a walk to get to from the main parking lot. This natural castle was used as a defence mechanism to prevent any attacks from the enemy. Since its location was central, it was used as a control centre for the trade way like the silk road during the Persian overtaken period. In Ottoman time, the castle was the location for protection and maintenance.

The Fairy Chimney homes haven’t been inhabited since 1980’s as the roofs started eroding and falling apart causing harm. The government then started a exchange program with residents to sell them their fairy chimney homes in return for money and land to build a new home.

Fairy Chimneys were formed from the volcanic eruptions millions of years ago that have erupted throwing huge mounds of ash all around and they are formed by different rock sediments and also covered by a layer of basalt.

Göreme Open Air Museum – Too many tourists here. Like too many. There are 2 churches in this museum and both you cannot take photos or video in. There are many nooks and crannies in this place that you can climb and walk to but considering all that we saw the previous day, this place wasn’t anything too special.

Love Valley – Fairy Chimneys – All along the parking lot and cliff of the Love Valley viewing area, there are tons of structures – “hot air balloons”, swings, carriages etc that you can sit on and pose with that overlook the valley with penis shaped rock formations below. You can swing out towards the valley which makes for a cool photo spot.

Pottery Demonstration – Really cool to see the artist’s studio space and seeing the inner workings of how the whole process comes together. We saw artists drawing and painting so intricately. After they demonstrate how they traditionally create pottery using their pottery wheel. We then went through their 2 rooms of pottery you can purchase before leaving.

Paşabağ – Best location of the day – go left and there will be a sign on the rock saying danger or do not enter – Go enter but please be careful as you have to walk up quite angled to get to the top. It sort’ve looks like The Wave in Arizona only half of the wave and white. Here you will see mushroom shaped rock formations.

Devrent Imagination Valley – We were only there for a short period to take photos but you can see shapes in the rock formations such as a camel, a penguin to the left of it, to a hand further left.

Ürgüp Three Graces (Beauties) – This is the 3 rock formations that are similar to the Three Sisters in Blue Mountain, Australia but the story goes: According to legends, the King had only 1 heir to his throne and it was his daughter. The daughter was madly in love with a shepherd and her father disapproved and wanted her to marry a man of authority. She decided to escape and secretly marry the shepherd and gave birth to a baby. She thought the king would forgive them thanks to their child and went back to the palace. Little did she know the King showed no mercy as he saw this as a sign of betrayal and sent his whole army to kill this family. The princess was running away from those soldiers and she prayed to the God “Please, my God, make us either a stone or a bird”. The God accepted the prayers and they were converted to stone.

We decided to have an easy night and walked out to Baskent Doner. I grabbed the mix kebap for 20TL ($5CAD). We hung out in the room and just recharged our phones, journaled and whatnot.