May 11, 2022

May 11, 2022

I woke at 4am this morning, and quickly threw on the clothes I set out last night. Like Tucson in the winter, it is cold this morning. I hopped on a van for Kapadokya Balloons. This area is renowned for being the best spot in the world for Hot Air Ballooning. I don’t have any burning desire to go up in a balloon, but feel like I need to do it once. Aimee says no way.

We drive in the dark to a lift off spot where a line of balloons are already half filled with blowers. We watch for a half hour as the balloons slowly inflate. When fully expanded they are given a burst of flame and the balloons rise up and twenty of us climb into the big wicker basket. We watch as the balloons take off one at a time. When it is our turn I can barely feel the ascent it is so smooth, but I do feel the heat on the top of my head.

As we ascend I am mesmerized by the dozens and dozens of balloons rising in the cool air. The Cappadocia Badlands are amazing from above. I start taking photos in every direction, before I remember Aimee telling me to stop and enjoy it too. Unfortunately when I wake up and look down, I notice we are WAY up there with almost nothing between me and skydiving. I take a big gasp, lean back and look straight ahead till the anxiety goes away.

Cappadocia is a geologic wonderland. It is a plateau of white stone that is carved with lots of eroded valleys. It is like the South Dakota Badlands. Except here a caprock of basalt has hindered erosion in areas to form thousands of hoodoos. Our balloon pilot takes us up and down giving us different views. At one point we drop down into a canyon barely above the terrain. Other times high in the air with all the other balloons directly below. It is very cool and I am glad I did it. All the time we are gently moving west with the breeze across Goreme National Park. It is very peaceful, except there are twenty of us packed inside this large basket, not including the pilot and assistant.

Too quickly our time aloft comes to an end and we can see our chase truck below. Astonishingly the pilot guides the balloon down and we very gently land right atop our truck's trailer! Precision, these guys are good. They have done this before. We celebrated my first balloon flight by popping some champagne and drinking cherry mimosas. It is a long drive back to the hotel where I take a hot shower to take the chill out of my bones.

After breakfast on the hotel terrace, we walked downhill exploring the town of Mustafapasha. Under the Ottoman Empire this region had a significant Greek Orthodox population. After WWI and the fall of the Empire, ethnic conflicts arose and the problem was resolved with one of the biggest forced migrations in history. The Greeks here moved west to Greece and Muslims in Greece migrated here. We noted the decorative doorways and I peeked inside a Romanesque Greek church. With tourism booming in Cappadocia, cave hotels are being built everywhere to accommodate the horde of tourists wanting to experience the Troglodyte lifestyle. We see stone blocks of volcanic Tuff easily being hand shaped for construction. Tourism is driving urban renewal here.

Church of the Buckle

Afterwards we drove to visit nearby Goreme Open Air Museum. The local inhabitants from the medieval age were troglodytes living inside caves they dug into the soft valley hillsides. I would bet it ended up being a last option after cutting down all the trees. The caves at this site are particularly well preserved. This was a Christian monastic community and surprisingly many of the caves are churches.  One of the caves looks like a tiny cafeteria suitable for a small group of monks. We visit a half dozen churches; some are chapels, modest square rooms cut into the hillsides. But others are elaborately carved with arches, apses, and domes. In addition, the walls are brightly colored with frescoes of Biblical stories. We walked around visiting most of them. One church also has burial niches in a side floor.

Getting our fill of archeology, we indulge our desire for hiking and scenery. Our next stop is Monks Valley which has lots of 'fairy chimneys' eroding from the hillside. This strange shape is caused by a hard basalt caprock sitting atop the soft Tuff. We have seen similar in the US in isolated spots. But here in Cappadocia they are everywhere. We hiked around the park soaking up the scenery. This is a rare Cappadocian landscape without extensive cave excavations.

Our next stop is Imaginary Valley for more hiking and climbing atop the pink and white hoodoos. I climb on top of the highest point I can reach. At the parking lot gift shop I bought a ceramic hot air balloon to hang outside our home to remember my aerial excursion.

For dinner we have BBQ chicken in a cave hotel. Their dining room is in the basement carved out of the volcanic tuff.