Hot air ballooning in Cappadocia

Thursday 24 September
I didn’t realise the best day in turkey was about to happen! We began in a cave restaurant for apple tea.

cave restaurant in Cappadocia

cave restaurant in Cappadocia

This morning was an early start again for an amazing experience in Cappadocia … Hot air ballooning. Watching the balloons being blown up was exciting with about one hundred balloons eventually ending up in the air.

hot air ballooning

hot air ballooning

There were different sizes with baskets to take different numbers of passengers. Our basket had the main central section for the operator and two sections on each side, we had 4 people in our section.

hot air ballooning

hot air ballooning

getting our balloon ready

getting our balloon ready

hot air ballooning

hot air ballooning – our balloon

hot air ballooning

hot air ballooning

our captain

our captain

hot air ballooning

hot air ballooning

amazing views from the air

amazing views from the air

hot air ballooning

hot air ballooning

hot air ballooning

hot air ballooning

our team

our team with celebratory champagne

It was an incredible experience… Exhilorating , beautiful, serene and thrilling all at once. The landscape has been forged as a result of 3 volcanoes in the area which erupted and the resultant laval rock has been attacked by water and wind over time. The surreal landscape of fairy chimneys has resulted providing an amazing backdrop to the hot air ballooning. It is also incredible to see the baskets being landed into the trailers directly and then the deflation of the balloon. The experience lasted for around one hour in the air. When it came to land it looked as though we would land on a steep incline but the faithful team made sure we landed on the flat surfaced trailer. Our team then provided us all with medals and champagne to celebrate.