Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The world's a nicer place in my beautiful balloon

Definitely one of the coolest things on our trip was a hot air balloon ride over the Goreme Valley.  Wow!  It's not easy: we had to get up before the sun and I hate getting up early.  But after a bumpy van ride and fast breakfast (that I wasn't hungry for), we got to the field just as five balloons were filling up with air.  If we got up early, think how early the balloon guys have to get up!  The balloons are really big - we had 12 people in our balloon but some balloons fit 30 people!
Our pilot was a guy from Australia who has done this a bajillion times.  He said that Goreme has the most hot air balloon flights in the world on any day, except for a festival in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

We were the last balloon to take off, so when we got up the whole sky was filled with balloons! 
It's noisy in the balloon when the pilot tugs on a chain for gas and fire.  But once you're up in the air, it's very quiet and you just drift wherever the wind goes.
This is Anna and me hiding from the gas flame.
We got really close to some of the pigeon houses that were carved into the mountains: 
A long time ago, people used pigeons to make fertilizer for growing crops.  That's disgusting.  Glad I don't have that job.

This is one of those cave houses, like our hotel, but old and not taken care of:
We were the last balloon in the air and the last one to come down, which was kind of cool.
Our silhouette
The pilot lowered us so close to the treetops that we could pick apricots off the tree!  And they were tasty!
We had champagne at the end, but it was nasty (not like the apricots).  Anna and I just had orange juice.  And we got medals for riding in the clouds!  Bye bye balloon!  That was super fun!
~ Sophie

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