Andrys Basten | profile | all galleries >> TURKEY Photos - Anatolia, 2004, with Canon Elph >> Cappadocia Balloon Ride Photos | tree view | thumbnails | slideshow |
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Finally ADDED (noisy) VIDEOCLIPS of this air tour - Sept 15, 2006.
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Looking for a hot air balloon pilot for next day (Semih found a GOOD one) |
Here's Semih (in red) who got us the slot next morning w/o prior reservations |
Arrival at our fun cave hotel, Yusuf Pasa, in Urgup Our room was right under the Restaurant sign. |
I got the little alcove with the bell |
Loved the rug. |
First (outdoor) dinner at the excellent hotel |
Yilmaz (red tie) from Yusuf Pasa Hotel and his cousin from France |
Closer up , Yilmaz and his cousin The Yusuf Pasa Hotel was a great place, though not one of our budget hotels. |
Getting out of car and seeing first balloons |
A hint of odd Cappadocia rock formations |
Not unlike a moonscape in the sun! |
Our pilot is landing the balloon we'll ride. |
Note the fire that provides the "hot air." |
Takeoff/Landings are from a flat area (when they can). |
The pilot gets ours ready. |
That flame was pretty hot over our hair. |
A crew member releases the balloon, and we're off and up... I made sure to catch the bottom of our basket in some of these by bending over the rim. |
That's the shadow of our balloon over the road. |
Trying to catch the wind to get us higher. It's strange to just float, almost gliding, with no engine sound but a roaring flame, and no whirring blades above. |
Another balloon nearby. |
Very Quiet except for intermittent roar of the fire above our hair. |
The odd Cappadocia mountain shapes |
More of same |
Our pilot says we can't get enough wind/current to get high enough. |
We start a premature descent. |
Closer to the ground again, to refuel |
Now we've caught the wind and are definitely high enough. |
Fantastic in the real sense of that word. |
I think he must be George Clooney's brother. |
Mischievously he gets us close to walls, then shoots the balloon up, smiling. |
So many different, and odd, shapes. |
Trouble - we can't get to where we should land. |
He said to hold on tight. (Think we made it back safely?) |
When it's quiet, the ride is eerily peaceful and quite a wonder, but there was mild anxiety at this point. |
We're looking for a place to land, since we can't make it to the right place. |
Eventually, I saw crew members gathering at the road to help us land safely. |
I hoped we wouldn't land right in the middle of the road :-) |
We finally landed, relieved, on a slight incline and they pushed us down to this point. |
A crew member/driver who picked us up at the hotel, for the ride. |
Getting the basket on a cart. |
Collapsing the balloon Also see an excellent description of the pull of this Cappadocia ride vs "common sense," by journalist Alison Gardner |
The balloon's done for the day. And here's a detailed account about the whole experience by Turgay Tuna. |
Our pilot treated us to champagne and a colorful certificate for our flight. |
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Andrys Basten | 14-Jan-2008 01:33 | |
mhcr | 12-Jan-2008 13:44 | |
ronny haim | 11-Jan-2006 07:32 | |
Andrys Basten | 18-Oct-2005 01:46 | |
Franz Bauer | 05-Feb-2005 12:22 | |
Wendy O | 20-Nov-2004 04:38 | |