#cavehotels

So with my desire to explore and Sandy's urge to climb and get dirty we headed out on a path/trail (still unsure what the difference is) but if there was any sort of foot markings you bet we were sure to follow them and see where they went. We were on the hunt to find Rose Valley - a landmark that according to every marker was 2km away, so we kept just winding and turning and getting off track as we found one more fairy chimney and cave house to climb and explore.

The entire day was spent just wandering wherever our eyes wanted us to go we went, seeing some of the most unique and natural landscape I have yet to encounter and just a day of crisp warm air was nice from contrast to the time square and tear gas of Istanbul.  We managed to get home before the rain only asking for a few directions, and eventually caving and taking the main road in, but it was a great day to prepare for the main attraction tomorrow: a sunrise balloon ride over the landscape of Kappadokia and the multiple hour tour known as the green tour.

Me a morning person? Not really - these days 10 am is a bitch to wake up to and I have no concept of an alarm clock or any real valued schedule - I just rely on the rudeness of fellow bunkmates to keep me in check and out before sunset. But something about this morning, something about the unique opportunity and the pure bone chilling crisp air that swept through the dorm got me promptly ready for what will be a long day of some of the most beautiful sights. A 5am departure leads to a massive gathering where you sit an anxiously wait to see if you are actually going up or not (sometimes due to wind or rain they often can get canceled), we were the orange group and well all 20 of us filled into two vans and off we go - for an experience that none of us can expect or dream of. Each balloon lined up throughout the entire valley, one right next to the other, some seem to be right on top of one another...all being filled with air and expanding, lifting, anxiously preparing for flight. 

One...ten...fifty...a hundred; all begin to bounce and levitate ever so gently off the ground as if the 1000kg of people were just feathers in the breeze. Some go straight for the stone chimney structures but never seem to hit, just all of a sudden making a vertical leap towards the sky. It was our turn and the black sky began to transform to a cool blue as we saw the flames of each balloon bring flight and life into the horizon. We floated up and up to 2000 ft I believe...I was holding on to my phone for dear life as I circled it around for a 'memorable' panoramic shot, not wanting to loose priceless memories. It was the perfect moment, the sun hit the same point as we were, the captain - if you will call him that, slowly circled the balloon so we could see a full 360 degrees of endless sky ranging from the pure white of the sunrise to a vibrant blue reaching out into the distance. The flight was coming to an end as you saw balloons precicely land on the back of a truck bed, some were not as fortunate, but our captain kept us going hovering through valleys and peaks nearly clipping the sides of each stone wall giving us all a fright. We asked, "are you nervous" as we began to descend right towards the walls of one of the fairy chimney's and right as we all grab for the basket, he looked at us with a laughing smile and replied "I do this every day" and up we went perfectly clearing what many of us could have imagined being our last site. He took us far off into the fields where we too landed perfectly and ever so gently on the back of the truck bed. We went back to the cave hostel after we casually tossed aside our turkish delight (as if it was salt...over the shoulder it went) in celebration as we scarfed down breakfast because the lovely Sandy had us booked for an all day tour starting at 9.30.

It was a fun tour, the typical green tour for Kappadokia which is mainly just transportation and a lazy tour guide that more was a sheep herder than anything. But after taking a nice nap and being called out for missing the only history for the entire day we arrived at our second destination: the Ihlara Valley - where Sandy was put in charge of herding and counting our group, well there was 15 of us, so we began the adventure of learning how to count in Turkish, while I just made the random notations of what is sounds like for memory:

Bir...beer

iki...icky

uc....oooch - it also just sounded weird, so it stuck

dort...dirt 

the list went on, and we just kept adding one more to the list until we got to 10, which meant we could count to 19, and well that was our only lesson for the day.