Balloon Ride

So I took a hot air balloon ride over Cappadocia the other morning. It cost an arm and a leg, it was a big fat tourist bonanza (think herding sheep into a big wicker basket), and it was the diametric opposite of going underground, but it was great. Fifteen of us were picked up at five thirty in the morning, carted off to the middle of a valley where about thirty other vividly colored balloons were in various stages of inflating, loading, taking off. Standing in the field, freezing, we were subjected to a comedy routine by an old Aussie guy who had been up for the past twelve hours drinking, still hadn’t slept. If I could snap my fingers and make one continent disappear… Anyway, we watched them inflate our balloon – a big red one – with a hot air pump. It had a disconcerting message on it: ‘In Loving Memory of Dennis.’ Before I could ask what happened to Dennis, we all climbed into the basket (the Aussie dove in headfirst), which was divided into four quarters. I was of course placed next to the Aussie who had lots of good things to tell me about what piece of anatomy the fairy chimneys reminded him of. Then, with a few thrusts from the torch, we were floating above the valleys and mountain ranges of Cappadocia. It lasted about an hour and was fantastic. Especially with all of the other balloons around us. Weightless among all of these floating globes. The pilot took us up into a cloud at one point, where all of the other balloons became silhouettes. We landed and the pilot popped open two bottles of champagne then called out our names one by one to give us our flight certificates. Ha. See pictures here.