This is the tyre we hit
11th of October 2021
A few days before I left for Turkey I had met with my friends for the last time in the next few months. We had talked about which places I should visit. And then one of my friends had suggested Cappadocia. My brain is apparently bad at connecting the dots because at first I hadn’t realised that this was the place with the flying balloons. This had been the moment when I decided I would visit Cappadocia.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and there I was at the airport, holding my driver’s license and my passport, waiting for a car rental company to complete my reservation. Together with a few local friends we had decided that renting a car to get there would be the best option. The buses take way too long and if we had flown there, we wouldn’t have the flexibility you can only get with a car.
We got the cars (there were seven of us, so two cars) and off to Göreme we went.
There is one thing you have to be careful about when driving in Turkey. It didn’t even occur to us that there may be old truck tyres on the road, especially after dawn. My friends crashed into such tyre. I was lucky enough to be a few dozen kilometres behind them so my car was fine but their car pretty much lost the front bumper and it was a miracle that the cooler didn’t fall off.
We arrived late at night, found our hotel and had some rakı with the owner. Then we went to sleep, only to wake up a few hours later (at 4 AM) and go fly in a balloon.
It was a cold morning but the experience is totally worth it. The flight was about ninety minutes long, there were dozens of other balloons in the sky and the view was completely breathtaking. Cappadocia is considered one of the best places in the world for flying in balloons and I agree.
After landing we had some champagne and took a group photo. They gave us special certificates which confirm your taking part in the flight. We were also given a chance to buy a memory stick with 360° video taken from the balloon, which I think is a nice thing to have. The flight was 80 euros, the memory stick cost extra 15 euros and the company name was Discovery Balloons.
Later we went back to our hotel and had a little nap. My friend tried to get the car rental company to provide
another car but it was just a waste of time, in the end they had to drive without the bumper.
The next day I
woke up early because I wanted to see the balloons again, this time from the ground. I also took my drone thinking
that maybe I would be able to fly a spot where I can fly safely and still be able to record the balloons.
First I went to a take-off site. It was dangerous to use the drone, so I took a couple of photos with my phone and went to Love Valley. The view from the Love Valley was outstanding. And I also managed to find a place where I can safely fly the drone and make videos with the balloons, so everything was perfect.
A few hours passed by and I decided that it had been enough and I should get going. I still had some time to kill (my friends were still asleep, they hadn’t wanted to wake up so early two days in a row) and I used it to visit the Fairy Chimneys. They name describes them perfectly, however they also kind of reminded me of Bedrock - the town where the Flintstones lived.
When I finished walking around Bedrock it was already quite late which meant I had to go back to the hotel, eat breakfast with my friends and go to the Underground City.
There are two famous underground cities in Cappadocia. We went to the biggest one - Derinkuyu Underground City, which as far as I remember was about 80 meters deep and back in the ‘olden days (10 centuries ago) as many as 20 000 people lived there.
It took as a few hours to walk around the whole city. After we had come to the hotel, we went to Uçhisar Castle to watch the sunset. It was really pretty and I wish the security guys hadn’t told me not to use the drone. The footage would have been perfect. If you like unusual souvenirs, you can buy a 0 euro banknote at the entrance to the castle.
And this was the end of our Cappadocia trip. The next day we packed and left quite early. On the way back we had just enough time to go to Tuz Gölü Lake, which is one of the largest salt lakes in the world and I had never seen such lake before, so I think going there was worth it.
This is it! If you have any questions or need advice, please drop me an email at contact@mtthw.net