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Day 16 - Amanda's action packed activity day in Cappadocia
I was so excited for this day in Cappadocia as I had all of these activities planned. First up we had to be ready by 5:20am for our hot air ballooning experience. I was impressed that Jayne and Ooti actually wanted to do it, as Jayne tells me she doesn't really like heights and Ooti is scared of flying. From our hotel we were dropped at the ballooning head office in what we called Disney land/ski resort (as in it was horribly lit up and filled with tourists) to pay for the balloon, a light breakfast and be assigned our groups. It was a bit chaotic when we arrived with masses of people running about but for some reason we got to skip the queue! The tourists seemed ridiculous - just people going on about the price and trying to haggle and going on like lunatics for so early in the morning. We had to wait a little while as it was a bit windy and not safe to fly - when we got the go ahead we somehow managed to become a part of a massive Japanese tourist group. That was fine however they seemed to get extensive instructions in Japanese on what to do on the balloon and all we got was "when you land get into the brace position". Luckily the pilot of the balloon spoke English and I had been before so I knew what was going on. Ooti was nearly crying as we took off as she was so scared - but we tried to distract her with videos and selfies. We managed to take off before sun rise so we got to see the sun rise as we were in the air. The landscape was beautiful with all the different rock formations. What really made the photos great (besides our beautiful and youthful faces) was the fact there were so many other balloons out in the sky as well. Also as a side note Ooti loved the pilot of our hot air balloon - however he seemed to have an uncanny resemblance to Peter Comino. The flight last about an hour and about 1000 selfies later we were ready to land. Now if any of you see photos of me crying on the hot air balloon as we were landing it wasn't because I was scared it was because I was so excited about how our pilot landed. So we were about 3 m off the ground and the Japanese tourists are putting themselves in the brace position ready to land and we thought we had missed some instruction. The pilot was laughing at them and told us not to worry about that. We were wondering where we were going to land and then it occurred to us he was going to land the balloon on the truck which is used to transport the balloons back to the office. Having been on the hot air balloon before in the Hunter Valley I thought there was no way that he could do that and was so excited and amazed that I started having a laughter fit which resulted in me crying. He managed to pull it off and seriously he only had a couple of centre meters before we would have fallen off the side. Jayne and Ooti loved my reaction so much that they took a million photos of my ugly laughing/crying face. I hate people that clap when a plane lands but we were so impressed we started clapping as did all the Japanese tourists when the balloon landed. After we got off the balloon we received a certificate and champagne ceremony to celebrate that we survived the flight. At this point we couldn't contain the laughter - we didn't know if this was just for the Japanese tour group and we felt totally out of place. Anyway we all loved the experience and is a must do if you go to Cappadocia. Next up we headed back to the hotel for some breakfast and a quick break before the rest of the day. We booked a taxi driver to stay with us for the day and drive us around to all the main attractions and cost us about $125AUD. The first place we went to was Kaymakli which is an underground city that has 5 levels open for tourists to explore - we got a tour guide at the entry who explained some of the history to us - but we really felt like he was making it up. Jayne also doesn't really like small enclosed spaces so it was really a day for her to confront her fears. What we understood from the tour was that at one stage the tunnels were lived in during a war by the Muslims and then later by the Christians during another war. Each house in the town had an entrance into the tunnel system and up to 5000 people lived in the under ground city for a maximum of 6 months at a time. The tunnels are hierarchical and the lowest class were restricted to the bottom levels in case the tunnels collapsed (the bottom levels have collapsed and you can't explore them). The tunnels were very impressive, I haven't seen anything like rhem before and is definitely worth checking out. The next place we went (one of the outdoor museums) we really wish we missed out - none of us wanted to go there but the lady at the hotel insisted that we go because it is a world heritage site and she seemed really offended that Jayne and I didn't seem to be impressed or care. Some dweeby American dude piped in and said we had to go check it out (we should have known at this point not to go) but the hotel manager put it on our agenda and our taxi man didnt speak english so we couldn't get rid of it. It was church after church and cemetery after cemetery. Jayne looked at one exhibit and decided she wanted nothing to do with the rest and that it was really bringing our day down. Ooti and I agreed but we at least checked every room, although it was really just for the chance to walk around and climb some stairs more than anything. We seriously spent all of about 10 mins there and in all of our opinions 10 mins too long. Next up was the hike through rose valley II which I was highly excited for - it was supposed to be about 7km, but we somehow managed to get lost a few times and ended up walking for an extra half hour but I didn't really mind. The walk was easy and the scenery was amazing - I loved it! Next up we got the taxi man to drive us to pigeon valley - apparently pigeon droppings are valuable to the locals - there are hundreds of pigeons there and houses caved out for them in the rock. By this time we had enough - went and had a kebab and headed back to the hotel. I loved all of it minus the outdoor museum and it was one of my favourite days. We ended the day sitting on the balcony of our awesome cave hotel under some blankets eating cheese and drinking wine!
Off to Istanbul again tomorrow.
Later
Amanda
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