Turkey - Ballooning (Cappadocia)

we were lucky enough to be able to do a balloon flight when we were in Cappadocia.  Unfortunately the day our flight was booked, all balloon flights were cancelled due to poor visibility.  Originally we were booked to fly with Royal Balloons (the owner of our hotel is one of their pilots), but they were booked out, so we flew with Maccan Balloons - and they were great.

Nikki was lucky enough to be able to spend about an hour before the flight with pilot Seyit, as he went about checking the wind and other weather readings for all balloons flying that day.  It was a great opportunity to learn about how they do things in Cappadocia.  

Nikki also had the opportunity to observe the inflation of the balloon (which the rest of the passengers were not allowed to do), and go inside the balloon (which is at least 3 times bigger than ChiChi).  Seyit  also let her take the controls of the balloon briefly during the flight, which she was VERY excited about getting the opportunity to do (although she was too short to reach all the controls, so only got to fly on the liquid burner).  

Seyit was incredibly skilful, doing a pirouette using the rotation vents around a fairy chimney as we flew towards it, and landing the balloon on the trailer at the end of the flight (those ground crew members work VERY hard).  In Turkey they seem to use their rotation vents (simultaneously or consecutively) to control descent, rather than their parachute or smart vent - this allows for very slow controlled descent, and was interesting to watch.

The balloons taking off in the middle of the fairy chimney's was different for us - normally we take off on the lawns of old parliament house or near Questacon :-)

Over 80 balloons took off and flew the morning we flew - this was pretty mind blowing for us (this is the low season, in the high season each morning 150 balloons fly).

Hannah & Connor in the balloon

This is a sight we will probably never see again - we flew in the clouds - this never happens in Australia.

Flying in the clouds

Flying above the clouds (we got special permission from CASA to fly higher than normal to get above the clouds to get better visibility)

Kierryn prooving that he can do dips (exercise) anywhere - in this case on the basket of the balloon

The ground crew "caught" the balloon and guided it to the trailer - super dangerous for the ground crew - I can understand why we don't do it in Australia (there was very little wind, in fact we had difficulty getting to a landing spot because of the lack of wind).

The Maccan balloon had a jump seat for Hannah to sit on - we think we can make something like this for her back home in ChiChi :-)

The jump seat folds up for landing