July 14

We headed off at 4:00am to go to the launch site for a balloon flight over the valleys of Cappadocia.  We were first taken to our Atmosfer Balloons headquarters and had a buffet breakfast where everyone was gathered before going to the launch site.  They use some massive balloons with gondolas holding around 20 people.  Our pilot was Donatas from Lithuania.  About 40 balloons from several companies were launching that morning.Donatas also flies competition for his national team and is an accomplished pilot.  We were one of the last balloons to take off which was an advantage because Donatas could see what the winds were doing to other balloons and pick altitudes to take advantage of the winds to give us the best tour.  We were down low and up way high to see incredible sights during our flight.  Winds were low so we ended up with a 90 minute flight instead of the scheduled 45 minutes.  We flew over valleys with cave houses that had no roads into them and can only be observed by air.  the sky was clear and temperature mild and we had a wonderful flight.  Donatas is such an accomplished pilot that we landed on the trailer that hauls the balloon & gondola to and from the trip.  As they were packing away the equipment we were served champagne and given flight certificates (they even had some tee shirts, pens and other goodies to sell us if we wanted.)  The views were spectacular and Donatas gave us a lot of information about the areas we flew over.  We went back to the hotel for the hotel breakfast  and had some time to relax before our day's touring which will be described in the next posting.