We were up at 3:45am to get a minivan to our take off spot via the Butterfly Balloons headquarters for a quick breakfast.
As we got to the take off spot, the balloons were being filled up with a fan.
We got into our basket (along with 12 other people) and the balloon got ready for takeoff.
We were in the compartment right under the flame which meant we got hot quite quickly despite the cold morning air.
Taking off!
All the other balloons taking off from a common area.
We couldn't keep the smiles off our faces.
The "golden hour".
Still smiling...
Balloons over Love Valley, called that because of the phallic rock formations..
Safely landed...
This was all over by 7:30am and we got back to our hostel at 8. With the day still ahead of us, we decided to walk to Pigeon Valley (the right way this time).
We found it!
Panorama of the valley.
We continued walking towards Uçhisar village as we wanted to climb to the top of the mountain.
The mountain ahead of us.
We made it to the top and found a small area with cushions in the shade. The early morning finally hit us and we ended up falling asleep. 2 hours later, we headed out to get some lunch at a small cafe overlooking the valley.
After lunch we decided to try and find the path that led through the other side of Pigeon Valley. We found a small trail that looked like it led I between these rocks down to the valley so we followed it.. It started turning into a really difficult path as the white stone was very crumbly and the path steepened as we got further down. In the end, we got about 5m away from the path but there was a 3m vertical drop to get to it so we had to walk all the way back up the way we came.
We continued along another path, giving up on trying to get into the valley and instead walked along the top of it, through a farmers paddock, to find this amazing view.
Ecstatic we were still alive after our cross country hike.
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