Emerging from my little nap in time to catch the minibus, I headed on the larger (geopgraphically) of the day tours offered by Andromeda.  First stop was a view point to get a good look at the valleys surrounding the town.

Around the area there are numerous underground cities that the locals used to hide from invaders.  We went to one of the biggest at Derinkuyu – crazy that hundreds of people lived fifty metres underground for up to six months at a time.  It was great fun walking stooped through some very small tunnels – the tunnels were small to slow down any enemies & make it easy to pick them off.  There were plenty of big disc-shaped rocks propped up near strategic doorways that could be easily rolled in to place & only opened from the defenders’ side.

With the driving inbetween, it was about one o’clock before we began what was misrepresented as a hike. There were a lot of stairs down in to Ihlara Valley, before we found yet another cave church near the river.  It was a nice hour-long walk down the tranquil path looking up at more man-made caves. For motivation, lunch was waiting for us at the end – the dining room was on a pontoon floating on the river. Very nice trout was enjoyed by many.

The highlight of the day for me was Selime Monastery.  More of the same in some respects, but much rawer as a tourist attraction. Plenty of caves, churches, tunnels, dead-ends and ladders to explore – with very few people around.  It was like being eight years old again – at least what I remember of the wonder of exploring such interesting places.

There’s a good chance after such a long day, I had yet another nap (holidays are great) before heading out for dinner – in a cave. All good fun sitting in the dark, on the floor, writing postcards eating all manner of Turkish foods with a nice local wine to wash it down.

The more local tour on Friday had a fair bit of the time looking at fairy chimneys – what the area is most famous for.  They come in three types – as I heard more than once while in town – cylindrical, cone & mushroom.  Naturally, they’re also a good place to build your house or church.

We had a brief visit to Cauvsin Old Village, which is mostly in ruins & deserted. This was interesting as we had flown right on top of it the previous day & the pilot had pointed out the features & where someone with too much money was restoring part of it to form a hotel.  We popped inside a very small mosque, that like many in the country, used to be a church before the Ottomans came along.

There was a bit of time watching master-craftmen at work at a local pottery studio – conveniently located next to the largest buffet restaurant I’ve ever seen, to cater for the bus loads of tourists.  Nonetheless, it was very impressive, intricate work & I managed to walk out with a small souvenir of my Turkish stay.

The mushroom type of fairy chimneys:

A short stop at a government facility that supports local traditional carpet makers where we got the hard sell on carpets – they unrolled dozens in front of us.  All of them very nice, big & expensive. If I had a home to furnish, I may have had a harder time not spending hundreds of pounds on a carpet.  As it was, I got a small rug – much needed in my room.

Well, I was working with luminous fish and I thought… hey – loom

This time we drove into the Valley of Imagination, instead of floating in.  So-called because it only takes a little imagination to see all sorts of things in the rock structures.

Camel

That’s me – that doesn’t take so much imagination

There was a photographer with this couple

Back to the hotel in just enough time to collect my bags & get a shuttle to Neveshir & my flight back to Istanbul. An excellent three full days in Goreme & Cappadocia – ballooning obviously the highlight & a great way to see the extraordinary scenery, but the museums & cave dwellings not to be sniffed at either.

Up at stupid o’clock Wednesday to get to Ataturk airport for a one-hour flight to central Turkey. Food served on a short-hop – beats sleasyjet! It was about an hour’s shuttle ride through the Cappadocian countryside to Goreme – the small town that’s the main tourist spot in the area where I was staying for two nights. On the drive it occurred to me that the rather odd landscape was a mixture of three national parks that Valerie & I visited last year in the States. Those were Badlands – for the erosion & layers of colour, Mesa Verde – for the dwellings in the side of the earth, and Bryce Canyon – for the eroded rock formations.

The hotel I’d booked in town was a whole lot swankier than I’d imagined, but as it was only nine in the morning my room wasn’t quite ready & I really wanted a nap. But sitting in the sun reading & looking out over the cave-house ridden landscape was a close second. Eventually I got my room & nap before strolling down into town for lunch – they really do lentil soup well in Turkey. Goreme has a small tourist town feel to it, with interesting English translations of course, that reminded me somewhat of Lakeside, Pokhara, Nepal.

The biggest attraction in Goreme itself is the Goreme Open Air Museum – so I thought that was a good place to start off. So I spent the afternoon ducking in & out of caves, from blistering heat to relative coolness, admiring the structures and surviving paintings.  A World Heritage Site, people have been living, sheltering, worshipping here for 1700-odd years.  There’s quite a few living/practical rooms you can go in with long table & firepits & such-like, but the really highlight is the many small churches carved in the side of the earth.  With tiny domes & pillars, it’s a bit of a contrast to the grandeur of Istanbul’s places of worship – but no less incredible.  Because the caves are dark, the thousand-year frescos have survived really well – unfortunately, that means no flash photography & no photos of paintings to share.

The Nunnery

Tables & benches

Some of the early paintings, not frescos, were just red (plant dyes) line drawings – but still impressive that they’ve lasted so long.  The frescos were intricately coloured and well detailed – I could even tell what a lot of them were.

Tombs of donors that helped pay for the chapel – it could take three years to excavate a church

Repurposing

I wandered back in to town, passing various sights on the way. I particularly liked this sign:

Just to make sure I earned another delicious meal, I wandered up the tortuous streets to the back of town to look out over the strange houses & the expansive valley.

Early to bed due to the reality of consecutive early starts – at least getting up at 4.30 is much better if you’re going floating through the sky, rather than going to pull another twelve hour shift.