With the girls gone and no concrete plans for a good month, Thad and I headed to Cappadocia, in the centre of Turkey, famous for it’s crazy unearthly landscape.
The volcanic rock there is soft, and has been molded by wind and rain into all different shapes including valleys that resemble poured honey and “fairy chimneys” where a harder rock cap above has prevented a small circumference of soft rock from being eroded. Because of the softness of the rock, it can be carved and for many centuries the locals have carved their homes, churches and monasteries out of it. We stayed in a cave while we were there, our room completely made out of rock.
We had the best time in Cappadocia. The first day we took a walking tour with the hostel manager through the local valleys. We started off in Pigeon Valley, where there are pigeon houses carved into the valley sides (and sometimes decorated with frescoes) . For centuries people have been collecting pigeon droppings for fertiliser, also pigeons were symbolically important to the Christians living there so they liked to treat them well! We continued to White Valley, where the rocks were paler and many locals had their vegetable patches, complete with wells. Next was Honey Valley which looked like thick honey had oozed down the valley sides. Continuing from Honey Valley was Love Valley, the same type of rock was present, however in Love Valley there are some basalt rocks that prevented thin column of the soft rock from being eroded, leaving very phallic-like pillars dotting the landscape.
That night, Carl and Mono – friends we’d made in Istanbul, arrived in Cappadocia so we went to their cave hostel and had a traditional Turkish meal – lentil soup, salad, lamb casserole and rice – all washed down with (vast quantities of) the locally produced wine. The next morning we dragged ourselves out of bed early to go on a bus tour of the region, which was fanTASTIC! We visited an underground city – carved 8 levels underground, where people lived for up to 7 months at a time to escape any invading
armies that tramped across the land. We also visited a huge monastery carved out of a mountain, fairy chimneys and a valley full of cave churches with frescoes dating back to the 14th century.
We finished the day off with a Turkish Night – a touristtrapesque night where you get all you can eat food, all you can drink alcohol, and watch traditional Turkish dancing. It was lots of fun and interesting too – traditional wedding dances and whirling dervishes and music players as well as a belly dancer who invited Carl and Mono up to bust some moves on the dance floor. We had a great time and when it was over, our driver offered to take us out for a round at his cousin’s bar which sounded great, so off we went, but the bar ended up being closed so instead he bought us drinks at a local supermarket and drove us around to see different panoramic views of Goreme. It was lots of fun although he was being a bit of a stupid driver and veering around the tiny little mountain paths and making us scream.
Anyway, somewhere along the way we realised that a) he was WAY too drunk to be driving and mustve indulged in the free alcohol when we weren’t looking and also that b) somewhere along the way he had grown a dislike for Thad, partially due to Thad not wanting to share his beer and partially because he wanted to take me for himself. Interesting.
Anyway, after he made it perfectly clear that he intended to remove Thad from the mortal coil I managed to communicate the situation to the other guys and we refused to get back in the car, and told him to go home. He sped off angrily, and we waited for a while so we could make our way back to the town (about a km away). He came back though, and was pretty angry, mainly because he was told to bring us back carl and mono’s hostel and now he wouldnt be able to do that and also still adamant about the whole killing Thad thing. He left again, and this time we decided just to climb straight down the cliff/mountain into the town instead of following the road. Luckily we did, because he came roaring back up the road about 5 minutes later and we hid, and then ran the rest of the way. We jumped into someone’s backyard to catch our breath and decided to continue through the backyards so we avoided the crazy drunk guy. After going through 2 gardens we came to a sheer drop and thought oh no, we’ll have to turn back, but then realised we’d landed on the roof of our hostel! So we climbed down and went to bed! We talked to our hostel owner later and he said that he knew the guy and he was a bit weird in the head. Great. But we got out alive ha ha!
We spent the rest of our time in Cappadocia relaxing in cafes and restaurants, drinking apple tea and eating lentil soup. Aaahh. On one day we went to an open air museum – a whole deserted village of houses and churches carved out of the rock that had to be abandoned due to safety issues. It
made a great place to climb around and explore, with ancient frescoes and odd buildings. On our way we saw an old guy who was blind in one eye driving a horse and little old cart that looked like it had been made out of scraps.
When he saw us he stopped and waved to us to jump on the back, so we did and he took us down a little track, past a cave church and to his farm, gave us tomatoes and showed us the natural spring, carved out summer rooms and little tunnels through the rock that ran between the plots. It was great! He then drove us back to the main road and waved goodbye, continuing on his journey. We also visited a UFO museum which was odd and hilarious. Paper mache exhibits are way cool.
