Today was our "green tour" day: a group tour that offerred plenty of driving time but some amazing sights along the way. We were picked up right on time at 9:30, and by 10:00 we'd picked up the remaining participants and were at our first stop within five minutes - the Goreme panaroma.
Of course, millions of years ago, I doubt there were as many gift shops overlooking the Goreme valley, but hey, it's Turkey! Actually, the gift shops here at all of the tourist spots always seem tastefully done and particularly in these spots (as opposed to the urban areas), the vendors do not hassle you at all. I don't know if that's just because busy season is over here and they're winding down to hibernation mode, or if it's their experience that hassling does not work very well.
Just before 10:30, we were back in the van. Heads were starting to bob already! The Chinese couple in front of Beth and I were already fast asleep. It reminded me of riding trains in Japan - people got so conditioned to sleeping on the train that they would be asleep within minutes of boarding the train and magically wake up seconds before their stop.
The landscapes in Cappadocia are really stunning, and quite varied. We were driving through a desert type area with occasional small and medium sized hills that looked like small volcanos. The sky has been crystal clear here and today was no exception - we could see landscape features many kilometers away.
Mehmet explained that Cappadocia was named after a Persian word meaning land of beautiful horses, but I've read that that is the tourist explanation - it actually comes from the old Turkish words describing the people who used to live there. The only horses in the area are for tourists!
By 11:00, we'd arrived at the underground city of Derinkuyu - another UNESCO world heritage site and the largest underground city in the region (there are many). The word means "deep well" and the place was certainly deep - over 65 meters with 8 different levels!
The lineup was surprisingly long to get in (at least, Mehmet seemed to be surprised) but we eventually got through the gate at 11:25. After hearing an explanation and seeing some warning signs on claustrophobia, Beth and Robin opted to pass on this excursion.
When went down the narrow stairway to the first level and it opened up to a relatively large room, I thought they'd made a mistake - after all, if you follow the warning signs at any theme park, nobody should really go on any rides.
Not much is actually known about the city. They know it was used as a hiding place (ie not a permanent living place), most likely for Christians who were facing persecution in the third and fourth century. They do know that the first two levels were made by the Hitites and the other levels were made after. I thought of how scared the people would have been to put so much effort in building this enormous hiding place - the people that were looking for them must have been brutal. We were only allowed to explore 10% of the city, and that alone was a massive area. I then thought of the tunnels Abby and I explored in the DMZ in Vietnam and thought how sad it was that the same hiding areas had to be built by people just forty years ago....
When we were ready to go back up, we had to queue up in an ever growing group, 65 meters underground in a room the size of our garage. The narrow stairway had to accommodate up and down traffic. People kept coming down and into our area for about 10 minutes, with seemingly no system to know when it was safe to go up. Eventually, there was a break in the crowd and Mehmet signalled to us that it was time to go. Yes, good choice Beth :-).
By 12:20, we were back on the road, and it was time for our group to join the "nodders"... Robin in particular was acting the part of a bobble head....
At one o'clock, we arrived at Selime Monastery - a huge, 8th century complex carved into the side of large rock mountain.
There was a ton of selfie action going on at the monastery, both from outside and inside our tour group. In particular, an Indian woman from our group with bleach blonde hair and ripped white jeans was putting on an absolute selfie clinic - it was pretty amusing.
When the monastery was no longer being used for religious purposes, it was tuned into a caravan inn for those traveling the Silk Road to and from Constantinople. What a cool place to stay!
We left at 1:40 and luckily it was only a ten minute drive to lunch because the troops were getting hungry! We were ushered to a table at one of those typical tour bus restaurants, given a minute to choose one of the six meal options and five minutes later we were all digging in. It was a very efficient, tried and true factory lunch which actually produced pretty decent food.
By 2:30, we were back in the van for the ten minute drive to the start of our Ihlara Valley walk.
The whole valley area, about 18 kilometers long, is a beautiful, lush valley that looks like a small version of the Grand Canyon, only with trees and a calm meandering river at the bottom.
It was really nice to get out and walk after lunch. Luckily, I'd convinced Grandma Abby to do her stretching this morning as we had to descend 400 stairs to get to the valley floor (no stretching would have delayed the tour group by 20 minutes to wait for her to hobble down the steps!).
The walk was really nice. The valley was cool and calm, with smooth sandy paths on each side of the lazy river and small pedestrian bridges crossing over to the other side every so often. After just ten minutes, Mehmet asked us if we needed a break. Really? Ok, we stopped at a nice little riverside Cafe. We saw lots of duck faces.... Both real, and of the bleach-blonde Indian variety....
We finished our 4km walk at another nice little cafe area, where we got back in the van. At 3:40, we were back on the sleep train towards Goreme. It was an hour drive to our second to last stop - the jewelry "factory". Yes, on all of the tours in Cappadocia, you cannot get away from a "craft demonstration" - the Red had rug making, the Green had an Onyx carving demonstration.
Magically, after he was done, we were led through a set of double doors into a jewelry shop the size of a football field. There were rows upon rows of shiny display cases with all kinds of, well, I categorize them as crap.
Beth was not impressed either. The prices were all in Euros and very high. We've definitely experienced sticker shock coming from shopping in Southeast and South Asia, but the prices here were ridonkulous. Things that we had seen for $10 Canadian elsewhere were listed at $150 Canadian.
Our group seemed to all be on the same page. We zipped through the massive store pretty quickly. At 5:15, it was time for our final stop of the day at the Pigeon Valley viewpoint just down the road from the store.
Pigeon Valley is just on the other side of Ulchisar, which we visited yesterday.
Back in the day, pigeons were used for making fertilzer (pigeon shit), for making plaster that could be used to make church walls smooth in order to apply paintings after (pigeon shit) and for communication (pigeon shit analysis....). That's why throughout this valley and the region, you see so many pigeon homes - they were a valuable commodity, or at least their shit was....
We were back to the hotel before six. The tour was pretty much what I expected - a good way to see the underground city, monastery and the beautiful valley, as well as a few other short stops. I couldn't imagine doing more than one of these day tours here, unless you were here for a couple of weeks.
We went to an Aussie place called "Fat Boys" for dinner (the kids have been taught the importance of the Fat Boys in the rise of hip hop, as well as the immense (hah, in both ways) talent of the Human Beat Box so we just had to go there!). They remarked that we've seen an "Aussie bar" pretty much every country we've been to, and they always seem to be places with good food, great beer (that was me chiming in) and a focus on sports. Tonight they were showing an Aussie vs Scotland rugby match and the crowd was really into it.
We retired to the cave, polishing off the night with a little Walking Dead. Like the trip, we are almost, sadly, done the series. But like our travels, the series will continue - hopefully forever :-). We are really loving our hotel - it's right at the top of our list so far, with less than ten more candidates to compete with!
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