Cappadocia - Goreme, Turkey
Goreme, Turkey
merheba everyone so, next stop on our turkey trip was the cappadocia region. this is definately one of the jewels of turkey, and if you've ever seen a picture of turkey, there's a good chance it came from this region. the unique stone geographical features, the "fairy chimneys" are truly astounding. once again, it seems easiest to let lonely planet do the one sentence sum up; " cappadocia is a geological oddity of honeycombed hills and towering phallic boulders of otherworldy fashion." this area is also rich in human history - there are some pretty kick ass, frescoed, hand-carved caves/churches everywhere. oh, and again, they're thousands of years old. it was actually a bit of a forgetten area and has only been touristy since the 1980s but is now much visited. UNESCO thought it was worth preserving as well. (usually a good sign.) we stayed in göreme, which is a touristy little town but still charming with its cobblestone streets, horses wandering around outside our hotel, and being passed by the occasional tractor. so, we have really enjoyed the human amazingness of this country. and here, we were even more amazed at nature/geography/ geology/rockology/colourology amazingness. several volcanoes in the area exploded and then erosion, wind, rain, rivers and time did the rest. the hard/soft/hard layers of rock have left their legacy of towering chimneys. conical in shape with a "************ top of a "softer" pillar. they have been compared to phalluses or mushrooms, but the tourist brochures have gone with the much safer image of "castles". and really, i don't think i should even try to describe them. but i can say that they are beautiful. and awe-inspiring. and everywhere. a one kilometre walk can take an hour because you have to crane your neck every half a second to admire something new. we spent five days in this area and the sense of wonder never went away. look at some of our pictures rather than having me be pathetic in attempting to describe them. and remember, of course, that as much as a picture is worth a 1000 words, i think the real deal is worth 10,000 pictures. there was no way to capture the size, amount, and colours of everything. maybe i can just go back to the phrase "wow. wow. wow.wowowowowowowowowowowowowowow." and. (insert smile here.) a word about weather. we're here early. the prime time is june, july and august when the bright sun really accents the colours of the rock. and now it is april. and one of the coldest aprils this area has seen in quite some time. in fact we woke up one morning to snow and it's regularily been around 6 degrees for the last days. this is not a complaint (although it certainly has been a little bitof a whine at times) but it does change some of the colour magnificence. nonetheless, it's been AMAZING. can't even imagine when the reds are really red and the yellows are really yellow. and the whites really white. and, it did lead, however, to some very canadian "let's talk about the weather all the time" as we huddled around the wood stove with the hotel family. and as they all took almost as many pictures as we did on their phones and tablets. so,we mostly spent our time walking around. we explored some exotic sounding valleys - the gorkundere, the gulludere, the kuzilcukur valley and some others. less exotically known as the love valley(see preivous notes about phallic shapes), the rose valley, the red valley, the white valley, and others. . oh, and sword valley. oh, and... you get it. lots of up and down. even more stopping to take yet another photo. and then another one. we saw deep canyons, marshmallow rocks, dripping wax rocks, ice cream and meringue rocks. red, yellow, white. rocks that looked like penises, rocks that looked like camels, rocks that looked like camel's penises. rocks that looked like rocks. please just look at our pictures or use google as your friend. and in betweeen all this hardness, we'd find a little fruit orchard, or a vineyard small enough to fit into our living room. or a tea stand. there were natural tunnels to hike through. and one hike that involved ladders-of-doom. and one hike that involved dragging our bikes around (more about that later). some areas were busy - around the open-air musuem there were probably 10,000 people. but hiking even 10 mins into "wilderness" led to a private self tour of mama natüre's splendour. part of the fun (and part of the dismay on occaision) was the, hmm, um, trail map. as in there isn't really one. again, my eternal gratitude to kevin for being a geeky scientist who downloaded 10,000 maps and trails onto his phone before we got here. how was he to know that just because there is a trail marked on the map that it means it's a trail that humans could actually walk on (many were correct, but there were some moments where we were cliffed-out or where the descent would have been only suitable for a mountain goat. there was some good knowing and guessing and some turning around and backtracking. luckily the scenery astounded no matter which of those options we ended up with. we admired two things mainly. the natural beauty (see the above descriptons). and also, as is often the case, the amazingness of humans to use what they have. the area is rich in pillars and caves and tunnels. and people went one step further and sculpted (as in with a hammer and chisel) themselves homes, churches, and hiding places into these dessert shaped rock chunks. we managed to see some magnificent examples of all of these. some of the churches still have quite intact frescoes. they are somewhat damaged by vandals. including muslims scratching out the eyes of the human figures (islam forbids the representation of humans, as a süper-short-cut explanation). but also a few "sally was here" kinda things. humans! and almost all our hiking led to a moment (or ten thousand) where we either uttered or thought "why don't we have our bikes?" then again, the fact that we were hiking in our puffy jackets and that we had snow and a bit of rain did dampen that a smidge. but the day came where it was a bit warmer and we just couldn't resist. we rented some red bikes that had both disc brakes and kick stands. and, hm, no wait, that's all they really had. we had a hoot. there was some single track swooping. there was some uphill slogging. there was some "poop, this trail just ends at this cliff, we have to go waaaaaay back up there (insert sound of weeping and loud sighing here)". there was some clever and tricky foot work while working our way up little teeny footholds with me heaving bikes up to kevin. there were some teeny tiny foot holds on 90 degree walls that really didn't allow us to pass bikes up or down and led to backtracking. see weeeping notes earlier. and some of the time that we were riding, we were wishing for our real bikes. saying that this would be an awesome place if you had a good trail map. that it would make a gorgeous back drop for bike shots. and then, then, we came around a corner on our walmart-style bikes to find some pro riders doing a photo a video shoot on some fabulous rocks. ah, yes! we watched for quite a while and it just seemed so right that someone was taking full advantage of the terrain. (to be fair, we wouldn't have done the hip off the big slick penis-head rock down onto the scrabbly tranny.) anyway, everything is funner on a bike. there is definitely that thing though, that you don't see as much as you zoom along; we were happy that we mostly picked a trail to ride that we had already hiked. and then there was the human intervention element. it's not enough apparently that all these reallly cool structures exist to delight us. the previous inhabitants (and there still are some people now who use these structures) used the natural caves and created addtional ones by chiselling away with hand tools to create rooms and tunnels. we're talking 4 stories of rooms made of rock. the openings remain and so do some remnants of paint or carved-in niches. for example, most old rock/cave "homes" have had dovecotes chiseled into them. little square rock cubbyholes for the pigeons to live in. the pigeons poop, the people collect the poop, the veggies are fertilized, and bob's your uncle. nowadays the pigeons likely hang around in part because you can pay a turkish lira to buy a handful of bird feed to drop on the ground at the touristy panorama lookouts. but the human part is everywhere, interspersed with the un-humaned rocks. amazing. other nice sights. a full size tree covered in evil eyes. a whole lamb roasting out on the street. carpet shops. (no we didn't). helping two guys move an industrial size propane tank. unsuccessfully - they ended up just dragging it behind their tractor after the four of us couldn't lift it into their trailer. uchisar (the next town up the hill) castle overlooking us almost always. dinner in a cave restaurant with roasted lamb shank and cappadocian wine (fine, but don't invest yet). grapes grown on the ground without any kind of staking. we visited a couple of prime leftover "structures". one was a monastary completely carved into a lump of magnificent rock. it was the waypoint for the tired camel caravans that needed a break after 50 days of travel. remains of kitchens and churches (complete with pillars) and of course, pigeon homes. it was the snow day we were there and it was a little additonal treat to have a layer of icing sugar on what already looked like a fairy castle. maybe the sugarplum fairies live here? we also visited an underground city. they're finding more and more of them in this region all the time. in the last six months they found one near here when a guy went to the very back of his shed and moved a door that he hadn't moved before and found an entire underground city behind it. we went into one of those. seven levels of city, going down 55 metres. one hell of a ventilation shaft as you can imagine. people didn't live here regularily - it was a place of refuge to hide from enemies. lots of fail proofs including secret tunnels, narrow staircases that would be easy to defend, and big-ass boulders that could be rolled into place to close off the staircases and tunnels. but it wasn't really totally a roughing it situation; these folks also carved spaces for stables for animals, and of course, wine cellars. super cool. oh, and you got to go number one and number two into a clay pot the whole time you were down there and then use it for fertilizer when you returned to the above-ground world. we went to see whirling dervishes. another thing that had been on my list for quite some time. gorgeous. really. worth another google. the whole thing comes from sufism - the more mystical aspect of islam. and from the program description: "it's all based on that the fundemental conditon of our existence is to revolve. there is no object or being which does not revolve and the commonality amongst beings is the revolution of the electrons and protons in their atoms, which constitute all things from the smallest particles to thestars in the sky. as a consequence of this similarity everything revolves and man carries on his life, his very existence by means of the revolution in these atoms, in the structural elements of his body, by the circulation of his blood, by his coming from the earth and return it, and by revolving with the earth iteself." every sound and movement and head tilt and arm movement and piece of clothing is hightly ritualized and is meant to honour god/allah. chanting, music, whirling. all leading to ecstacy. pretty darn cool. and even if you had no idea what any of it meant, just the men twirling in their white robes/skirts with slowly moving arms and heads was graceful and beautiful. and the chanting, totally incomprehensible to us, was just a slightly atonal but interesting backdrop. and the balloon days.... our first balloon day had us waking up to the sounds of whales blowing outside our window. that didn't seem right. maybe it was the heater making odd noises? and then we knew. we raced up to our rooftop terrace and were welcomed by hundreds of balloons floating above the beauty of göreme. hundreds. colourful. and some more colourful as they lit up from within as their pilots added more, hmm, up-gas, to the balloon. fantastic. it had already been on our list but that just reaffirmed that it was something we had to do ourselves. and we did. in the peak season there are balloons every morning but, again, we were in the snowy and a little bit windy season. we managed to fly on our last morning. and again, maybe just look a the 10,000 pictures. we re-saw the valleys we had walked through, but from above, and the colours of the rocks accented by the brighly lit balloons. we started at sunrise, when we got to watch them inflate our balloon and let our anticipation build. and the sun continued to rise and highlight the valley as our flight went by (way way way too quickly). we went as high as 800 meters. and as low as "holy small gap batman, i could throw a piece of baclava at that rock and hit it." i'm sure it's part of every pilot's schtick, but it was pretty cool how thread- the- needle he was (very safe, moms and dads, he really looked like knew what he was doing; i was standing next to him and i didn't see him flinch). amaze-balls. and then some baby duck on the ground afterwards to celebrate. and recieve our official flight diplomas; kevin hugh buxton will be happy to proudly show off his which says "kevin HUNG buxton". since this is a family rated piece of writing, that's all i'll say. a word about our hotel. it was for sure the best one in town. like all others, it was a "cave hotel". many rooms are built right into the rock in the old style. which is cool and all, but we opted for one with lots of windows and a private balcony overlooking the splendour. private balcony came complete with cumfy couches and snuggly duvets (see the weather comment earlier). and, it had (and only travellers may really appreciate this next part) more than one plug in, and that plug in didn't require juggling your phone/e-reader on the corner of a chair propped up ont top of the garbage can. and what really made it, werebthe people who run the hotel. süper nice. friendly, interesting, helpful. once again, because of our pathetic turkish it was delightfyl that they spoke good english. we had many conversations about everything and nothing, mostly over endless cups of tea. it really felt more like staying with a family than anything. and to top it all off, they had the best breakfast yet of any of the places we stayed. there was also a gözleme making morning - these are turkish crepe-pancake-y things, rolled süper thin and filled with cheese or potatoes or chocolate. both kevin and i are pros now, so come on by sometime for breakfast. and this might be the time to digress to talk about the friendliness of the turkish people. in İstanbul, people were a little bit more reserved, but everywhere else is full of genuine friendliness. i preface the next section with saying that we still only speak about 10 turkish words, recognize 10 more (and add in 20 or 30 food words). but for people we've interacted with who speak no words of english, we've had smiles, laughs, pointing and a great deal of friendliness. for people we've interacted with who speak 5 to 10 words of english, we've had smiles, laughs, pointing and a great deal of friendliness. and for the turks who speak pretty good english, we've had all of the above plus lovely conversatoins. we've had lots of handshakes and some kiss-twice-on-both-cheeks. also, the tukish people love to tell jokes and joke around. we've had lots of invitations for tea, which generally means an invitation to visit (again, whether ther are 0, 5, or 10,000 words in common.) so, really, another fantastic place. thanks for playing along. luz and kevin