Turkey (Cappadocia)

Day 1: Settling in...

Arrived today on the overnight bus from Selchuk. Random: This keyboard is interesting, it's actually a English keyboard (which is nice) but the spacebar is broken so I still can't type. Anyways, the ride here was beautiful albeit short (probably due to the 2 sleeping pills I bought cuz I can't sleep on the bus) The landscape is amazing, but a little weird (see photos,)

Kind of like a cross between the moon and the grand canyon...

From the edge of the canyon

I met two cool people today, Paul, who is a dutchman working here while he takes a break from travelling, and Linda, an Aussie who is doing the same. Dave and Kirsten went for a hike in the gorge but I stayed home to read. That was the plan anyways, but soon I started talking to Paul and he invited me to go with him and Linda for a bite to eat. We wandered around town for a bit then stopped by the internet cafe, which is where I am now.

Speaking of...I need to get back as I have Dave's Room Key and if they get back from hiking soon I'd better be there...

Got back in time to give Dave back his key, then met up with Nick, our friend from Tennesee that we met on the ferry to Kusadasi, weird, then we later (At Topkapi Palace in Istanbul) ran into a pair of australians that we stayed with in our hostel, weirder...

So we hung out with Nick again for a night, he went to the Turkish Night with us and ended up getting pulled on stage to do some belly dancing with a bunch of Japanese men, it was hilarious! I took these pictures by Nick's Hostel...

The Minaret of the town mosque at sunset

Same scene, different composition

Goreme Town

Goreme Town again

Day 2: The Tour

Went on a tour today, it was really neat but I had food poisoning from the night before so things were a little rough. The night before we had gone to "Turkish Nights" which was a little touristy but still very cool. All you can eat and all you can drink, whirling dervishes, belly dancers, and lots of Turkish dancing.

On the tour today we saw many neat things, the fantastic landscape which some people have dubbed the "Grand Canyon on Acid" the fairy chimneys, a pottery shop, underground cities, a merchants crossing, and a monastery.

We started the tour with Sawash, who turned out to be a really cool tour guide, kind of reminded me of my tour guide in Egypt (Sameh) they were both funny but had a serious side too. We ended up talking about Ataturk and Islam and he told me about how he felt about the radical Muslims, about modern Turkey after Ataturk, etc., it was really interesting.

Even with food poisoning the tour was great, Sawash was a riot, and we saw too much cool stuff to put in this blog, all for about 35 bucks. I was going in and out of being sick most of the day, but still managed to make some friends on the way. A doctor who had just finished med school and his wife, Luke the australian and his girlfriend, and a Danish kid and his father who was visiting him in Turkey (he was doing an exchange). We had lunch together and the father was very nice and very happy that I ended up giving him my lunch because I couldn't stomach it (food poisoning), we also met a nice Polish girl who we ate lunch with but didn't talk much too otherwise (she was in the front of the bus). We visited both the underground cities and the monasteries but I didn't bring my camera in so no pictures :( I'll put the pictures I have in order so you can get a good idea of how the tour went.


Sawash explaining the fairy chimneys to us (far right)

On the bus for our tour, the back of Luke's head, Luke was a nice Australian kid who had just graduated from law school, we ran into him again in Istanbul later too.

First stop: overlooking the canyon where Goreme (the city we stayed in) is located

A donkey in the bottom of the Ilhara Canyon, we made the 3 km hike through the canyon before breaking for lunch.

The doctors wife, (left) she gave me advil when I was sick and the Polish girl

Eating lunch (or not eating it in my case) I was dying in this picture but managed to smile anyways. The guy in the foreground is the Danish father who ate my lunch!

The Merchants Crossing where a 12 century monk/holy man spread his teachings of tolerance

The inside of the Merchants Crossing

Out the window towards the end of the tour

Day 3: Hiking

Went hiking today, the original idea was to get to the Rose Valley but we ended up wandering around for four or five hours and not having enough time. Dave and I started off in Goreme where the Shoestring Hostel was (where we were staying) and blazed our own trail for awhile, after wandering around some fields and scrub for awhile we found these little carved out houses in the cliff, at least we thought they were houses.

Of course Dave is pretty much the next Indiana Jones so he absolutely had to scale the rock face and climb up the the carved out area, I reluctantly followed. After nearly killing ourselves a few times on the way up we made it and found out the "house" was actually a giant shite collector for pigeon poop, which the farmers used to fertilize their fields. We scrambled in, took a few pictures, then scrabbled out again.

We got lost for awhile, although these mysterious blue dots kept showing up reassuring us we were on the right track, found an old abandoned church (from where the Byzantine Christians fled the Ottoman Turks?) and wandered some more.

Next, we finally found a trail again, wandered through this georgeous cliff-top trail and found our way back to Goreme. Just in time to say goodbye to everybody and catch our bus to Cannakale. Crazy day...here are the pics.

Climbing up the pigeon crap collector

Dave ascending to another cave dwelling

on our hike through the canyon

Fresco from inside a church carved in the cliff.

Day 4: Roaming around Goreme

We had time to kill in Goreme before going to Cannakale so we went to a restaurant for a bite to eat, ran into Luke there, and Dave had his first experience with a nargile, which is a water pipe for smoking flavored tobacco. We said goodbye to everyone at the pension and got ready to board our bus for Cannakale...

Dave trying out the nargile

Andrew, the world traveller at our pension, he had been to 92 different countries and showed no signs of letting up!

Saying goodbye to the ShoeString Cave Pension, bye...bye...I'm going to miss the bus!
- posted by mark @ 5:55 AM