Avanos and Goreme

Avanos and Goreme were two cities not too far apart. But they have a much different feel to them. Avanos is a center for pottery (red clay pottery, we were told pointedly in Sirince)

Many of the shops were built into the rock, just as the homes were. Doreen wanted a couple of plates, so we bought them from this fellow:


Driving back, we had this great view of Uchisar:


Down in Goreme, we were told to eat at the Local Restaurant. Yes, that is the name.

We had a lamb braise:


And yes, it was really called the Local Restaurant:


After we finished lunch we went to the Goreme Open Air Museum. The owner of the Local Restaurant then gave us a ride back to Uchisar for our last evening.

Hiking the Pigeon Valley

The Pigeon Valley leads from Uchisar to Goreme. As Uchisar is the highest point around, our hike was downhill. Everyone we saw was walking the other way. It turns out that Goreme is a very popular place for backpacking travelers, as it has many cheap pensiones.

We started the hike down from our place - it was about a 2 K walk. Very pleasant.

Here Doreen is at the start of the trail:


The odd rock formations were everywhere. So were wild Lilacs. As we live in Houston, we seldom see lilacs. They bring back memories of my childhood in Wisconsin.

I did not know that they were native to Cappidocia. (I really still don't know that. But I am assuming it from there presence here)



The walk had two tunnels that had been carved by the little stream:


We saw many people heading up. So sad to be them!

Heading home

This post will be out of order. I still need to write a little more about Cappadocia and the Turkish Agean. But this is our flight home. We should be boarding in about half an hour.

A great trip.

More driving in Anatolia

After we left Sobesos, where the Roman village was being uncovered, we came across a sign for the Keyserik Monastery. We had not heard of it, and it was not on our map. But we stopped, as this is the sort of thing you rent a car for.

There was another car with Tourists there, and their guide/driver was sitting down with the woman who was selling tickets to enter. It looked as if she lived in the caves still, as she had all her stuff there in front of her. For our YTL3 ticket entrance fee, we also got a cookie. She was very nice.

These were gorgous churches. There were no people there, though there had been many in the past. There was a lot of Greek graffitti, much if it with dates from the late 19th or early 20th century.

This room in particular was moving, just because the colors were so vivid:


You can see some of the frescoes, with the graffitti here:


We then drove down to Solangi to see several more, and much more famous painted churches. (many photos in my Picasa album to the right ---->)

But it started pouring down rain. We had to hide in this cave until it stopped.

We really felt isolated. There were NO people in this area where we stopped. There was a French couple we saw originally, but they skedaddled when it started raining.

A Turk jumped into our cave, apparently from nowhere. He was telling us that he owned the apricot trees on the grounds. We had no reason to disbelieve him. He told us that he sold dolls down in the village. We said we would stop by.

Then he walked with us to this church:


and promptly disappeared.

We did go to his doll shop later. More about that by and by.

Driving in Anatolia

After much angst, (almost all on my part, I assure you) we decided to rent a car and drive around Cappadocia. It proved to be a wonderful decision. The only thing I gave up was beer or wine at lunch, and since the beer is just OK and the wine is expensive here, that hardly seemed like much of a sacrifice.

We had a small Japanese car, with a manual transmission. Everyone was very concerned to know if I could drive a standard. I assured them that I have owned many manual transmission cars, and this would not be a problem.

So we got into the Uchisar town center, and tried to figure out were to go. The roads are all very well marked, and with Doreen as navigator, and a small, not to scale, almost hand-drawn map, we started out.

People don't really drive a lot here. I don't think that many people have cars. And gas is VERY expensive. So we were treated with many views like this one:

where we were essentially the only car on the road. In this particular case, this road was not even on our map. It had signage telling us we were heading in the correct direction, though. So we kept going.

The first place we stopped was the underground city of Kayseri. As I had mentioned earlier, this rock is very easy to work. And the ancient citizens took advantage of this to create cities that dropped up to eight stories underground. The one we went into has been excavated to six stories, and open to four. The ceiling (or roof, or back, if you prefer mining terms) was generally very low. Getting into the place there was one very long, skinny, narrow passageway that was no more that 3.5' tall the whole way. I am guessing it was about 100 m long, and you had to duck walk the whole way. Oddly enough, I (at 6'6") did not bonk my head once. Doreen, (at 5'8") could have used a hard hat. I guess I am just used to being closer to the ceiling.



It was uncomfortable and rather unpleasant once we got through. But the women behind us really freaked out. My guess is that the younger one was 50, the older one 70. (give or take 5 years). The younger one started crying "Mamma, I can't get through! Mamma, I don't like this! Mamma, I want to go back!". Their guide talked her down.

(as an aside, we never used guides in any of these places. When we would overhear them, we were happy we did not. They would sometimes have useful information, but more likely it was just non-sense. We had a Blue Guide, and some other books. It is better to do your homework, I guess. The guides, though, did not like us. Nor did they hide it)

We kept following the red arrows (inbound) until we saw a group of about 40 Japanese tourists coming out the wrong way. I guess they couldn't finish the trip.

You can see here how low it was:

It was worth the trip. It was crazy imagining 20,000 bodies underground waiting for the Huns to leave.

When we got out, we drove through a small town and stopped to take a photo of the scenery. This boys came up to the car and started asking our names, (in English):

We replied and chatted a bit. They did not speak much English other than "What's your name?". Look at the eyes on that one on the right. Many of these Turks have these crazy green/blue eyes.

As we started getting back into the car, the one in the middle started shouting "Donkey! Monkey! Donkey! Monkey! Donkey! Monkey!" I imagine that those are about the only "bad" English words he knew. Then as we were driving away, he spit at the car.

I attributed this more to having three 9-11 year old boys in one place. Doreen pointed out that we have never been spit at before.

We then drove down to a new discovery of an old Roman village. They would not let us take photos, but it was a heck of a thing to see.

More Uchisar and the White Valley

This terrain is really amazing. It seems like an impossible, other worldly environment. Considering that people lived in all of these "Fairy Chimneys" I guess you could say that it is like another world.

Many people still live in these places, but they tend to want to have indoor plumbing and electricity. Imagine that! But the tuft is still impressive.



Now, many of the fairy chimneys are used to raise pigeons. One of the books says that they are raised for the droppings, which make good fertilizer. Personally, I think that they are raised for the squabs.




This is the inside of one of the houses. This one is pretty tall - many of them I have to squat to get into. When I get down to the undergournd city, you will see some REALLY small spaces. I think that many tourists freak-out when they get underground. I was not too happy myself, but mainly because I was duck-walking for about 200 m. Yipes! Not too much fun.


Kocabag is the big winery in Cappadocia. We bought some, and enjoyed it. They even gave us a Kocabag bag to carry the wine home.

Uchisar

We made the easy flight to Uchisar relatively late in the day. We did go and see the Hagia Sofia one more time, there are more photos listed over to the right---->


This is what the landscape looks like around Uchisar. It is a soft volcanic Tuft covered up by some lava flows. As the lava flows erode off, the tuft is easy pickings for wind and rain. And cave builders.


This is our little house.


This is our porch.


Every morning at about 5:00 AM balloons take off to view the Goreme valley. Very pretty.