Faded glory of Pamukkale

The climb up the terraces (oops!)
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We pulled off a 'I can't believe that all worked' feat on our visit to Pamukkale, with a little help from Adem of Jimmy's Place in Selcuk.

First we jumped on a bus for 3 hours from Selcuk to Pamukkale village, dropped our packs off at one of Adem's mates places, wandered around the sites of Pamukkale, got bundled on to a local minibus in the evening for a short trip to the town of Denizli, where we connected with our overnight bus for the 10 hour trip to Cappadocia.

All of this to avoid the horror of actually having to stay in Pamukkale which has got to be the saddest town we came across in Turkey.  Very run down and seemingly surviving only on tourist dollars so full to the brim of touts desperately trying to get you in their restaurants / sell you bus tickets / get you to stay in their hotels.  We only found one restaurant that looked as though the food (or the locals in it) wouldn't kill us, so we ate both lunch and dinner in there to the delight of the owner (who was the only other person in the place both times).

Empty limestone terraces :(
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Anyway, not wanting to focus on the negatives, the reason for all of the fuss was to visit the limestone terraces and thermal pools that are Pamukkale.

For the Kiwis that are reading this, you may have heard of the Pink and White Terraces in NZ that were a huge tourist attraction to overseas visitors in Victorian times.  The limestone terraces were filled with hot mineral water that tourists and locals alike bathed in and the terraces glowed in the setting sun. The Pink and White Terraces were however blown to pieces by the Tarawera eruptions and ever since I did a 'project' on them for one of my school history assignments I've been a little obsessed about them and have always wished I had seen them.

Mineral pool surrounded by Turkish blokes
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Well, Pamukkale promised pretty much the same thing, terraces of white limestone filled with mineral water spilling down the sides of a hill/mountain just beside the village of Pamukkale.

Being 'independent tourists' instead of one of the many busloads of people on tours turning up at the site, we had to improvise to get up to the top of the terraces as the guard at the entrance wasn't in a helpful mood.  Hilariously (to us anyway, not the guards at the top) we actually ended up scaling the terraces themselves rather than finding the hidden path.  Ah well, if they don't put a no entry sign up or point the way to the walking path we can't really help it!

At the top of the limestone terraces complete with mineral water
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The terraces were stunning.  However, disappointingly the village has siphoned off much of the mineral water, which means that only 3 or 4 pools actually have water in them, completely ruining what must have been an incredible sight at one time of an entire hillside covered in white terraces in turn filled with the most beautiful blue green mineral water.  How they managed to do this to a UNESCO world heritage site amazed both of us.

The other disappointment is the hot mineral pool that tourists are still allowed to bath in has been completely surrounded by a massive building and once inside the gate we were faced with no other tourists, no one in the mineral pool and about 30 Turkish blokes sitting around looking bored.  Suddenly the thought of getting in to that bikini and lounging in the hot pool, thereby becoming a tourist attraction myself for the local Turkish blokes didn't quite appeal and we exited fairly rapidly.

So in summary...glad we went (see above - Pink and White Terraces obsession), but also glad that we just did it on a day trip on the way to somewhere else.