Fairy Chimneys

After stopping in for a night in Egirdir (a beautiful little town on a little Island on a lake, with mountains all around and an army Commando training camp) enroute to Cappadocia we found ourselves staying in a cave with a CRAZY lady!!!

Honestly I am not sure I have ever met anyone that crazy who claimed (at least I think she would have if I confronted her) to be sane. The cave was TINY and there were 5 beds with about 400mls between them! The lady had her gear spread out on every surface and had spent the entire day packing after having been in Cappadocia for 3 days! We got the hell out of the room as soon as we had dumped our bags! Which was a great thing as we went out to dinner at a fantastic retuarant and finally found some of that cuisine Turkey is supposedly famous for.

The nest mornign the first thing we did was fidn another hostel! Apparently there is a limit to our tolerance! who would have thought???

We found ourselves in another cave....this time I just had to put up with the two idiots I was travelling with! Sweet!

We then headed off to check out the sights, and after deciding the best option was to hire mountain bikes we set off on three rather crappy bikes to see what we could track down! We stopped in at the open air museum, which was a whole heap of churches carved into the side of mountains! Was pretty awesome, although not being of any set faith I struggle to see why you would need hundreds of churches in the same place!??? Some of the frescos were still pretty much intact, but they all had their eyes scratched out (something muslims seem to like doing when they invade christian churches, I have not yet been able to figure out why they dont get rid of the entire fresco?).

Instead of carrying on up what looked like a mountain on our mountain bikes we decided to head off crosscountry to track dwon some fairy chimneys! We managed to track down a fair few dwelling carved into hills, and some spectacular scenery, as well as a very cool little cafe selling fantastic oranges in the middle of nowhere (this was reached on foot - pushing our bikes for about a KM (apparently the ancient cappadocians didn't get around on bikes)).

I managed to go head over heals at one point, and missed splitting my head on a rock by about an inch....these things happen when you hire a bike with no back brakes! I somehow managed to get the cuts infected too.....so I now have a Turkish scar to go with all of my others!

That night we booked ourselves in for a turkish night, which included dinner, entertainment and all you could drink! Somehow we managed to starve ourselves all day, and turned up ravenous and rather grumpy! Thankfully there was tonnes of food, but I think the day wore us out as we didn't nearly make the most of the unlimited alcohol! The entertainment wa sof the turkish dancing variety! The first being the FAMOUS whirling dervishes! I am not sure why they are famous......but to be fair they did come on before we had ahd anything to eat....so that could have something to do with it!

The rest of the dances were pretty cool.....although I cant say I was impressed with Sii and Caths thought on setting me up with one of the very feminine turkish dancing boys! Although it is hard to believe sometimes....I DO have standards guys!!!!

We went home to bed after a wee bit of a half hearted boogie on the dance floor, having watched Ben Parkes (from eng class at uni, who was randomly staying at our hostel with his girlfriend) make a bit of a fool of himself (how out of charchter) in the audience participation perfomance.

Stupidly (especially given our vow to never again do another tour) we went on a tour the next day! The tour was not too bad, just a little tedious at times, and we did have a crazy russian and some usual aussies to keep us entertained when we got bored on our canyon walk and decided to eaves drop! We went to an underground city that was 6 stories high, pretty impressive!! The ppl hid in it during invasions, they had schools, churches, animal storage and even a wine making cellar.

Dinner that night was in a clay pot that they take 5 hours to cook and knock the top off in front of you!  I quite liked that little touch! And passing out on the cushions afterward! Turkish cabanas (as I like to call them) are a fantastic invention!