Life Among Fairy Chimneys

July 11, 2008

Goreme in Cappadocia (via Konya)

(Amber)

We spent the day traveling toward the region of Cappadocia in central Turkey. We made a stop in the city of Konya, which is famous for the Shrine of Jalaluddin Rumi, where the shrine of the mystic Sufi poet Mevlana Rumi (1207-1273) is located.

Apparently, Matt has owned a collection of Rumi poems since he was in college and was excited about this stop. Rumi established the Whirling Dervishes, who spin in place during a ceremony called Sema. We first ate a gross Turkish pizza with cold minced meat smeared on it, then we toured the Shrine of Jalaluddin Rumi and saw the Mausoleum of Rumi, which had a giant silk blanket on it. It was fun, but nothing was in English. So we really just looked around at things, took pictures and made notes to research the place later because we had no idea what was going on. If you are interested in learning more about Konya and Rumi and the Dervishes, the following website has a good explanation: http://www.sacredsites.com/middle_east/turkey/konya.htm

We then visited one of the largest caravanserais on the old silk trail. Caravanserais were the places that trading caravans (traveling from Asia to Europe carrying a variety of good, including silk) would stop to rest for the night, visit ahamam (Turkish bath), and prepare for their continued journey toward to markets far and wide.

The rest of the drive was pretty. The country is just so diverse. We went along lakes, through mountains, through rocky hills, and finally through wheat fields before arriving in Goreme, which you cannot be sufficiently prepared to see.

Here's how Wikipedia describes this historic and amazingly unique area of the world:

Cappadocia was an extensive inland district of Asia Minor (modern Turkey). The name defines a region of exceptional natural wonders characterized by fairy chimneys and a unique historical and cultural heritage. The Cappadocia region is largely underlain by sedimentary rocks formed in lakes and streams, and ignimbrite deposits erupted from ancient volcanoes approximately 9 to 3 million years ago (late Miocene to Pliocene epochs). The rocks of Cappadocia nearGöreme eroded into hundreds of spectacular pillars and minaret-like forms. The volcanic deposits are soft rocks that the people of the villages at the heart of the Cappadocia Region carved out to form houses, churches, monasteries.Göreme became a monastic center between 300-1200 AD. First period settlement in Göreme reaches to the Roman period from Christianity. Yusuf Koç, Ortahane, Durmus Kadir and Bezirhane churches in Göreme, houses and churches carved into rocks till to Uzundere, Bağıldere and Zemi Valley carries the mystical side of history today. The Göreme Open Air Museum is the most visited site of the monastic communities in Cappadocia and is one of the most famous sites in central Turkey. It is a complex comprising more than 30 rock-carved churches and chapels containing some superb frescoes, dating from the 9th to the 11th centuries.

Around 7:30pm, we arrived at our hotel in Goreme which, like many in this area, was built directly into ancient caves. It was beautiful, and despite the heat outside, our room was really cool inside....like a cave...because it was a cave.

(Matt)

As soon as we arrived at the cliff overlooking the valley where Goreme lies, our rowdy and rather reckless bus driver pulled off to have a Turkish tea and a smoke break...5 minutes from our destination. We find this to be very common in Turkey--the bus drivers like to have 20-minute stops right before the destination, which is weird really. Since we were stopping anyway, we got out to see Goreme from the scenic overlook at sunset. We were very impressed.

It is a magical city of Fairy Chimneys, naturally-occurring geological wonders into which humans have carved multiple-level caves and, sometimes, churches and alters. These Fairy Chimneys often at have windows at their highest points. Finally, after some pictures, our bus delivered us to a hotel called Shoestring, an unfortunate name for a really cute hotel. Our room...or cave...was at the top of a hill overlooking Goreme and had access to a (slightly dirty) pool, which was nice during the hot parts of the day.

As soon as we arrived, we got talked into eating a "pottery kebab," which is touted as a local tradition, but it may just be a gimmick for tourists. It was really just stew with tough meat in a pot. We enjoyed the company of our Australian friends, Peter and Debbie. Though hot during the day, Goreme really cools down in the evenings. We ate out on a patio. After we had been there for a little while, an older American woman walked up and introduced herself. This is one of the first Americans we've seen or spoken to on the whole trip. She was from California and initially, after bragging about how drunk she had gotten the night before at a contrived "local dancing" show, told us that she "just loved Austin" and seemed sincere. About 15 minutes later, I overheard her telling Amber that she "hated Texas," ignoring not only the fact that Austin is in Texas but that it remains the capital of Texas....and is our home. This women in many ways was the quintessential loudmouth American traveler that everyone, including us, tries to avoid. Apparently, Peter and this same woman got into an altercation on the bus the next night after the woman began berating the bus driver on the side of the road for swerving to avoid some livestock on the highway. Notably, the livestock in the road did not belong to the bus driver. I bet this woman gets into a lot of  altercations. When we went to pay for dinner, Amber and I found we had no money. Peter and Debbie spotted us, and we all went for great baklava at a local shop.

July 12, 2008

(Matt)

So our first day began with breakfast at the hotel. It was included. We had a choice, and I decided that I needed to go with a common Turkish breakfast that I had not tried, called menemen . A dish with eggs and roasted tomatoes, peppers, and olive oil. These were prepared on a hot plate and brought to the table in the same manner as fajitas in Texas. Unfortunately, the eggs were totally raw. Amber got regular scrambled eggs, and her eggs were also raw. We think that maybe this cook just didn't think cooked eggs were very good or something, but my only experience with menemen was this one. I simply could not eat it. So I will always think of raw eggs when I hear menemen.

We then walked around Goreme proper for a couple of hours, checking out the many residential conversions from ancient cave to modern home and the hotels that had done the same. After a few days, we figured out that Goreme is really the coolest town in Cappadocia. Plus it is the perfect base for exploring the region.

Next, as the sun made its way into the summer sky and got really hot, we walked to the next valley over, Zemi Valley, also called "Love Valley" because of the phallic Fairy Chimneys there. And I can't really argue with that observation. We had the place to ourselves for hours and explored the valley freely and took lots of pictures. Near the top of the valley, I climbed into a random, unmarked cave and found original paintings of crosses on the ceiling and intricately constructed arches. It was probably a chapel.

It was surprising how this valley, which is so close to Goreme, was so empty. But it is apparently not on the main tour bus itinerary. There were some small gardens and evidence of a few farmers living in the valley, but they were nowhere to be seen on this day. I climbed to the top of the ridge overlooking Goreme and Zemi Valley and got incredible views of the area. After we were done exploring, we took a lunch break and walked back to town. I ate anadana kebab. Amber had a potato gozleme. We went back to the room, and I went for a midday swim in the pool. Amber napped. That afternoon, we walked to the Open Air Museum, passing Zemi Valley. The Open Air Museum was nice, especially the Dark Church, but it was packed with tour groups. We figured out after 3 days of exploring Cappadocia that, setting the Dark Church aside, there are many places just as impressive the Open Air Museum that are free and free of the crowds if you seek them out on your own.

As we walked along to go to dinner, we ran into Jamal and Tony from the Blue Cruise. They had a bus to catch in like 10 minutes. After a short and happy reunion, they strongly advocated renting a car to see the countryside, and we gave this some serious thought at dinner, which incidentally was inedible. Note - we have found that it is true worldwide that the more touristy small towns are, the worse the food; the opposite is true for big cities. We turned in fairly early this night.

July 13, 2008

Matt on rented scooter
see all photos »

(Matt)

We got up on the second full day and went to breakfast intent on not eating raw eggs. This was our only goal. So I ordered a gozleme, which usually has something inside of it, and it was just a single crispy flap of bread. Strike two. Amber did slightly better, I thought, by ordering muesli, but she claimed that it was horrible and couldn't eat it.

We then decided that a car was too expensive. So we rented a scooter and headed south, first climbing out of the valley where Goreme sits. It was very liberating to have our own wheels after more than 6 months of being afoot. After less than 15 minutes on the road, went arrived at Pigeon Valley, which is a very cool place. Though many tour buses stop at Pigeon Valley to take pictures from the road, very few people actually climb down into valley and climb around. We wandered around the empty valley and took pictures of the hundreds of caves carved into the Fairy Chimneys there.

Then we climbed back out all the way to the highest point in the area, the castle at Uchisar, which overlooks Pigeon Valley and the small village of Uchisar. We stopped in the town to take some pictures. Amber bought some dolls from an old Turkish woman who was posted up outside the entrance of the castle, which has a small admission fee. We then made our way back to the highway on the far side of Pigeon Valley. We were excited to see that our scooter was still there. We hopped on and headed off to the underground city of Kaymakli. The road to Kaymakli was mostly on empty Turkish back roads. To the south of Uchisar, the canyon lands are replaced entirely by rolling fields of wheat. It was fun to be cruising along on our 125cc scooter honking at local farmers and little kids, who all waved at us enthusiastically. For some reason, everyone knew we were foreigners. They could spot us from miles away and were all happy that we were there. It was fun.

The underground city of Kaymakli is not as large as the underground city of Derinkuyu, but it has a lot less tourists. By all accounts, Derinkuyu is packed with package tours. Remember Ephesus?! We wanted to avoid that scene. Kaymakli was awesome. Here is an explanation of Kaymakli off a web site, though it was probably written by someone who is not a native English-speaker:

This the widest underground city of Cappadocia region, it was carved out underneath a rock hill (Kaymakli Castle). The first three floors were probably carved out by Hittites about 2000 B.C.  After that; Assyrians, Lycians, Persians, Kimmerians settled down in the region. By the forth century B.C. the world famous Greek commander Alexander The Great occupied the region and become dominant. In the year of 1000 B.C. Cappadocia Kingdom was established. The kingdom made war against Mecodomans, Galatians, Romans and Pontuses. The Romans occupied the region in the beginning of the 1st. Century B.C. Roman empire accepted Christian Religion in 376 A.D.Before that Romans didn’t have official religion, Early Christian suffered a lot from the Romans, Pagans and Arab invaders. Therefore they refuged in the Underground cities and they enlarged them. Kaymakli Underground city was opened to the public in 1964. People of the town built their houses around the underground city and they linked their houses to the underground city with underground tunnels.First floors of the underground city served as stables for the domestic animals, because upper floors were higher and convenient for this use.On the second floor a lying down blocking stone, some living rooms, cemetery and Christian Church are available.On the third floor too many storage rooms, mill stone to make flour, wineries to make wine and wine cellars to store wine. In some of the wine cellars, some of the broken wine jugs can be seen.On the forth floor, there are some more wineries and grape storages. A long gallery leads people to the communal kitchen, In the kitchen too many food storage areas, ovens, a kind of hard stone which served multi functions, such asmorter, melting copper, barricade to block the passage to stop enemies (bazalt or andezit stone). In the underground city there are some main galleries and inside them same sub division were carved out make the city very complicated to make the enemies confused.There were also some wide areas where some of the important matters were talked and ceremonies were hold.The ventilation shaft is vertical and passes all floors down like on the elevator in an apartment. The depth of the ventilation shaft is about 120 meters in total.The underground city was originally carved out as eight floors, how ever four floors are visitable. In war time about 5000 people can refuged in.

After getting back to Goreme and returning our scooter, we went to a restaurant owned by an Australian woman and her Turkish husband. There we ran into Cameron, the Aussie doctor. We talked about various things, played cards, and then Amber and I turned in for the night.

July 14, 2008

(Matt)

On our last day, we were informed at breakfast that we had missed our check out time and that we were going to have to pay half a night's rent as a penalty. We were really annoyed but ultimately had to check out at 2pm. We then rented a scooter again from the same place and headed east and north. This area of Cappadocia is all canyon lands all the time.

Our first stop was at the Fairy Chimneys near Urgup, the ones that appear on many post cards in Cappadocia. We continued onto the town of Urgup, which was pretty interesting--it had caves in the side of a cliff--but the caves were uniformly converted into hotels and residences without any other businesses, such as restaurants or shops or anything. Bascially, Urgup was completely dead.

So we quickly took off to the north towards Avanos. On the way we came across a lovely rock outcropping, probably called Devrent. We pulled off at an overlook, took some pictures, then continued onto Avanos, where we noticed signs for a place called Zelve. After arriving at Zelve, we quickly realized that this place had some of the most outstanding Fairy Chimneys and canyons in all of Cappadocia. I climbed to the window at the top of one of the Fairy Chimneys and, after looking out and posing for a picture taken from the ground, realized that falling from one of those would be instant death, no question about it. We then hiked all the way around the canyon of Zelve, which had some great views. Afterward, we drank some water (and threw away a nasty Coke Zero) and started back to Goreme.

On the way we passed a tremendous ancient city carved into the canyons in a town called Cavusin, which has the Church of St. John the Baptist, dating back to the 5th century, making it the oldest church in the region. Later we found out that Christian missionaries and communities lived in the old Cavusin valley and that there are 5 churches close to Cavusin. We circled back and took the scooter around the town until we were right next to the ancient city, stopping to take pictures whenever something was impressive. This continued on the way back to Goreme. Every time we thought we had seen it all, another amazing site would come into view, and we would have to pull over and take some pictures. Having your own wheels is absolutely the way to see the Cappadocia region.

Not all countries are safe enough to risk the scooter getting stolen or to risk getting robbed or risk a wreck, etc., but Turkey is absolutely safe enough for vehicle rentals. There are not many cars on the roads, and crime is almost unheard of in Cappadocia. It was a tremendous couple of days riding around the countryside, through the canyon lands, and happening upon plentiful and frequent geological and historical wonders of the world. For me, Cappadocia will probably be a top 5 of the whole trip around the world. I loved it. We returned the scooter and began preparing for our 16-hour, overnight bus ride back to Istanbul. I bought The Red Dragon, the novel before Silence of the Lambs, at a used book store to read on the bus.

At 8pm, we boarded the bus and found that, like most Fez Bus buses, there were three of us on a full-sized bus. It was pretty comfortable.

For photos of the road to Goreme, including the Rumi Museum and one of Asia's largest caravanserais, click here: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AatmbZk0ZtFIPY&notag=1

For photos of Goreme and the fabled fairy chimneys of Cappadocia, click here: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AatmbZk0ZtFIQg&notag=1