Cappadocia - highlight of Turkey

The classic Cappadocia landscape
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We arrived in Cappadocia bleary eyed after a 10 hour overnight bus trip.

Before I move on, we can't finish our Turkey blog without mentioning Turkish long-distance buses, which are the pride of the country.  A 'bus boy' is on hand to serve free water, coffee, tea, soft drinks and snacks for the really long trips.  At the start of the journey, lemon cologne is brought around the bus for passengers to freshen up, and every 3 hours, the bus stops for 20 mins for everyone to get off, stretch their legs and grab snacks.  They even played a movie on our bus.  Although we both would have been a bit more comfortable if the driver didn't have his own personal screen so that he could also keep up with the movie while presumably driving and watching where he was going.

Us and our Japanese friends about to take off
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So as I said, we woke up to Cappadocia and were kicked off the bus at 7am, still half asleep to see one of the most surreal and beautiful landscapes I've ever seen.  The Cappadocia region is surrounded by 3 now dormant volcanoes, and over the courses of thousands and thousands of years these volcanoes have erupted, covering the area with different layers of volcanic ash, mud and rock ('tuff' to the locals).  As time goes on, the wind and the rain has eroded the tuff to make incredible shapes out of the tuff - deep ravines (Grand Canyon esque), 'fairy chimneys' and hills that look more like desert sands than solid land.

High up in our hot air balloon
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We stayed in Cappadocia for 4 days and 'splashed out' on a few tours and trips that allowed us to thoroughly explore the area.  We were lucky enough to be in the area during a period of heavy snowfall which made the whole place even more magical, and when the snow clouds cleared we were treated to clear sunny skies.

Highlights of our journey were:

-  Hot Air Balloon ride at dawn over Cappadocia - quite toppy for us budget travellers, but worth every lira.  We flew the day after the big snowfall, the sky was so crisp and clear that we could see for miles all around.  And our pilot was a legend, at the end of the flight he landed the basket back on the trailer, jumped out to pour everyone a glass of bubbles, then drove us all back to our hotels.  Now THAT's service.

Scrambling around Seline
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-  Our hotel (Kelebek if you ever want to go)- built into the rock of a small Cappadocia village called Goreme, with some rooms carved into fairy chimneys, and with incredible views over Goreme from the breakfast room and terrace.

-  Underground city of Derinkuyu - Due to the soft nature of the landscape the locals have for millenia lived a troglodyte existence, building homes, churches and monasteries into the mountains and in some places deep into the ground. These places were used as shelter during times of invasion.  Derinkuyu is the most extensive and impressive of these cities with 9 levels of tunnels, rooms, schools and even churches all protected by Indiana Jones rolling stone doors.  For anyone who remembers 'Fraggle Rock' I now know where Jim Henson got his inspiration from.

Being a Fraggle in the Derinkuyu underground city
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-  Frescoes in the many churches carved into the rock, some perfectly preserved.

-  3km walks down the Ilhara and Rose Valleys - a chance to get up close to the incredible landscape and get a feel for the number of cave dwellings all across the area.

-  The Seline Monastery - again carved into a mountain (you might start to see a theme here) - but an extensive complex that we spent time scrambling over, under and through.

I could go on and on and on as Cappadocia was far and away the highlight of our time in Turkey, but you can instead look forward to me boring you in person one day.

Exterior of part of the Seline Monastery
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After harping on about how great the Turkish buses are, we completely wimped out and decided to fly back to Istanbul.  Not a tough choice really - 1 hour flight, or 12 hour bus trip...hmmm....

In saying that, we had a bit of a squeaky bum moment trying to get to our flight the morning after a huge dumping of snow.  Unluckily for us, the hotel driver took it upon himself to bang on our door at 4am for a 30 min drive to catch our 8am flight.  The roads were clear and we arrived just as the airport staff were arriving to open up.  So after sitting around the airport for hours watching the cleaners clean and the cafe open, we had a lovely uneventful flight back to Istanbul our last stop before leaving Turkey.