Hierapolis & Pamukkale

The necropolis (cemetery) at Hieropolis.
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Hierapolis & Pamukkale

I guess touristy Turkey is just a small place.

October 18^th, 2006

The pristine pools before the invasion of tourists.
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Today we were supposed to leave by 8:30 am today in order to catch a 3 hour bus ride to Hierapolis and Pamukkale. After another Turkish breakfast, (12^th day and counting) we were picked up half an hour late at 9:00 am.

The long bus ride was boring and we either slept or read to while away the time. We arrived at a town near Hierapolis and to our surprised met up with Claudia and Marie, 2 ladies from Nova Scotia we had met earlier in Oludeniz. We discovered that is the way tours are in Turkey. People you say goodbye to one day reappear down the road another day despite the fact that you may be heading off in different directions. We lost count of how many times that we kept running into people that we had previously met on our tour. I guess touristy Turkey is just a small place. After months of traveling on our own it was welcoming to see a familiar and friendly face.

The invasion of the tourists.
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We had no expectations what to expect in Hierapolis, so were amazed to find another fabulous ruin from the ancient world. Most amazing were the ancient necropolis (cemetery) with the wonderfully preserved sarcophagi, and the 15,000 seat theatre. This is another UNESCO world heritage site and again serves to remind us of the long history of civilization in this part of the world.

Pamukkale is famous for its white pools of hot water flowing over cliffs and pools formed by deposits of minerals, mainly calcium carbonate, in the water. It is said that this warm mineral water has healing and beautifying powers and that Cleopatra came here to bath. Amazingly, tourists are allowed to wander pretty much unsupervised amongst the ruins of Hierapolis and the pools of Pamukkale. We were just instructed by our tour guide, who then stayed in the bus, that we must not wear shoes, but walk barefoot in the pools. It being a very cold and blustery day, we all looked forward to warming our tootsies in the hot springs and pools. Initially, we tramped around in the shallow and ‘mineral mud’ but then someone crossed a flimsy fallen plastic tape to the beautiful white pools of clean, deeper and warmer waters, and the next thing you saw was about 3 bus loads of tourists wading happily in the warm pools of Pamukkale. We were all warm and happy until suddenly a uniformed guard came running over, waving his arms frantically and fiercely blowing his whistle. Two more officials came running over and all the tourists were hastily herded out of the supposedly out-of-bounds pools. Typical of sheep, we had all followed the leader and didn’t realize that we were not to be in this area. It was nice while it lasted, but we obediently wallowed back to the mud and sincerely hoped that we hadn’t disturbed too many centuries of deposited minerals.