Land of the Fairy Chimneys - Cappadocia

Next stop, Cappadocia. This is a region in central Turkey known for it's "out of this world" rock formations.   On the bus it took us about 10 hours to get there. We arrived at 4am.  Unfortunate for us because we didn't have a hotel/hostel booked.  For about 15 minutes in 1 degree Celcius we wandered with a few other travelers through the tiny town of Goreme looking for anywhere that had an open door. The town was completely asleep. We finally found the hostel we wanted to stay in, fittingly Nomad Hostel, but the doors were locked and the lights were out. Next door to that was Roma Hotel. It had a reception lounge that was open... Praise the Lord. The receptionist told us that we could just wait around in the lounge until our hostel next door opened. She even made us some tea. So nice. We waited until sunrise, 7am to see if we could find another hostel that would be open. We looked but nothing we felt comfortable with so we went back and, finally, Nomad had opened it's doors. We checked into the cavernous dorm room and slept for a few hours.  We were wiped out.

Winter conditions with no winter clothes.  Freezing!

Cave converted to hostel.  What else would you do with a cave? Lol!

After waking up we decided to go for a walk to see the town.  We only planned to sleep one night here and leave late the following day so we needed to make the most of it.  Walking around we tried to figure out what else we wanted to do there.  The most popular thing to do is take a hot air balloon ride early in the morning to see the valleys from above. It was too expensive for our cheap budget (refer to our Meteora blog regarding our cheapness). We thought about taking ATV's to the valleys, but we wanted to hold out to see about the weather.  

Very different scenery.

Rose Valley

Fairy Chimneys in Zemi Valley

Look at these formations!

Later that first night we had to make another run to the hospital (see Fethiye Blog).  It was a scary night, but the IV drip brought down the swelling in Mu's throat.  We are so grateful for the owner at Nomad Hostel. He changed his evening plans to drive us to the hospital the next town over, he stayed with us so he could translate, he drove us to the pharmacy to get some meds, and he took us back to the Hostel.  (Nomad Hostel definitely get an A+ for customer service.)  We thank God for taking care of us through him.

The next day, we woke up early and found it.... wait for it.... SNOWING! Awesome!  So glad we didn't book the ATV's.  But then we needed to decide what to do.  Lucky for us there was a tour company that worked with our hostel.  They had the van outside ready to take off and, after counting the cost, we decided to go for it.  If we didn't go it would pretty much be a waste of a day.  The tour group was going to Southern Cappadocia.

More winter weather with absolutely no winter clothes. Did I say freezing?

To start the tour we drove to a cliff (Pigeon Valley) with a scenic view of Goreme and the surrounding valleys. It was still snowing so we just ran out, took pictures and ran back to the bus. The region is called Pigeon Valley because the Christians who moved there reared pigeons and used their droppings as fertilizer in the grapevines. After this we visited an underground city called Derinkuyu. It was built by the Hittites circa 300 BC to protect themselves from the raiding Aegean civilization.  Later when Christians came to the area to escape from the Romans, they took over the city and expanded it.  A total of about 36 underground cities can be visited in Cappadocia.  The underground city in Derinkuyu has 13 levels but only 8 have been restored. We walked down to the 8^th level through narrow passages and stairways to a depth of about 60 m. It was still freezing so we were so cold.  The lighting down there was pretty dim so a lot of our pictures didn't turn out so well. 

Going down 8 floors was easy. Coming back up...a different story. Supposedly 720 steps. Get your fitness on V!

Amazing how they built stairs in these underground caves.

Meeting Room

Underground Church with baptismal

After that we went to  Ihlara valley, the largest valley in area, 16 km long. We walked for about 40 minutes and saw the walls of the cliffs lined with cave dwellings. There are many churches carved into caves. We visited one of them which still had frescoe paintings in place after hundreds of years. The churches date back to the 4th century. 

Walking along the stream in Ihlara Valley

We enjoyed some lunch at the end of the walk. After this we went off to another part of Cappadocia called Selime to see a monastery carved out of the rocks. It was an amazing thing to see. A cool bit of trivia is that this area was the inspiration for the cave dwellings you see in the movie Star Wars.  We spent about 30 minutes all over this monastery, climbing up pretty high on the carved walkways.

The Selime Monastery

In the Monastery

Atop the Monastery

At the Monastery

 To wrap up the tour we stopped at a shop selling nuts, dried fruits and other Turkish delights and then one more panoramic view of the valleys.

Beautiful colors (yep, those are dwellings)



Last Panoramic View of the Pigeon Valley

Wow, what a day. Then 45 minutes after we got back we took off for the bus station to return to Istanbul... 12  more hours of fun :)  Stay tuned for Germany.