ElRach

Today we did a tour of the highlights of Cappadocia. We left the hotel at 9.30 and we went to look at the fairy chimneys first. We made a couple of stops and had a wander around them. Some of them have houses and steps carved into them where people used to live 60 years ago. Alot of the fairy chimneys make cool shapes, I got photos of some that looked like camels and dogs etc. After we had seen the fairy chimneys we went to a pottery studio and watched how they make pots and ceramic plates. They had some really nice stuff and most of us bought something. Next we drove to the place where we had the Turkish night last night to have lunch. We had a meal of beef and veges which ... read more

This morning I got up at 4.30 along with 3 others on the tour and we were picked up and taken to the starting point for our hot air ballooning. There were 20 people in our balloon and we watched how they set it up by filling it with gas in its side and then tipping it up so it's attached to the top of the basket. Our ride was meant to be an hour and it went over all of the fairy chimneys and valleys and the beautiful scenery of Cappadocia. The ride itself was really smooth you couldn't even feel the take off it just felt like we were floating on water, but 500m up in the air. There were about 40 balloons up at the same time and it was a pretty amazing ... read more

We had a very early start this morning, we left Olympos at 6am because we had a long drive to Cappadocia. We were all pretty tired so we slept on the bus for most of the morning. The drive to Cappadocia took about 10hours and we stopped a few times along the way, but other than that it was a pretty boring day of driving! One of the places we stopped was at a caravanserai which was the place where people travelling along the old silk trading road used to stop and spend the night there with their camels. We arrived in Cappadocia at 9pm and went to a food court in a mall for dinner. On the way to the hotel we stopped and looked at a couple of the fairy chimneys on the side ... read more

We woke up early and had breakfast then drove for an hour to get to the place where we were going canyoning. We suited up with wetsuits and helmets and then started down the river. There were some parts which were deep so you had to swim through then, but most of it we waded through the water. It was so cold I was really grateful we had the wetsuits. It was fun going through the canyon and in parts the guides had to help us get up the rocks because the current was quite strong. On the way back through we slid down those parts. We were a bit disappointed because we didn't go very far, the whole thing took only about 1 hours. But by this stage it was 4 pm so we were ... read more

This morning I woke up feeling sick, so I stayed back at the place we were staying and had a quiet day. The others went for a walk to the beach, but we were going rockclimbing that afternoon so I wanted to be feeling better for that. So at 4 we headed out to the outdoor rockclimbing wall, which is beside the river which runs through the mountains. It is dry during summer though. The couple from our tour chose to go fishing but the rest of us did the rockclimbing. The guides set up two areas for us to trying climbing, I did the harder one first because I knew I'd be tired doing whichever one I did second. I managed to get up both, have quite a few scrapes and bruises to show for ... read more

We had a late start this morning because some of our group chose to go paragliding in the morning. So the rest of us had a late breakfast and waited at the hotel for the morning. When the others arrived back we left for Olympus. On the way we stopped at a beach for a swim - it was the most amazing blue water, possibly the bluest I've seen so far. We spent awhile there, then continued on to Kas which is where we stopped for lunch. We had a wander around the shops after lunch and I bought a couple of souvenirs and some delicious dried apricots. The town of Kas is right on a peninsula, and there is a Greek island only 300m across the ocean. After we'd looked around the town we headed ... read more

After breakfast we got picked up and were taken down to the waterfront where we got on our boat for the day cruise. It was a 12 Island Cruise, which actually only went to about 5 Islands, but in each one we stopped and got to jump off the boat and swim and explore the islands. They were all uninhabited islands so they were nice and quiet. One of them had a rope swing which we could swing off into the water, and another was called Aquarium Bay, which had water so clear that you could see your feet at the bottom. We got served another BBQ lunch which was nice. After our 5th and final stop and swim we headed back to Fethiye where we had gotten on in the morning. We had a quick ... read more

This morning we left early and drove for a few hours to the Saklikent Gorge, which is a canyon with a river running through it which you can tube down. I decided not to do the tubing because I'd just done it a few weeks earlier in America and I want to have enough money to go hot air ballooning when we get to Cappadocia. So I sat by the river and had lunch which was nice. After they got back we went for a walk through the canyon, wading through the water and climbing over rocks, the opposite direction to where they had tubed. It was really cool and I'm glad we got to do that otherwise it would have been a pretty quiet day for me. After a couple of hours walking we headed ... read more

This morning we left the hotel bright and early at 6am and headed to Koycegiz. The drive took about 3 hours and we stopped on the way to take some photos of the scenery. When we arrived we checked into our hotel that we would be staying in that night. We walked down to the waterfront at 10.30 and got on a boat which took us across a lake to a channel where there was a beach. On the way we saw a massive turtle, apparently these turtles usually lay their eggs on that particular beach. We went for a swim and the. Had lunch on the boat, then they took us to a natural mud bath and we covered ourselves in mud. We sat on the side and let it dry then we showered and ... read more

We left at 9.30 from the hotel and drove 3 hours to Pamukkale, which is an area inland with terraced natural calcium formations which you can swim in. We had lunch when we first arrived, then took some photos from the bottom before we went up to the top of them. They look like snow but are hard like rock, kind of what I'd imagine the pink and white terraces would have looked like. When they were first discovered all of the terraces had pools of water covering them, but they have been damaged over the years so some areas have no water. There is a small area which we swam in, it wasn't very deep but it was refreshing because it was such a hot day. After our swim we sat and had a cold ... read more