Land of the fairy chimneys

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Cappadocia is known as the land of the fairy chimneys, but one of our first introductions to these chimneys in the very appropriately named 'Love Valley' made us think that it looks more like the land of phalic statues! It is like some crazy cult has carved big statues of a feritility god. However nature created the surreal lunar landscape, when 30 million years ago erupting volcanoes covered the region with volcanic ash. Volcanic rock then covered the ash and solidified into what is known as tuff (soft rock like substance). The peaks and canyons were formed by erosion from water and wind that wore grooves into the tuff.

Due to the ease of carving into the tuff, many of the fairy chimneys and surrounding mountains were used for houses and churches. Dwellings were also created underground to provide security for the Christians that lived in the area, during the reign of the Romans and later Arabs. Hundreds of cities were created underground and we were lucky to visit one of them. We saw underground stables for animals, kitchens, storage rooms, churches, extremely long holes for ventilation and large round wheels that were used to block off sections to the outside world to prevent intruders from entering. Many of the ventilation shafts were disguised as wells, so there were many fake wells in the region. The city that we visited had eight levels underground, although we could only visit 7 of them due to the tunnel to the 8th level having collapsed.

In a different part of Cappadocia, near Goreme, many monks lived in a monastic complex that was composed of churches, rectories and dwellings and it was one of the earliest centres for religious education. We saw many of these churches and chapels in the open air museum that date between 900 and 1200 AD. There were many well preserved frescos of religous stories painted on the church walls and ceilings and the art work was very 2 dimensional, so was painted a long time before people knew how to paint more realistic human images.

We stayed in Goreme and walked around Love Valley and the Valley of the Swords to take in some of the natural sights. There are many balloon flight companies that you can use to get a birds eye view of the valley, but Dan and I weren't interested. Dan was keen to go quad biking, but the company that some of our friends booked was too dodgy to use, so Dan declined that opportunity. We did visit a nice Turkish carpet store and before you fall asleep, I will say that we watched a very educational and interesting talk about the quality and origins of many carpets. We bought a wonderful tribal piece from Iran that we hope to display as art in our house (once we finally build it!).

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Photos

Our first glimpse
at the dwellings carved into the tuff

Wonderful view
heading into Goreme

Love valley
Wonder why it is called that?!

Table with seating
inside a dwelling in the monastic complex