Kapadokya Day 2

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Slept well in our cave but woke early-ish (about 7am) and quickly popped outsie to see all the balloons in the sky around Goreme. What a sight! Apparently there are around 70 balloons flying on most days. We have booked to do our flight tomorrow afternoon.

Back for a bit more sleep (breakfast doesn'start til 8am), another sumptuous brekky and then it was time (9:30) for our tour. The minibus picked up up from the hotel entrance. We were a group of about a dozen, including people from NZ, Aust, Pakistan, India, England, Brazil and Spain! Our guide, Fatih, had a good sense of humour and also provided some really interesting history of the region, as well as background on the places we visited. This was the Cappadocia Undscovered tour, and sent to some of the less touristed places.

First stop, Mustafapasa Village, formerly known as Sinassos. This was one of those villages that was once predominantly Greek, until the "population exchanges" of 1923, whien all the inhabitants of Greek and Armenian heritage were sent "back" to those countries (even though they had been living in Turkey for generations), and people of Turkish heritage living in those countries were sent to Turkey. There is some interesting architecture in the village in the Greek style, some of it falling into ruins, and some now being restored to make holiday mansions for wealthy Istanbullus.

Our next stop was Keslik Monastery. Once again, carved into the rocks, but located out in the countryside on land that is owned by a local farmer, so the heritage monastery is surrounded by fruit trees and other crops. The Christians were a minority group at the time they came to the region, and so used the sft volanic ash rock to carve their caves, dormitories, kitchens, refectories, store rooms etc. They had an ingenious system to protect themselves when they were attacked. They had safe rooms to which they could retreat, and roll across a massive round millstone/wheel that blocked off the entrance. Of course, being up in high places also gave them a good view of the surroundings and the advantage of high ground for battles. Once again, the church part of the monastery had a range of frescoes, many damaged over the centuries, both intentionally and just through the passage of time, but up on the ceiling, there were some that were still there. They seemed to be covered in black - not sure if it was smoke but one of the guide books says it was black paint that may have been intended to protect the frescoes. If you stand very still, block the bright sunlight coming in through windows and doors from your view, some of them are quite easy to see. There are all sorts of religious images, of Jesus, Mary, various saints and other characters such as Saint George slaying the "snake". I was able to take some photos this time, so will share them on this post.

Next stop was a site called Sobessos, where archaeologists are busily excavating (no-one there when we visited though) the remains of an ancient Roman settlement. There are roman baths, a marketplace, and a large meeting house including a church, with some floor mosaics still intact. As in many of the churches we visited, there are also graves, but instead of just niches where the bodies were buried in the floof of the church, here there were also a number of stone grave coverings, some carved.

After this we moved on the Soganli Valley, which once again has a whole collection of rock cut churches. We were dropped at one of them a little way into the valley, with more frescoes etc, and than had a lovely walk for about 1-2 km back to the old Soganli village which is now just used as a bit of a tourist site with a shady cafe/restaurant and a bunch of old village women trying to sell us dolls that make themselves out of fabrics. They remind me a little of the South American ones you can get - like worry dolls, only a little to a lot larger. Some are actually quite lovely but we weren't in the market for dolls. One woman on the tour bought a small one for one Turkish lira (about 55-60c Australian) from an old great-grandma. We had lunch in the restaurant - four courses of simple but delicious fare.

After lunch it was back on the bus to travel to the town of Derinkuyu, where there is an ancient underground city. Once again, this was built by the Christians many centuries ago as a place to hide from Roman soldiers. It is all carved into the rock and goes down about seven stories, blow their normal village up on the surface. They cleverly disguised the tops of their ventilation shafts as wells and hid their entrances, so on some occasions the soldiers came and thought the people had all fled their village. Sometimes the soldiers would drop poison into the "wells", thinking this would kill the villagers when they returned. There were actually wells down inside the underground city (at the bottom - the water level was below the level they built their cities to!). Other things in the underground city included stables - they would even bring their animals down, kitchen (one big one that made the food for all residents), storage, church, meeting room and of course a smallish living space for each family. Apparently they would sometimes come underground just for a few days but at other times would live there for months. There was a whole organising system that determined who did which jobs, got which rooms, etc (the ones closer to the serface were favoured by the wealthy - better air quality). There were tunnels and stairs everywhere to move around the city, quite narrow and low so we had to stoop to move along in them. This was also part of the defence - once again at various places, big mllstone doors that could be closed off to block passage of the army, and small holes in the side walls where they could use their weapons to attack the soldiers. All in all, a fascinating place. There are apparently about 90 underground cities around the region, but only a small number that are open to the public. Rumour has it that they have also discovered a tunnel running all the way from Derinkuyu to Kaymakli, the other big and well-known one. It's something like 7-10 kms away, so if it's true that's pretty amazing.

Anyway, that was the last stop on our tour, and we arrived back in Goreme a little before 5pm. It was nice to get showered and freshened up, have a beer on the terrace, and then wander down into Goreme centre to find somewhere for dinner. We ended up eating at Anatolian Kitchen, as usual al frescoe dining. Jeff ordered a beef terracotta pot, which comes to the table along with a big dagger thing that Jeff had to use to tap the side to break off the lid. Inside was his steaming beef stew.

Just a short stroll back up the hill to our hotel, for an apple tea and a little blogging on one of their two computers that are available for use by guests. We are a few days behind in the blogging department, and it as still a challenge as the keyboard kept sticking on certain keys. It was also most helpful when one of the other guests showed me how to change it from Turkish to English!

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