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Published: January 16th 2007
That stuff is straight out of Austin Power
Look at the tree to get an idea of the size of this monster.Leaving Konya was as painful as getting in. I was determined to use that tram to get out of town but finding it took a long time even though it was only a few minutes walk away. I was told by the hotel guy that I had to take bus so I went to the bus stop in front of the hotel and tried to ask someone but no one could speak english or understand my broken turk, until one man laughed at me and told me to walk before taking off (but not saying in which direction).
Trying again to snatch information from these overly nice turks I ended up finding the 2 women from the hotel (those who mistook me for a turk) who showed me the way. I was just 2 minutes away from it... I eventually found the tram and managed to reach the bus station. This little adventure wouldn't even have made it to this blog in previous months. It's the kind of stuff that happens all the time. Yet it put me again in a very dark mood for the whole day. I realized one more time that I needed a break from serious
travelling, and also that maps from the LP are always useful.
I had to wait a few hours for the bus to depart so that I arrived in Goreme, the backpacker capital of Cappadocia, by sunset. Goreme is in the middle of Cappadocia, a region in Turkey with amazing rock formations and rock-cut villages where people used to liveup until the 70s. I looked at a few hostel, again in a somewhat dark mood, until I decided to stay at Shoestring Cave, where I had a dorm in a rock cut cave.
I immediately loved the place. The city, the people, the hostel. I first went to eat at a pizza place where I stumbled upon the korean girls from Ephesus who were leaving soon back to Istanbul. I had a chat with them which cheered me up. Next I went to an internet cafe and Michael (the guy I travelled with from Dubrovnik to Belgrade and from Sofia to Istanbul with) was in town but was leaving at 10PM. I sent him an email to come see me at Shoestring and he replied straight away that he would come before he left. While I was doing this
(at Shoestring's computer in the common room), the owner and his western wife/girlfriend were having fun making a fight between their new little kitten and their dog. The kitten lost overall but as soon as it will grow a bit, it will kick the dog's ass as he already got his fighting techniques down, he just need some mass. The dog on the other hand seems to rely too much on the butthit, an inefficient technique if there ever was one (it is literaly an attempt to hit the opponent with your butt... didn't seem to hurt the cat too much).
In the middle of this hardcore WWF style fight, Chris, the canadian guy who had worked for a year in Bethleem, came in. He had just spent an amazing day doing a walk in the valleys and his enthusiasm was contagious. We talked about what we had been doing since we met in Istanbul and what to do for the next few days in Cappadocia. And just to ensure that the evening would be perfect, Michael popped in for a 30 minutes where we caught up on what had happened. It was good to see him for a
Me and Rafik
What a cool guy this Rafik. last time, we had been travelling together on and off since Croatia. After Michael left we watched a Saturday Night Live rerun with an hilarious Eddy Murphy and Drew Barrymore as a young kid, just to top off this nice evening.
It is funny when you travel. Sometimes everything goes wrong, or you're alone and things aren't going too well and you're tired and you get real low, and then sometimes everything seems perfect. It just seems that evening that the gods of travelling decided that I had had enough bad luck in the last few days and made me meet all these cool people in short succession just to brighten my mood. Well, it worked.
Me and Chris had talked about going together the next day but we both opted to go alone as we both admitted to prefer to be alone when walking alone in nature. The walk I did the first day was to go up Pigeon valley to Uchisar's super castle and rock-cut houses and then go down white and love valley before walking back to Goreme along the road. Wow. I'm not gonna even try to describe what I saw, just look at
the pictures. The insane rock formation and beautiful rock-cut house are amazing. Even though the weather was quite cold (below freezing at night), it was possible to walk in a t-shirt during the day provided you stay on the move and kept moving.
I didn't see a single soul, except at Uchisar where the place was full of french tour group and turks trying to sell me tourist stuff. But in the valley I was on my own. I stopped walking several times and sat on a escarpment, facing the sun, thinking: "This is why I travel". Everything just seemed worth it and the annoyances I had felt in the last few days felt far away. The place was otherworldy and it was all mine for these few hours.
In the evening, Chris and I went to a cafe run by a name called Rafik who was the coolest turk I've ever met. Chris had recommended it to me and I wasn't disapointed. The bureks were amazing and Rafik was so funny. He spent most of his life in Denmark and only recently came back to his native Turkey to open a little cafe. If you go to
Goreme go see him, you won't regret it and you'll be entertained.
After hanging out with Rafik, we went to a bar to smoke sheesha, drink beer and discuss Israel/Palestine. I usually try to avoid the subject because most backpackers are rabid anti-israeli because it's the cool opinion to have amongst young people who pretend to be intellectual, yet don't know anything about the history/politic of the region. Chris, on the other hand, was intelligent enough to have a balanced opinion as well as first hand experience of the place which made for a very interesting discussion.
The next day I did another walk, taking a dolmus to a drop-off and then walking a few kilometers on a road to Zelve open-air museum which was an old village cut in the stones which was quite amazing. On the way there were some very nice chimney formation. On the way back I took some little path which rose up on the mountain. It was quite risky in parts due to frost on the stones which made walking slippery. Chris had warmed me about this but I had thought he had exagerated it. Well, he didn't but I managed to
make it through without slipping and falling a few tens of meters.
After this part I walked up and down several valleys. I stopped again several times just to enjoy the amazing scenery and tell myself how lucky I was to be here and to have the whole place to me. I eventually reached Red Valley which had a tea-shop and a rock-hewn church. I chatted with the guy running the tea-shop (to be more accurate, he has 2 plastic chair, a low-table, a thing to boil water and a few glasses). Apparently I was his 16th customer of the day, all the other had come from the "Red Tour" all together. It was one of the tour the hostel had tried to sell me. He said I was the first person to come independantly since another canadian had come a few days ago. I asked how many came in summer and he said more than 300! And that's just a little church in one of the valley. I'm really happy I came here in the low-season, just before snowfall. I thought there were many tourists in Goreme, I wouldn't want to be there when there's 20x more of
Uchisar castle
It's basically a rock cut castle. them.
I checked out the church and it was quite nice, the frescos were still visible. After saying goodbye to the teashop owner, I made my way to Rose valley then walked back to Goreme along some rarely used path that I found accidentatly.
Chris was leaving early, going back to Istanbul and then Canada, so we went back to Rafik's place and had delicious burek and baklava while laughing at his famous imitation of japanese tourists and oz accents.
The next day I decided I would have an easy day, just chill around, go on the net and walk a bit and that's what I did. I only walked up Pigeon Valley in some places I had missed initially but aside from that I didn't do much. I had tea at breakfast time with Rafik and I chatted with him and some of his turkish friends. They're a good laugh but goddamnit they really need to get laid and stop daydreaming about western girls for a change. Rafik was okay, I think his 20+ years in Denmark made him immune to the crazyness that seems to invade every seemingly intelligent turk everytime he see a blonde
woman, but his friends just seems like they couldn't control themselves or talk about anything else. I'm glad I'm a man when I travel.
I still had things to see in Cappadocia but I was happy with what I saw and the way I saw it. I'd never trade my lone treks for any arranged tours or balloon trips in the world. I didn't even bother to check the expansive open-air museum with some frescoes. Maybe I didn't end up seeing the most impressive painting but I knew it would never live up to the feeling I had when I trekked.
I met this french-canadian guy at the hostel in the morning (telling your friend that you come from maple syrup land makes it much more likely that other quebecers will realize you're a quebecer) who invited me to rent a scooter with them and go around. Giving that it was freezing and I didn't have any gloves and I wanted a day off I told them no but I ended up learning backgammon with them in the late afternoon. I got thrashed a few times and then got raped when I tried to play against Rafik after
I brought them over to the cafe.
But I had to say goodbye to everyone as my bus was leaving. I was heading overnight to Antakya, the biblical city of Antioch, famed for the sinful ways of the inhabitants. Nowadays it is mostly known for a stop on the way to Syria, as well as an arab city stolen from Syria by Ataturk. I was looking forward to how arab and turkish influenced fused in that city.
I shared a bus to Kayseri with an Austrian guy who was heading somewhere east toward Iran. We separated when I took my bus to Antakya in Kayseri but he was good company.
I arrived in Antakya to find that the centrally located bus station had been relocated somewhere on the outskirts of town. I did manage to hop on the servis to the center and got a room in a hotel described by the LP as only viable for hardcore overlander!! I guess I fit the bill as I found the place not too bad.
I can't say the same thing about Antakya... The city was not really impressive, in fact it was my least favorite in Turkey.
The arab influence is a bit there but to be honest it looks like every single turkish cities except they use pita break for doner kebabs instead of baguette bread. I did go to St-Peter's church, which is basically a cave where early christians would gather and pray under the direction of St-Peter the Apostle. There was even a tunnel where they could flee toward the other side of the mountain.
After walking around for about 1 hour and a half I ended up finding some sort of cafe where I sat around playing backgammon with an old men but when he left I was alone again. The main problem I had with Antakya is that nobody ever heats. The cafe, hotels and restaurants aren't heated and it's barely above freezing so I find myself constantly freezing. I was planning to go visit kurdistan but Antakya broke my will. Now it's Syria time. Tomorrow, it's Aleppo. Shame, I loved Turkey and turks. Maybe I'll come back in summer one day, or in winter in a few decades when global warming will have done its job.
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non-member comment
iiiich!
Ma nouvelle destination! Je ne savais vraiment pas qu'il y avait une autre vallée des pénis que celle du parc Maisonneuve ; ). Que d'émotions! Pour ce qui est de la raison des sols rouges et blancs alternés, c'est surement un changement important de climat. Le rouge provient souvent du fer et des déserts et le blanc du CaCO3 et des océans... Ce qui semble très pertinent vu l'emplacement du site. Les océanographes aussi peuvent répondre ; ).