Advertisement
Published: July 20th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Goreme 1
The town of Goreme Day 15 Istanbul to Goreme (Sun 18th July)
Up for an earlier start today, our last goodbye to Gettis. From here to the Iran border we will have a local driver with a local coach. Its a larger air conditioned coach with leather seats and just enough space for us all to have a double seat each to sleep if we need. I don’t really like air conditioning, but I must admit it’s really nice not to be sitting in a sauna all day.
An uneventful, if long, drive to Goreme. The driver had to stop and ask for directions a couple of times along the way though, despite the fact that Goreme is the oldest and certainly the most visited town in the area.
The drive through Cappadocia was stunning. Its the land of the “fairy chimneys”. These are natural pillars of stone and many have been lived in. The houses are built into them, and it is a bit surreal to walk around the town.
The hotel we stayed at here was partly built in and partly free-standing. The rooms were very basic but it was a lovely place and had a pool!
Lake Tuz
A huge salt lake - no sand, just salt! Day 16 Goreme (Mon 19th July)
Early start! We were up at 0430 this morning, meeting just before 0500 and heading off for the highlight of my trip - Cappadocia balloon ride!!
We drove to just out of the town and registered (and paid a very small fortune, well worth it) before dividing into groups of 24 and heading up. 8 of our group decided to go up - Lynn, Heather, Jana, Aisleen, Jo, Thomas, LJ and myself. After watching a couple of other balloons go up it was our turn. We all jumped in (harder then it sounds) and it took about 2 minutes to get up about 50m, just enough to get over the nearby “fairy chimneys”. And then an hour of floating over some very beautiful country. A perfect way to see this area. We got up about 800m above the ground, and at another point were only about 3m above. When we landed, our pilot (driver?) actually managed to land the basket on the trailer - quite a feat I reckon.
We were all buzzing when we got back to the hotel at 0730 so after a quick breakfast we all went out to
Goreme 2
A couple dozen balloons went up as the sun rose the pool and spent the morning swimming and enjoying some sun.
For the afternoon we took the coach to Kaymakli underground city. The best fun of the trip so far! We spent just over an hour walking, climbing, crawling and wriggling around the rooms and tunnels of 4 floors of this underground city. We all had a great time - lucky I don’t suffer from asthma though.
Stephen, Lynn and I separated from the rest when we decided to explore the really dark tunnels. I had a small LED light in my bag, which may have helped contribute to our decision to do this. At one point I was trying to get through a very small tunnel so decided to go backwards (to make it easier to get out f I got stuck) and managed to get around the first corner but couldn’t quite make it round the second. Next time Ill be sure to take a small shovel to help! Needless to say I did manage to worm my way back out!
There was another hole we took turns jumping into for photos and I wanted one where it looked like I was clinging to the edge.
Goreme 3
Aj up in the air I possibly should have warned Lynn first as when I knelt down she screamed, think I had actually managed to fall down another hole that hadn’t been seen!
There were stables, and living areas, and a church even down there. There were doors made of huge round disks of stone and it all put us in mind of Indiana Jones.
In short - well worth time taken to get there (as the driver somehow managed to get lost, despite the sign posts even us foreigners managed to read!)
Back in time to wander into town for dinner though, and spend some more time by the pool while we could.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.429s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 18; qc: 77; dbt: 0.1432s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Leanne
non-member comment
Hi Amanda Love the photos of Goreme. They are really something!