Capadoccia Day 4

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Day 4: The 12 hour overnight bus ride wasn’t so bad. Poor Robin stumbled out of the bus in her sleep at a 5 minute stop in who knows where, and found a toilet. The Kent bus seems to only stop at the most awful bus stations. We arrive Goreme semi-awake, and find our hotel. The owner is really great, always willing to sit and chat, and suggest things to do. We get breakfast, and head to the open air museum. We meet a lot of other tourists, Russian, Dutch, Canadian, and Korean. Afterwards we take a hike in the Zimi Valley, which is not marked very well. We make a lot of wrong turns, and find tended gardens in what seems like miles from anywhere. It’s a bit hard to appreciate the beauty when you aren’t sure where you are headed, but we meet 2 Kiwi hikers coming the other way who tell us there are other hikers up ahead, reassuring. At the very top the trail really opens up, with some wild “sculptures”, and it’s a long flat hike back into town. We find what looks like a shortcut back to our hotel, but it turns out it becomes a very steep drop onto someone’s roof….Joe almost does a “Santa Claus” entry into the house, but manages to scramble back up the tuff slope, and we return to the trail. We hang out and read at the hotel, have a simple dinner, and scope out some mountain bikes. At 9PM the call to prayer is played, and watching the men head towards the mosque under a brilliant full moon is a really cool memory.

Goreme is really a magical place.

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