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Published: June 14th 2010
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Fairy Chimneys
Much anticipated these were We thought the price of hiring a car in Goreme (70 Lira) could be justified based on the cost of an organised tour (140 Lira for us all) that was the only alternative to visit sights further afield. 'Rennie' the Renault was a far cry from a previous car we'd hired in Malaysia called 'Roxy', as he was sleek and modern and was also a rather confusing left hand drive (results in trying to change gears with the door handle). 'Rennie' is probably the most unoriginal name for a Renault but I put this down to the fact that Rennie didn't really quite have the character that Roxy did. Rennie was just too reliable. Annoyingly the car hire place turned him over with the instructions 'car is on empty, so you return empty'. This meant trying to fill up bit by bit and mostly driving around on either the reserve tank or close to reserve. One thing that came as a rude shock was the outrageous price of petrol in Turkey. Prices are close to 3.5 Lira/litre (eqiv AU$2.50)!
We set off first in search of the Fairy Chimneys and arriving in the car park we were faced with about
L - R: Father, Child and Mother
People here tell stories about this family rock formation 10 massive tour buses and hordes of tourists. Not such a problem, but it got disturbing when Russians started being revolting yet again, posing for photographs in only ways the Russians can. We hightailed it out of there and went for a scenic drive through one of the nearby valleys. Now, maybe it's the fact that we've been in the desert for the past couple of weeks, but I think Turkey has some of the most beautiful, lush countryside I've ever seen. The highlight for me was the multitude of wild flowers that grow on the side of the road: bellflowers, poppies, yellow rocket, lilies-of-the-field, pimpernels, milfoil, borage, bachelors button, chicory, bindweed (and yes, I did have to look that all up) burst forth with life from the side of the road in a symphony of red, purple, yellow, white, mauve and orange. We were also treated to some spectacular scenery of the surrounding rock formations on either side of us, and even had views of snow capped mountains.
We arrived at the
Kaymakli Underground City which was basically deserted apart from the ticket person charging rather outrageous entrance fees. The tunnels were a bit reminiscent of the Cu Chi Tunnels
Snow Capped Mountains
It was pretty incredible to see these on a 30 degree day in spring in Vietnam that the Viet Cong used to reside in, except this time they were larger and airier and I didn't let my claustrophobia get the better of me and headed in. Once we were half way down Phoebe urgently announced “I need to got to the toilet!!”, so up, up, up we went to get to the toilets. By the time we were ready to go back down about three tourists buses arrived (they must have followed us from the Fairy Chimneys!) and all piled in. We thought we could just bypass them and skip to the spot we were originally at but no such luck...those tunnels were packed! No problems we thought, we'll just wait until they all sift through and then trail behind them. Well we waited, and waited but they just kept piling on through. Eventually, after about six busloads had piled through we eventually decided to join up with a group and then skip past them when we had the opportunity. Being stuck in an underground city with bus loads of tourists certainly put my claustrophobia to the test!
Afterwards we wanted to drive down into a valley known for it's great scenery. A
Bellisirma Village
Funny little rock houses with grass sprouting from the roof! town called Bellisirma looked like it would be a good vantage point from which to explore the valley. Arriving finally in the little town we found a few tumble-down houses, some feral but happy looking children and some old women giving us some suspicious looking glances. Eventually the road looked like it would no longer take a car so we parked Rennie on the side of the road and wandered down a steep, cobbled path. Suddenly we started feeling like intruders, as we stumbled down into the valley and into another settlement of Bellisirma, presumably the older one, as the houses were not only dilapidated, but built of rock, sticks, and sometimes built into the cliff face. I wondered how old some of the dwellings were and took a guess at possibly a few hundred years old. Some houses looked like they were built on older houses, perhaps using the foundation but building new walls or a new roof, or maybe a more modern facade. It was very quaint....I think 'rustic' would be a good word to describe it. As we walked down we would see the odd rooster, or an old woman lugging vegetables up the hill. Stumbling further
Wading in the Stream
After doing this Phoebe inspired some Turkish kids to do the same down still, we found the river that was running through the valley, with bright green clumps of poplar trees and a few beautifully set up restaurants. Phoebe looked at the cool running water with glee and suggestively recounted a story where 'Gaggy', her great-aunt once told her that she might get wade through some rivers when we were overseas, and that she 'practiced' in the Yarra at Gaggy's house. We took the hint and told her she could jump in.
As the sun was setting, it was time to start heading back. Looking at our very basic map (no good maps are available and most are basic ones produced by travel companies), Nick suggested we take the “short cut”. As is ALWAYS the case with short cuts, we ended up getting lost and taking much longer route home. Somewhere along the way we headed off our rudimentary map and into unknown territory, delighting us with still more beautiful scenery and cute, little villages. We realised we'd probably taken a wrong turn when the main road to the city of Nevsehir suddenly turned into a dirt track, and names of villages we'd never heard of came up periodically on signposts.
Nevsehir!!
We saw this and finally knew we were back on track We then started doing what you can only do when you are so hopelessly lost (and did I mention that we were on empty?), which is attempt to use the sun as some sort of compass (“so if the sun sets in West...” etc. etc.), and say reassuring things to each other like “This feels like the right way”, and “I'm sure we're going in the right direction”. With our two Turkish words of “Merhaba”, and “Tesekkur” (hello and thank-you) we would say to villagers on the street “Hello, Nevsehir?” while pointing straight ahead, to which locals would nod and we would say thanks. This system seemed to work quite well and when we came up to an ancient looking man who looked partly blind and asked him the same question, he responded with “2 kms straight ahead, then turn right”. I was floored by his English, and wondered if foreigners getting lost around these parts was not uncommon (and that possibly '2k's and turn right' was the standard answer to any annoying foreigner). Turned out the blind old man was right though, and soon enough we were back on the right track, fighting time to get the car back to the rental place. We were 15 minutes late, but it wasn't a bad effort and they didn't seem to mind too much.
At the day's conclusion we added up how much we spent on car rental, petrol, lunch and entrance and parking fees and worked out that in fact if we had signed up for the day tour we would have come out about 20 Lira ahead. But I guess that would have cheated us out of the opportunity to drive around on empty all day, get lost and feel like intruders in some little backwards town, which are after all, the vital ingredients for any good adventure.....right?
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christine giles
non-member comment
Turkey
Norman waxes turkey.i hope i can go one day .good to go to villages,despite effort.By now u will be in comfort.Life will be so unchallenging. U will take time to adjust.Love AC