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From Gaziantep, I left at midnight on a stuffy, warm and rather stanky 6 hour bus ride. It was rather hard to sleep on this one unfortunately, but when the sun came up, I was rewarded with a lovely view of the snowy peaks of Mt. Argeus (an ancient volcano) complete with several other smaller cone volcanoes surrounding it. After a short and groggy connection in a small town called Kayseri and another hour of bus (less stanky this time), I had arrived in Goreme (a town in the area known as Cappadocia)!
Now, how does one go about explaining what the Cappadocia area is like? Basically, it has a similar look to it as the land/rock around Drumheller, but far more variety. The most interesting part of Cappadocia is how the locals have dug into the huge pinnacles of tuff known locally as fairy chimneys (although one would be more apt and vulgar at describing them as giant penis rocks). These dugout 'houses' are in many cases multi-storied, multi-roomed and downright huge! Needless to say, I spent a lot of my time climbing in and around a lot of these abandoned homes!
I would consider the hiking here (despite being fairly flat outside of the valleys) to be second to none! There are no less than 15 valleys nearby, each with their own look and feel (resultant of their varied geology). I managed to hike in at least 7 or 8 of them, finding among other things: churches complete with coloured frescoes, small pigeon holes where farmers collect their droppings for fertilizer and underground fruit storage caves with thousands of ice cold grapefruits (ok, one less than thousands now).
I also took a day to explore the surround villages/cities via a wee 125cc scooter (managed to get that puppy up to 90km/hr going down the hills!). Along my way I explored Cavusin, an abandoned (due to a 1968 earthquake) cliffside 'city' that had at least 75 cave rooms; some even more penis shaped fairy chimneys in Pasabagi, an area full of small rock cut churches in Soglani; two amazing undergound cities that go up to 55m underground and come complete with huge ventilation shafts, a winery, huge stone doors, and more tunnels to get lost in than you could imagine! These are just a few of my favourites, but I could go on for a long time about this place!
After a brief tally of my remaining days on my trip (exactly one month), I made the rather painful decision to move on and hop on a night bus to Istanbul.
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Barb Howard
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This place sounds truly fascinating Mark! I think I would love it also.