March 28th: Fairy Chimneys and Caves

Our travel to Goreme went relatively smoothly – aside from the fact that we were counting on our GPS to guide us to our hotel in Goreme, and it couldn’t find the right town!  One thing we've learned id that a province or area is often named after a larger town, which we presume is like the "county seat".  Therefore, there can be several towns with the same name, and you have to guess which one you are looking for by the province named for the nearest big town.  Once here we settled into our “cave”, which may be dug out of the side of a mountain, but is the most luxurious place I have stayed in so far this trip. We went out to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Goreme, where our guide, Sinan, guided us for two hours through some amazing churches and monasteries, then he went with us and showed us some secret spots to view the fairy chimneys and other rock formations in the area.  We had been planning to take a balloon ride in the morning, but it was -6ºC when we got here this morning, and snowing now, so we have rethought this and plan to visit the troglodyte city early tomorrow morning.  We saw Uchisar and it is COLD here!  Cold but amazing and very beautiful.

Everything went smoothly this morning, we checked out, the taxi arrived within moments of being called, had no problems with security or checking in, had a smooth one hour flight, and arrived in Kayseri on schedule.  At least, we arrived on our new schedule:  originally we were going to fly out the night before and pick up our car in the morning.  As a result, our flight arrived at 8:00 and our car arrived at 9:00, right to the curb at Departures.  It was a bit of a cold wait, although it did warm up to a balmy -2.  The air was still, so it felt warmer in the sunshine.  We tried to phone the car company, but couldn’t figure out how!  We kept getting the message that we had dialed an incorrectly formatted number.  How do you format a cell phone number?  While we were trying to phone, another flight came in, and suddenly the cars were parked three deep around us.  At least we knew we had a few minutes to figure things out before we were going to move again!

Eventually the car arrived -- right in the middle of the crowd of people -- and Ian had to learn how to drive in Turkey in a big hurry!  We got out the Garmin, and tried to enter the address.  Two towns of Goreme appeared on the screen, but neither was the one we wanted.  I decided to type in the name of a nearby town, which worked, and also booted up the Netbook, where I thought I had a map.  No map.  The one I needed I had not remembered to save as a PDF from Google Maps.  (Well, it was one of the ones I’d forgotten, but I think I have them all now!)

I convinced Ian to try my plan of heading to Uchisar, and off we went.  Unfortunately, we passed the turnoff, and Ian was convinced we were going in the wrong direction.  We pulled over, figured out how to make a phone call (we were calling the International Extension) and talked to the hotel.

The rest of the trip was brilliant.  Ian drove like a professional, making every corner and turn, avoiding farm vehicles and lane closures that appeared without warning, and we drove straight to Goreme.  Our hotel here is cut out of the volcanic rock that has been used for centuries, except our cave at the Spelunca Cave Hotel has a Jacuzzi!

Our bedroom, carved out of the tufa!

After a short break we went up to the rock cut monasteries at the UNESCO site, and met our guide, Sinan.  Sinan is actually only certified for Italian tours, but his English was fairly good.  Turkey is working very hard to become a tourist destination, sort of a new Italy, and they are doing very well.  We have met the nicest people here, who are delighted to help out and give information.  Istanbul is a city I felt very safe in.  It amazes me that very many Turks know at least one other language than Turkish very well, since a foreign language is an expectation for every high school students.  Many of the people we have met speak 3 or 4 languages well.  Even so, it is a real test of one’s ability to communicate!  Years ago in Kusadasi  I spoke to a retired Classics professor in Latin – our only common language – and so far this trip we have employed lots of Italian and German, a smattering of French, and a whole bunch of English to get along.  It makes my feeble attempts to learn Turkish look a bit, well, feeble.

But I digress.

The Hittites were the first to make dwellings in Cappadocia, but it wasn’t until the 4^th Century AD that monks first began to come to this area to live a more spiritual life.  Some went off and lived by themselves, while others formed religious communities.

Our guide took a picture of us!

One isn’t allowed to take pictures inside the churches, but one can take pictures inside the ordinary living quarters.  I found it ironic that in their little churches they carved columns, not because they were at all necessary, but because columns are expected in a church!  Sometimes the columns aren’t quite straight, or the rooms quite symmetrical, but since they started out by carving steps and then hollowing out rooms from the top down, I guess they did alright. 

Originally the rooms were connected by tunnels,  including stone ladders built in the centre of shafts.  As the fronts of the caves fell away, they might be replaced by a wooden wall with a door, and accessed by a ladder.

There is still slush on the ground.  It is a little unnerving that they keep an ambulance permanently parked at the front gate.  Our guide said it was just for insurance purposes.

A lot of the paintings were defaced in the early part of the 20^th Century when the Greek population was “exchanged” with Greece.  With no monks to protect their churches, ordinary people used them for houses, and since Muslims don’t believe in human images, the images were destroyed. We also saw many examples of iconoclastic art from the period when Christians did not believe in making representations of animals or people either.  I somehow thought that there was no art at all in the iconoclastic period, but the crude and symbolic figures are striking in their own right.

This is the devil throwing up his arms in dismay when he sees Christ has been crucified and has risen again.  These have been restored, using the same techniques used to create them.  The images on the left were too badly damaged to restore.  Taken from outside the door.

Sinan guided us – Ian drove – around the countryside.  We saw lots of mistletoe, looking a lot like the plastic representations people hang at Christmas.  Sinan pointed out that mistletoe is only found in abandoned fruit trees and wild plants, as it is a parasite that kills them. 

We saw three valleys: the rose valley, which has a beautiful pink colour; the yellow valley, the colour of the sulphur in the soil; and the white valley.  These are so close together, it looks like someone painted stripes on the landscape.

We saw the two types of ferry chimneys, straight and “balancing rock”, which are created when the top layer of stone is stronger than the rest.  

We also saw the abandoned old part of G, the next town down the road.  Although it is forbidden, there were two people who had climbed nearly to the top!

The old The square houses in front are Ottoman, and only 150 - 299 years old.  The further up the hill one goes, the older the dwellings. 

After we drove Sinan back to his own car, we went to the tiny town of Uchisar, known for the “Roman Castle at the top.  It was starting to snow, and the wind was vicious.  It took a lot of will power to take my hands out of my pockets even to take a picture, but it was so beautiful.

Sinan apologized for the fat that we were not seeing Goreme at its best, when vivid colours under a blue sky make for fabulous photos.  When travelling, however, you take the weather that you are given and enjoy what you are seeing on your own special day.  I will treasure my memories of the snow falling around me as I viewed the spectacular natural and historic beauty of Goreme.