What a whirlwind! Cappadocia has it all. Landscapes that leave you believing you’ve been dropped onto some alien planet. An elfin wonderland where you expect mythical creatures to pop out of the doors and windows of absurdly impossible houses. Balloon parties in the sky. Ancient apartment blocks that have been turned upside down and burrowed below ground. Perplexing religious spaces almost as old as Christianity itself. And everything carved into solid rock and crammed with indecipherable symbols and images. It’s like you’ve turned into Alice and fallen straight into a fairytale story!
Taking the Plunge (but not literally!)
We decided to base ourselves in Goreme which can probably be described as the most Disneyland of all the towns in the area. On our first full day, we started out at 3:50 having decided to take the plunge and book a balloon flight. We were picked up by van in the dark and taken to a very busy restaurant for a light breakfast.
Once our take off had been approved by the aviation authority we were whisked off once again to a location outside Goreme. Here, we watched our balloon being prepared for take off. It’s spectacular and a little terrifying! We clambered up into the basket and waited for the go-ahead. And then there was the collective gasp of childish excitement as the gas started to roar and our balloon finally lifted off the ground.
It was a very serene experience as our balloon was gently taken by the wind across the alien landscape that surrounds Goreme, occasionally venturing lower through valleys, or ascending to capture the vast landscape. With the sunrise in the distance and about 150 balloons scattered across the sky behind us, it was just magical. We had chosen a top shelf tour, figuring that this was a once in a lifetime experience and were so happy that we had. It was an 8 person basket ( they can go up to 30 persons) and an extra-long 75 minute trip, nonetheless the time passed in a flash! The people we used were Royal Ballon. At the end of the flight we opted to sign up for video and photos from the flight at a smallish extra charge. The files were professional and easy to upload.
We got back at about 7am and after a more leisurely second breakfast in the garden of our hotel, we set off for the day with our tour guide, Fatih and driver, Mujdat. Our first stop was the Goreme Open Air Museum which is a small valley crammed with a collection of Christian churches carved into rock.
Visting the Goreme Open Air Museum
Unfortunately, photography wasn’t allowed inside the churches and we had to confine ourselves only to outdoor photos which makes it hard to describe the place. Suffice to say, that these caves were created at a time when Christianity had to be hidden, and we can only guess that they were intended to provide some kind of protection in the face of persecution. Most of the people depicted in the paintings inside the caves have had their faces scratched out – presumably by later Muslim peoples who found these depictions offensive.
Fairy chimneys, imaginary animals, underground apartments and more
Once we were done at the Open Air Museum we were taken on a drive to a few sites to experience the landscape and get a closer look at how people once lived in the area – homes were literally dug into the sides of great monolithic columns of rock left by erosion over the millenia.
Our first stop was Pasabag where there are some good examples of the “fairy chimneys” that Cappadocia is famous for. These are rock formations that are created as high plateaus erode. As basalt is the topmost layer and it’s a very hard type of rock, erosion results in column formations capped by small conical shapes that look like elfin houses.
Our next stop was a site known as Imagination Valley where you’re challenged to find animals and objects in the shapes of the eroded rocks. This was the most obvious of all – a camel of course.
Continuing on, we stopped at Üç Güzeller to see the fairy chimneys. They’re also known as the Three Beauties, but I couldn’t help but see meerkats on their hind legs peering out across the valley.
We decided to continue on to Avanos for lunch and to check out some ceramic stores, which the town is very famous for. W ended up buying a beautiful ceramic plate at the Gouray ceramics factory which we’ll treasure for a long time to come. They also have a very cool underground museum tunnelled out from the rock with displays of both historical and modern ceramic works. It’s very impressive.
In recent times, more and more underground cave dwellings have been discovered in the region. Kaymakli, our next stop, is one of these. To secure their safety, ancient communities built doppelgänger streets and houses below ground. Some of these “villages” are known to extend up to eight levels underground. They equipped them with clever ventilation shafts, secure sources of drinking water and storage facilities for food. Even their animals had special areas allocated to them underground. The openings to these underground caves were then barred with enormous boulders. An invader showing up in town would assume that it had been abandoned, oblivious to the activity beneath his feet. So very, very ingenious!
On our way back to Goreme, we were treated to a final stop just outside Uchisar. It doesn’t feature in Google maps, but our guide called it the “Flinstones Caves”. These were the reverse of Kaymakli. In this case, ancient communities built “apartment blocks” high up into the sky by hewing stone from the natural rock formations in the area to create cave houses. Their front door openings just open out into the sky, with no sign of ladders or steps. This would have left any invader somewhat confused and the residents smugly safe and sound looking down on them! Also an ingenious use of what nature had provided them.
Hiking in Love Valley
Our second day in Cappadocia was much more laid back. First up we did a short hike around the base of the White Valley, otherwise known as Love Valley for reasons that will be obvious when you see the photos below. The geological formations are astonishing! We noticed that the main tourist approach is actually atop a small plateau from which you would see the formations looking downwards. But actually walking amongst them was awe-inspiring and apart from two other tourists we pretty much got to experience them in peace on our own. The trail we took to get to the valley is marked ‘Love Valley Trail’ in Google Maps.
After a brief stop to climb Uchisar Castle we headed on to the small village of Ibrahimpaşa. Definitely not on the usual tourist map, it was a partially abandoned and very traditional village which at some time in the past had a strong Greek community. It was wonderful to see traditional buildings in their original, if dilapidated state.
Heading out to some small villages
We met an enterprising 83 year old lady with soft blue cornflower coloured eyes. I add this because she was kind and beautiful and reminded me very much of my wonderful nonna. She had spied us from her upstairs window whilst we were crossing the nearby bridge and had hurried down with a basket of scarves which she had made. She tried a few on me and lifted up an old cracked mirror declaring that I looked beautiful! Well no-one has said that to me for a long time! She won my heart and I bought her scarf. It would prove useful over the course of the trip into more traditional areas of the country! So thank you!
We visited a small ex-church-now a mosque which Fatih found to be very unusual. It was decorated in vibrant reds and greens and had a mural depicting a mosque. Figurative depictions are taboo in Islamic religious spaces.
By this time it was late morning so we made our way back to the centre of town and stopped for tea on the verandah at the local “bar”. It was special. A chance to watch the everyday goings-on in a small village.
At the tables beside us sat the local farmers having a good old chin-wag. They hadn’t moved from this spot since we had arrived in town. Mujdat had been eavesdropping on their conversation for a while and had us in stitches as he recounted the discussion. It was all about potatoes. Yes, potatoes.
Potato farming is a big thing here. One man described how, in the first year of harvest, he had paid one man at the table to hoe his field by tractor. That year the harvest had been splendid, with plenty of good quality potatoes. But the tractor driver had charged him too much. So for the second harvest he had made arrangements with a different, cheaper tractor driver. It turned out to be a terrible harvest. Of course, this had everything to do with the second sub-standard driver! The first tractor driver pointed out to him that it had nothing to do with the second driver. No, it was entirely down to the curse he had placed on him for not hiring him in the second year! It was such a joyful moment!
We moved onwards to another more well-to-do village, Mustafapaşa. Here we visited a stripped down ex-church and some cave churches, none of which had anything much to recommend them.
Then on to Ürgüp for lunch at the Cappadocia Restaurant. The food was great and very traditional. Beef and potatoes, eggplant and mince and baked beans. Yum!
As it was quite a hot day we decided to finish early today and spend the rest of the day back in Goreme. Just a quick observation. Goreme’s landscape set amongst incredible geological formations is truly spectacular, but unfortunately this beauty has also attracted a lot of tourists and the accompanying infrastructure that tourism brings. Which means that it has a Las Vegas feel that none of the surrounding towns seem to have fully succumbed to.
Exploring Goreme
Nonetheless, it has a buzz and beauty that is irresistible, especially at night. We were glad in the end that we had chosen a hotel at the outer edge of town which allowed us to experience the beauty of the natural environment. We even had our own fairy chimney in the wonderful garden! It was worth the hot hike down and back up to town!
Cappadocia is an absolute must visit in Turkey. Two days probably wasn’t enough. I’d make it three. Nonetheless, it was a magical experience!
