Around the World - Part 2 - Cappadocia, Turkey

CAPPADOCIA

Our route took us around the city center and through farming country; in the distance rose Mount Argeus, a snow-covered volcano. We learned that winters are cold with heavy snow.

Derbent Valley to see our first "Fairy Chimneys." Here Ozkan explained the formation of these massive projections. We entered the valley, stopped again and made more photos of animal-shaped ones and others that appear to have familiar shapes.

Our next stop was Monk's Valley, the place where all the postcard photos of the mushroom-shaped formations are made. Here we learned about the millennia needed to form "Fairy Chimneys" and spent about 20 minutes making photos. Ancient Iraqi Muslims named them because they thought the sounds the night wind made as it whistled through holes in the formations meant they were home to peris, Persian fairies. 

The day's last tour stop was Esentepe, an overlook, for a panoramic view of the valley below.

We left on time and headed for Goreme Open Air Museum, the religious site where St. Basil, an educated monk, introduced Christian instruction. In ancient times priests lived here in rooms cut into the rock; they also carved churches and chapels. A monastery and a nunnery were also located on site; they are now closed to visitors because they're not safe. We did get a history of the site from Ozkan before visiting some of the cave rooms and churches. Decoration is faint in some and varies from geometric to pictorial. Some is fresco while other is painted directly on the rock. St. George and the Dragon is a very popular motif. Several require climbs up steep stairways; the easy ones have modern steel stairs replacing eroded rock ones. We were somewhat disappointed in what we could see inside the manmade caves. Not many are open and the ones that are appear quite similar. Deterioration occurs when temperature extremes cause cracks in the stone and water seeps in and freezes. At least one structure, St. Basil's Chapel, has been covered on the exterior with a mixture of powdered rock and concrete to form a protective shell. Inside there are several huge cracks in the faded frescoes; there are also some tombs which were carved under the floor. Some had exposed skeletons---felt like sacrilege. 

From there we drove to Cavusin to see houses built in front of cave dwellings.

At a Caravan Sarai we saw a restored stop on the ancient Silk Road. We found this interesting. Surrounded by a thick wall about 30 feet high, a huge gateway led into a courtyard. One side was lined with stalls for use in summer; the other with private rooms for VIPs. The back portion was a huge domed space that served as winter stables.

Urgup's Family Fairy Chimneys. This is the post card scene.

Mustafapasa, the former Greek town of Sinasos, was involved in the 1924 population exchange between Turkey & Greece; it is only now beginning to restore and reclaim its Greek architecture.

After a brief stop to view Uchisar Castle, a rock structure once used as a fortress,

Our first stop of the day was The Underground City of Kaymakli. The underground cities were constructed in ancient times as places of refuge from enemies, storms or catastrophes. They were probably only occupied for a month or two at a time and that didn't happen every year. Entrances were hidden inside buildings in the town above where the inhabitants spent most of their lives. Passage ways are narrow and low. The first level was stables and lower levels consisted of communal areas where they slept, cooked, ate and lived. There was also a small chapel on this level. Lower levels were for storage. There are 8 levels total and 4 have been excavated; no artifacts have been found and no written records detail the use of these subterranean quarters. Huge round stones carved to fit into a niche and wedged from inside blocked passageways and prevented outsiders' entering. There were also ventilation shafts running to the outside. Shafts used to disperse smoke led to the outside where horizontal shafts with hole in them, life perforated pipe, dispersed the smoke; fires were usually lit at night to make the smoke harder to detect.

We arrived at the beginning of Ihlara Canyon, Turkey's Grand Canyon, which was formed by the Melendiz River. We continued driving through the village of Ihlara and down into the canyon itself via a switchback road. We also made a few photos in the village.

The crumbling ruins of Selime Monastery tower beside the roadway; the chapel has totally eroded to dust and only rooms like those seen at Goreme remain. A cemetery covered with irises was across the road.

We then needed to retrace our path through farming country. Fields of wheat line the highway; some of them are irrigated. We saw a herd of sheep and a couple of herds of cattle. Here tractors pull machinery but they're not the giant ones seen in the US.

At Pigeon Valley which once housed thousands of caves holding nesting sites for pigeons, they gathered the guano to fertilize the fields. Now there are only a few pigeons for tourists to feed as chemical fertilizers are much easier to use. We also saw Uchisar Castle from a different perspective.

HOT AIR BALLOON RIDE – Left the hotel at 5:00 a.m. when the van from Royal Balloon arrived. Who knew there were more than two dozen companies operating hot air balloons around here? We rode to the offices where a buffet breakfast was available. Around 5:45 we loaded into designated vans for a very long drive to the balloon launching area; we never understood why Royal's launch area was so far away. We saw the inflated gray balloons in the distance and arrived at the launch area by a very circuitous route. The balloon's rectangular gondola is divided into 5 sections---a center section for the pilot, the controls and the propane tanks; 2 sections on each side of the center one. We climbed up a stepladder to enter the gondola; there were 18 in our gondola and our compartment had 4. Our compartment was very crowded as the other couple was much larger than we. We buckled "seat belts" which were attached to the inner partition of the gondola around us; everyone stands. Our lady pilot was Seniz Tuzcu Timur and she gave a commentary in English of the countryside below. The balloon is at the mercy of the wind directionally, but the pilot can change altitude to take advantage of prevailing currents at different levels. Sometimes we were 250 meters high and others we skimmed the tops of trees. The perspective is entirely different from above and the landscape looks even more surreal than it does from ground level. After an hour's flight, we landed on a flatbed trailer attached to a pickup and managed to extricate ourselves from the gondola---not an easy task for old folks who aren't very agile. The balloon handlers did an excellent job of helping us. We enjoyed a celebratory sparkling wine and orange juice and each received a medal to denote our accomplishment. While we were partying, the handlers were folding the balloon and getting ready to pack it into the gondola.

The valley in front of the hotel was filled with hot air balloons the morning we left; we stopped counting at fifty.  The drive back to Kayseri Airport took a little less than an hour. Just shortly after leaving the village, we drove past the landing area for the balloons and the ground was littered with pickups and trailers; vans; ground crew. Balloons were either on the trailers or heading toward them. It was interesting to see the process from a different perspective.