Someone was shaking me, yet I could neither see nor hear who it was. I pulled the anorak off my head and removed my earplugs, only to find the yardimci
leaning down by my face.
"Kapadokya," he said to me curtly.
Susanne and I grabbed our backpacks from the upper storage compartment and walked down the steps of the bus, only to find ourselves standing along the side of a pitch black highway.
"Where are we?" I asked the yardimci.
"Nevsehir," he said. "You will take a taxi to Göreme."
"No we won't," I replied, showing him our ticket. "This bus is supposed to take us to Göreme."
"We are not going to Göreme," he responded, not appearing to care at all about our predicament.
"Could you at least take us to the local bus station?" Susanne asked, equally annoyed.
"The bus station is not open until seven o'clock -- two more hours," the yardimci said. "You must take a taxi."
Conveniently, of course, a lone taxi was waiting by the side of the highway, just behind our bus. We were in the middle of nowhere at five in the morning, so the only way the taxi would have known to be there would have been if he made prior arrangements with someone connected to our bus. We were being squeezed and there wasn't a damn thing we could do about it.
The taxi driver approached us as we argued with the yardimci. "Göreme -- kaç lira?" I asked him.
"Besmilyon lira," the cabbie replied. "Five million."
We were a captive audience, worn out and without options. Susanne and I either could sit by the side of the road or we could pay this guy the 13 bucks he wanted to take us to Göreme. We were in no position to argue.
The taxi took us down the highway, steadily making its way to Göreme. I fumbled through my Lonely Planet to find a hotel to which he could take us. I had previously circled the Peri Hotel, which had received a good write-up. As the minutes ticked by I watched the taxi meter reach five million lira, yet we appeared no closer to our destination. The meter soon passed six million lira, seven million, eight million.
"You promised us five million lira," I said angrily to the driver.
"It will be a bit more," he answered nonchalantly.
"No it won't, because we don't have any more than five million lira," I responded. "Either take five million or take nothing at all." I wasn't exactly bluffing, either. Since I had honestly expected to be able to get all the way to Göreme on our bus ticket I had neglected to change any more money before leaving Selçuk.
"Okay, no problem," the taxi driver said, apparently not wanting to debate the issue further. "Five million lira. The meter is no problem."
Around 5:30am we reached the town of Göreme, situated at the bottom of a jagged valley. We weaved along the main road, passing blunt shadowy peaks to our left and right. The cab pulled over in front of the Peri Hotel, a small collection of bungalows surrounding a rock garden. The lights from the hotel sign reflected towards several umbered hillocks across the road. As my eyes adjusted to the light I got my first clear sight of what we had come so far to see: the tufa cones of Cappadokia.
Millions of years ago, a series of fantastic volcanic eruptions showered the region with over 100 feet of hot ash. The ash eventually hardened into a soft pumice stone, locally known as tufa. Over the eons, wind and water had eroded much of the tufa in the valley, but certain sections of tufa were protected by enormous boulders that had been blown out of the volcanoes and onto the ash layer. The rocky debris prevented the rain from wearing down the tufa below it, creating tall columns of pumice with boulders perched atop. These tufa cones became known by the villagers as peribaca, or fairy chimneys. With thousands of giant fairy chimneys dotting its landscape, Cappadokia has become one of the most celebrated geological wonders in Turkey.
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Turkish Pronunciation
Interested in learning how to pronounce the Turkish words mentioned in this journal? Check out my Turkish pronunication guide!
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Inside the hotel courtyard we found a sign in English asking us to ring a bell in order to wake up the manager. A minute or so later a tired young man in a t-shirt and sweat pants appeared.
"Merhaba," he said, wiping the sleep from his eyes.
"Merhaba, I replied. "Ingilizce konüsüyormüsünüz?"
"Yes," he answered. "Do you need a room?"
"Please.... In a tufa cone, if it's available."
The man brought us across the courtyard to a tall tufa cone that had been carved into a small bungalow. Because tufa is incredibly soft, it's possible for anyone with a hammer or a rock to carve out rooms quickly. We entered the cone and looked around; it seemed like a fine place to spend a few nights.
"How much is the room?" I asked.
"Seven million lira," the manager replied.
"We would probably stay for two nights," I said. "We'll spend today and tomorrow in Göreme and then catch an overnight bus out of town."
"So you will spend three nights here, not two," he replied.
"Are you counting this past night?" I asked. "It's after 6am. The sun is coming up. It's morning."
"It doesn't matter," he said. "If you come here now I will charge you for this past night, for I will have to make your bed in a few hours."
"That's crazy," Susanne said.
"Do you want to stay here or not?" he replied, clearly as frustrated as we were.
"What do you think?" I asked Susanne.
"Forget it," she said. "Not if he's going to try to charge us for an extra night."
Susanne and I picked up our bags and walked out the door, ticked off and not sure where to go next. We sat outside for a moment in order for me to put on my sweater and get my bearings. The sky had brightened since we had left the cab. We could hear the sunrise call to prayer emanating from the mosques near the center of town.
"So what do you want to do?" I asked.
"Are there other hotels around here?" Susanne responded.
"Every other building here is a hotel," I said. "There are several around the corner that are supposed to be good."
We walked 20 yards downhill and reached a steep driveway. At the top of it I saw a sign for the Horizon II Hotel -- or as it is awkwardly known in Turkish, the Ufuk II. We climbed the driveway and rung another bell, guarded ineffectively by a white terrier napping on a counter. A young man soon appeared and offered to show us a room. He brought us to a tufa room with double beds and a private shower.
"How much is it?" I asked.
"Five million lira," he said, two million less than the Peri Hotel. At this point Susanne and I both desperately needed a few hours of sleep, so we didn't care whether or not we would be charged an extra night for our nap.
"We'll take it," I said. The man gave us the keys and left us as we took off our shoes, collapsed on our beds and quickly fell asleep.
I awoke two hours later, just after 8am. I gave Susanne a tap on the shoulder to see if she was ready to get out of bed. When she opened her eyes it was clear that her cold had become significantly worse.
"I'm too sick to get up right now," she said.
"I know," I replied. "But we were going to take a tour today, then explore Cappadokia on our own tomorrow. Are you well enough for a tour?"
"I don't think so," Susanne answered, coughing.
"How about if you get some more sleep for a while and I'll walk into town," I suggested. "I need to change money anyway so it will give me something to do. I can also stop at a few tour agencies to get their tour schedule for today and tomorrow. We'll figure something out when you're well enough."
As Susanne went back to sleep I left the hotel, walking downhill to the center of Göreme. Göreme is a small town, with most places being no further than a five or ten minute walk away from each other. The roads were very quiet, apart from a street sweeper working its way towards our hotel. Young women in headscarves suspended enormous Turkish carpets in front of their family's shops while men used brooms on sidewalks to brush away the overnight dust. The downtown area was divided by a dry riverbed, now populated with green trees and rows of flowers. Göreme was very much a tourist town, a quaint destination for those of us seeking a little adventure in the surrounding hillsides. The town made sure to put its best foot forward.
Next to the small otogar I found Hiro Tours, a local agency recommended in our Lonely Planet guide. A large man with bad teeth sat outside the agency, splitting a bottle of coke with a young man in an Australian outback hat.
"G'day mate," said the man in the hat, his unusual accent lost somewhere between Ankara and Adelaide. "My name's Ahmed. Lookin' to join the tour this mornin'?"
"Actually, I just wanted to find out what tours you offer around Cappadokia."
"Come inside my office and I'll show you, mate," he replied.
Inside the agency I sat down by his desk, an Australian flag hanging behind it. "Have you live Australia?" I asked.
"No, not yet," he replied. "I learned my English from all the Aussies and Kiwis who come through Göreme. We get a lot of 'em here, y'know."
"My girlfriend and I are looking for a day tour of Cappadokia," I continued. "We only have a couple of days here, so we want to get on a tour that can take us around to some of the far-off sites, like one of the underground cities. We'd then do the area around Göreme on our own."
"I've got some tours for you, mate," Ahmed replied. "Today we're doing our Classic Cappadokia tour, which'll take you to one of the underground cities, a winery in Ürgüp, and a few other places. Tomorrow we've got our Ilhara Valley tour, which includes a hike through the Ilhara Valley, an underground city, a Silk Road caravanserai and the pottery town of Avanos. Both tours include a minibus with an English-speaking guide, entry fees and lunch. "
"What time does today's tour start?" I asked.
"At 9:30, so you could still make it. The bus comes back after sunset."
"I'm not sure if today will work out since my girlfriend is not feeling well," I continued. "But tomorrow might be better. Let me talk with her and get back to you."
"No problem, mate," Ahmed said, tipping his hat goodbye.
Around the corner from Hiro Tours I entered a covered mall populated by carpet shops and more travel agencies. Most shops had a sign out front noting their daily exchange rate. I found a carpet seller who was offering 440,000 lira per dollar, with no charge for cashing traveler's cheques. I exchanged $100 with him and returned to the hotel to see how Susanne was doing.
To my surprise, Susanne was up and around when I got back to the room, though she certainly did not look well.
"How are you feeling?" I asked.
"Miserable," she said. "I don't see how I can do a tour today."
"Well, I've got an idea," I replied. "There are some interesting tours that leave every day at 9:30am. Since today seems out of the question, let's plan for taking a tour tomorrow. Today, we can relax, get some brunch, and take our time seeing the Göreme Open Air Museum and the other local sites. It's only a 20-minute walk from the hotel. When you've had enough of that, we can return to town and chill out. Then we can get a good night's sleep for tomorrow's tour."
"I really wanted to rent motor scooters here, though," Susanne continued. "And a balloon ride is still really tempting."
"How about if we just plan to stay here for a third day?" I suggested. "Cappadokia was one of the main reasons why you wanted to come to Turkey, so let's take advantage of it while we're here. We've already worked in a couple of spare days in our itinerary just in case we wanted to stay somewhere longer or if we got stuck. Why not spend one of those days here in Göreme? That way we could rent scooters or take the balloon ride on that third day, then make our way to Nemrut Dagi either that last night or the next morning."
"Okay," Susanne said, satisfied with the idea. "Why don't you get tickets for a tour tomorrow while I get ready?"
I briefly returned to Hiro Tours to make our arrangements with the Aussified Turk, Ahmed. I was back at the hotel just after 9:30am, which had given Susanne just enough time to get organized. We walked down into town, checking out some of the local breakfast cafes. Immediately below our hotel we passed the Flintstones Bar, a backpacker hangout that advertised its satellite TV schedule and export beer selection. (Flintstones references seemed to be all over Göreme, thanks to Cappadokia's uncanny resemblance to that classic animated landscape.) Just beyond the bar was the Vegemite Cafe, a small outdoor restaurant that catered aggressively to Australians.
On the main road, just across from the dry riverbed, we walked by a no-name cafe with a medium-sized dog out front. The dog eagerly approached us and nudged my hip, literally steering me towards the cafe. It was a clever ploy, one we really enjoyed, so we acquiesced to the pooch and sat down under a small awning. Susanne ordered a hefty plate of French toast and some apricot juice while I got the Turkish breakfast, hot tea and peach juice, a meal that was fast becoming my morning ritual. The Turkish breakfast came with the usual olives, goat cheese, hard boiled egg and honey, and was accompanied by a generous sliced loaf of fluffy, oven fresh bread.
"I could eat like this every day," I sighed contentedly.
"You do eat like this every day," Susanne laughed.
Since I had promised we would take our time today, we lingered over every bite and ordered seconds of tea, allowing us to sit back and observe Göreme's persistent inactivity. Every few minutes a horse cart would come by -- an older man chauffeuring his wife and daughters, invariably concealed by headscarves and often under a full-length chador. Even though Göreme is now a tourist town, so to speak, its roots are still very traditional. Occasionally women traveling alone here have been hassled here because they were showing too much skin, but it seemed to me that Göreme had reached a compromise with most of its visitors: if you're polite and not being immodest, we'll welcome you here.
Nonetheless, Susanne and I spotted a number of backpackers wandering around in shorts, which struck us as being extremely indiscreet. We've always felt that it's important to respect local customs as much as possible, especially when it came to dress codes in Islamic countries. Though you can get away with wearing shorts in the touristed parts of Turkey, we still found it to be a bit of an insult. As warm as it could get here in Cappadokia, we would be sure to wear our khakis.
After our long breakfast Susanne and I started our walk to the Göreme Open Air Museum. The hills west of town were famous for their extraordinary collection of grottoes filled with ancient Byzantine churches. The soft tufa rock made it easy for the faithful to carve monasteries into the hills and fairy chimneys, and many of them still contained colorful frescoes from the 10th and 11th centuries. Hundreds of such monasteries are scattered around Cappadokia, but their greatest concentration could be found just outside of Göreme, in a national park now designated as the Göreme Open Air Museum.
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| A tufa cone house in Göreme sports a Turkish flag |
Along the road, just uphill from the hotel, we found a row of tufa cones perched on an embankment like bloated stalagmites. Each tufa was about 30 feet high and was wide enough to host a small home. We briefly climbed around the hillside, trying to get our first pictures of Cappadokian tufas, despite the fact that they were often obscured by telephone wires and TV antennas. It didn't really matter to us that these particular tufas were perhaps the least picturesque cones in all of Cappadokia. We were just happy to have the chance to explore them, even the most mundane tufas.
About five minutes past the hotel the road sloped downward into a broad valley. Further ahead I could see the road rise again by the entrance to the museum, perhaps a kilometer away. To our left, beyond a sign marked "Overnight Camping," we found acres of farm land populated by congregations of tufa formations.
"Let's go that way," Susanne said, pointing left towards the distant tufas.
"But the Open Air Museum is straight ahead," I remarked.
"I know," she replied. "Let's go explore."
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| Ancient tufa dominate a Göreme melon patch |
We turned left down a dirt road and then cut a little towards the left into a thriving patch of melons and pumpkins. Susanne and I walked carefully, avoiding to step anywhere near the bulbous orange and green fruit. Just beyond the patch we reached an outcrop of tufa on a hillside, which from a distance looked a bit like a petrified sandcastle. I followed Susanne as she scurried up the hillside, still avoiding those errant melons that had grown high above the field. We could see that some of the tufa formations had been carved out, so Susanne and I each chose our own cave to explore. My tufa had been hollowed out vertically into what must have been a church. Large black Maltese crosses were painted on the walls, and the shattered roof revealed the remains of what was once a vaulted ceiling.
"You've got to see this!" I yelled out to Susanne, who was somewhere above me on another hill.
"You've got to come up here!" She yelled back. "These caves are incredible."
I pulled myself up the crumbling hillside and found Susanne, crouching low to reach the interior of another cave. As I kneeled in front of it I could see more black crosses and symmetric lines of red paint.
"It's amazing that these caves are nearly a thousand years old," I observed. "You'd think that someone hollowed them out just recently."
"And the whole hillside is like this," Susanne replied. "It really is incredible."
Once again we split off in separate directions, hoisting ourselves higher and higher along the hillside. Some of the formations were easier to climb then others, with rows of steps carved into the tufa. Other areas weren't as accessible, with sand and pebbles tumbling down every time you took a step up. I quickly discovered that if I leaned forward and crouched as I climbed along these steep embankments, my center of gravity would be lower, allowing me greater balance.
We each spent some time exploring the caves, some of which were carved into multi-story dwellings. I followed Susanne to the second floor of one cave, which had large open windows facing west and south. A hole in the floor at one corner of the room dropped down to the first floor. I imagined a wooden ladder rising from the bottom, jutting through the hole towards where I was standing. I also noticed some charring on the floor and on the walls. In one corner of the room there was a pile of ash with black soot scarring the wall behind it. In the middle of the wall on opposite sides of the room, just above a round hole, I found more charring, this time streaking straight up.
"It looks like they had a fire in the corner, over there," I surmised. "And they probably had torches or some kind of lamp stuck in the walls." The ash in the corner included small pieces of bone. I wondered how old the remains were -- had people camped out here recently or were these the remains of some Greek family long ago?
Susanne continued her way to the top of the hill while I played detective in the ancient living quarters. "Come on up here," I heard her yell down to me. "You've got to check out this view."
I carefully followed her voice up a steep gravel path, eventually making my way to a rounded summit. Susanne was staring out towards the west. Far beyond the valley floor an enormous tufa formation stretched north and south, several kilometers wide and hundreds of feet high. Over the eons water had streamed down the formation, slowly chiseling a delicate pattern of channels from top to bottom. It was eerily beautiful, the tufa etched and polished like the soft peaks of Italian meringue or fresh whipped cream. A geological dreamscape -- fluid like sand, yet frozen in time.
