I went alone on the tour. It was in a minivan which would carry us to our various destinations throughout the day. Our first stop was up the ridge from Göreme to get a good view of the area. Here's what it looked like.
She told us a little about the area, how it was settled by Christians and all of that good stuff. Then we got back to the car and drove towards Derinkuyu. After a 45 minute drive or so, we arrived. Derinkuyu was one of several underground cities built in this region. This particular city was built either in the 8th or 7th century BC by the Phyrgians (though they aren't really sure). The underground city was also used by the Christians to take refuge from Romans persecuting Christians. The city itself was large, 11 levels. It went 85 meters deep (the passageways were very very narrow though). It could hold several thousand people and could even store livestock. The city had everything needed for a city including cellars and storage rooms, etc. They even had a room for religious studies.
It was an amazing place to walk around - to imagine how people would have lived here in hiding for years. It was also amazing to me to think how they built something like this without today's technology. There were no bulldozers, tractors, cranes, etc to build this 11 story underground city. It was all done by hand.
One memory I wont forget is trying to climb down and back up the 55 meter staircase. It was so steep and narrow. There were several times that I thought I wouldn't make it out of there. It was actually built this way for defense purposes. No more than one person could ever enter the stairwell at a time, so if they were ever attacked, they could pick off the attackers one at a time as they tried to enter the lower levels of the underground city.
After we had left the underground city, it had started to rain. It was only about 8C outside. i didn't know it was going to be that cold. The tour guide told us that she had never seen it rain in Cappadocia in July in all of the years that she's lived here. She was just as surprised as we were.
We then took the bus to a volcano lake. Although it was no longer geologically active, the lake water is undrinkable and no living things live in it. There are still poisonous gasses bubbling up from beneath the earth's surface. The gases also make the water a slightly different color, but it was hard to see the difference because the weather was so bad. The clouds were rolling over the volcano lake. I braved the rain to get a picture.
On the bus, I started talking to these two British guys sitting next to me. They were touring around Turkey and we were swapping stories. They had already been to Van and some other portions of Eastern Turkey. Originally, they had wanted to go to Iran and tour there. They had come all the way out to the border with Eastern Turkey when their visa got denied. This was when all of the journalism stuff was going on in Iran and the "Green Revolution," which wasn't really a revolution at all, was occurring. Iran didn't want any more westerners in their country for any reason that summer. So these guys had to change their plans and here they were. I was jealous that they even had the chance to go to Iran. As an American, they wouldn't have let me in regardless of whether there were political uprisings. There was some other guy I talked to on the bus for a little while that was an American. I can't remember his name or what he did (I should really write these things down on my trips) but he was a nice guy.
The bus made it to our next stop, the Ilhara Valley. The Ilhara Valley is a 10 mile gorge cut out of volcanic rock by the Menderez River. The reason it is so famous (in addition to its beauty) is that it has numerous hiding places and entrances to Byzantine churches built to hide from the Romans and access points to underground cities. We, as a bus, had to decide whether we wanted to do the 3km hike through the valley. It was lightly raining and once we decided to do it, we could not turn around. The bus would leave the starting point and pick us up at the end. We decided to make the hike anyway (the rain was not that bad).
Here are some pictures from the hike (and we went inside one of the churches too).
After the hike we stopped for lunch, which was pretty unremarkable. Then we arrived at the Selime Monastery.
The monastery is the biggest rock-cut monastery of Cappadocia with a cathedral sized church. Selime monastery was carved by the monks in the 13th century and apart from the church has monks quarters, a large kitchen, and stables for animals. The walls were once decorated with frescoes of which very little remains. The inside was pretty cool to see and the view was great. Our tour guide told us some other cool stuff about it but I can't remember exactly what she said!
After the monastery, we rode back towards Goreme. On the way back we passed Mt. Hasan and Mt. Melendez, which were the two largest mountains in the region. In fact, they were even snow covered in July!
Our last stop brought us to overlook Pigeon Valley (Güvercin Valley). This valley was the gorge that connected Goreme to Uchisar. The pictures should reveal why it is called Pigeon valley!
Also at the Pigeon Valley was the inevitable jewelry shop. They took us for a tour of the jewelry store and at the end was of course jewelry that if bought would be a commission for the tour guide. I didn't buy any, obviously. All in all the tour was great and i was really glad I took it.
That night it was raining more (surprising for the region) and I went to a local kebab restaurant. The local kebab here in Cappadocia is known as a Pottery Kebab. The weird thing about it is that it is actually served in a piece of pottery (I think cooked in it too) and the piece of pottery is actually broken upon serving it. I am not sure if this is just for show or if they ruin a piece of pottery every time it is made! It was tender and good. I really enjoyed the meal. I then went back to my room and hung out a little while before going to sleep.
Sharing my room with me was an interesting couple from New Mexico. They had lost their jobs in the bad economy and instead of living in the US, they travelled to poorer third world countries and were seeing the world and using their money on that. They explained to me that traveling around the world was actually less expensive than living in the US because the cost of living was so much cheaper. They had bought one of those around the world air fares and had been going to places like Thailand, Malaysia, Turkey, etc. They told me that Thailand was the only place they had been to that was better than Turkey. One day I hope to find out if they are right. They were certainly an interesting couple to say the least. Soon after chatting with them for a little while about their life and what they were doing, I went to sleep.
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