Goreme, Cappadocia
Arriving off the overnight train from Bulgaria, I hauled my mountainbiking gear up to Sultanahmet where I left them in the hotel we had booked for our return. This was, I guess, somewhat sketchy - in that it required me to trust the guys working there. But we had stayed there before, so I decided to take a risk.
After dropping off my gear I was hot, tired, sweaty and had some time to kill before meeting up with Korina. So I decided to sample the delights of a Turkish bath. One hour later I decided there was nothing quite like being cleaned and massaged by a fat, hairy and somewhat sweaty Turkish man! It was certainly a bit of a cultural leap, but the hammam was ancient, and right across from the blue mosque - so with the call going out, and the light coming in through the coloured sky lights, it was certainly a unique experience.
Korina had had a rather harrowing flight in from London, including nearly missing the runway in Istanbul, so first priority on meeting up was to find some beer. An uneventful flight passed (why does she always have dodgy flights when she's without me, and no problems when she flys with me?) and we reached Goreme, checking in late to our cave hotel.
Open Air museum
We got up pretty late the first day, both a bit knackered from travelling. Enjoyed a great breakfast at Elif Star then headed out to look at the Goreme open air muesum. The early christians in this region carved houses, churches and other buildings out of the soft rock - and the dry, arid climate had kept these structures largely intact centuries after the people had departed.
We were to discover on our trip around Goreme that these cave houses were EVERYWHERE! After a while it became a bit of cave overload, but that first day, it was magnificent.
Cappadocia day tour
The guys at Elif Star convinced us that doing a day tour around Cappadocia would be a great thing to do. So we signed up, and whilst it was a convenient way to do a lot of things - e.g. more rock churches, underground cities, hiking in a canyon - I would have to say that I HATED this trip. Basically, we were a relatively small group of around 10-15, which was fine, but there were probably about 30 other groups essentially doing the same trip. This meant attractions like the underground city you were rammed into a confined space with several other moronic tourists.
On something like the canyon hiking, this started out well, but we got stuck behind a slow group of Spanish school kids. Our guide refused to overtake, so we had to dawdle along rather than walking at a pace that suited our group.
It is this type of experience that reminds me why if at all possible I prefer independent travel, and if travelling in a group, trying to go where there are no other groups is a good idea.
Ballooning
The following day was one of the highlights of Goreme for me. We got picked up at the crack of dawn (literally - 5am or something) and taken out to a field in the middle of nowhere, where several hundred balloons were in the process of taking off. Like most things in Turkey, finding our balloon was a complete shambles, and they had essentially forgotten to add us to the manifest - however, they managed to find a space without overloading the balloon.
We had read that ballooning could be a risky activity, and that there were some cowboys operating now - so it was with some relief that we found that I had booked Goreme balloons - a very established company. This was backed up by our "pilot" who was an Australian fella, who displayed a certain joy in the ability to fly as close to rocks, trees, canyons and anything else he could fly, to freak out his patrons.
However, he was very skillful - there was never a time where I felt we were out of control. He even managed to land right on the trailer attached to the back of the landrover at the end.
Hiking pidgeon valley
It was still early when we got back, so we had a quick breakfast and got a lift with in the Elif Star guy's creaking Renault up to the top of Pidgeon Valley, with the intention of walking back down. It all started well enough - and given that it was only 4 km, we thought our walk would be quite quickly concluded. We initially walked through a number of gardens used to grow local produce for Goreme and the other villages - it was a lot more lush than the surrounding country, supported by a small creek in the bottom of the valley.
In the garden we passed an old guy - who we were to meet again later on. Immediately after this the valley became A LOT more erroded and criss-crossed with hundreds of unmarked trails. Finding the path became increasingly difficult. We thought we were on the right one when all of a sudden we came to a part where the trail had completely slipped away. It looked as though you could almost make it across, and we were contemplating what to do when the old guy turned up again.
He told us that a British couple had tried to cross the gap earlier in the year, and one had fallen and broken their leg. So we took up his offer to follow him, aware that this was probably going to cost us something. He led us back up the valley, over a very steep spur (climbing monkey style at times) and down into the next valley. We certainly appreciated his guidance, as it would have been very difficult for us to find our way out by ourselves. Whilst we appreciated his help, we didn't appreciate the price gouge he tried to give us at the end - but some heated negotiations later and we had arrived at something fair and equitable for both parties.
ATV biking
Later that afternoon, after avoiding the hottest part of the day (spending quite a bit of time in the "one way cafe" - famous for the coldest beers in Goreme) we hired a couple of ATV's and a guide and headed around the few valleys and areas surrounding Goreme. By that stage I was starting to feel a little rock church/cave/rock chimney overload, but riding the ATVs was fun, even if Korina did take some strange lines through some of the corners!
Perhaps more amusing was our guide - who had a scooter, was wearing jandles, and had a young kid sitting in front of him. Certainly looked appropriate for doing some offroading!
The terrain turned out to be mainly pretty placid, but it was quite dusty/sandy in places so you could open the bike up and do a few skids etc. Luckily, neither of us were as stupid as the guy we'd seen up at the open air muesum who rolled his bike trying to do a donut.
Scooter adventure
At the end of the ATVing, we enquired about hiring a scooter for the next day. In addition to getting the scooter, we also got some advice about where to go to get off the tourist track.
Our scooter adventure was somewhat complicated by Korina waking up the next morning feeling pretty rubbish - as per normal on our holiday's food poisoning was to become a frequent companion. However, we had been pretty careful with what we had eaten, and take pro-biotics, so it was only a mild case. That said, there were a few emergency pit stops during the day!
We initially rode out of town and through a couple of the surrounding towns before heading down to a closed underground city the scooter guys had told us about.
Arriving in the village, a guy in a large cowboy hat strode out into the middle of the street and yelled STOP - putting his hand on our handlebars to prevent us caning off. "My name is ISA" he said - this was the guide we had been told about by the scooter guys.
A quick Turkish tea with the locals, and we dived into the underground city. Relative to the other ones we'd seen, this was much more hard core, with ladder climbs and the need to put on a 'safety' sling from time to time. There were a few parts where it was one person at a time - and standing at the bottom by myself I suddenly throught that if this guy was dodgey, he's just managed to split us up - and there would definately be no finding your way out of that maze.
As it turns out, other than wanting a break to smoke a cigga-weed, Isa turned out to be a reliable, if somewhat erratic guide. Apparently the village had been on the tourist trail until about 5 years ago, when the government had closed the cave and subsequently killed the local tourist industry. Isa was still working independently, as it was all he had done since he was a kid. But you felt it must be hard for him, as the village was far off the beaten track.
It was a long ride back, and along the way I managed to pick up a bit of sunburn - frequent applications of sunscreen not withstanding - so the next day we took a bit of a rest before jumping on the bus to Nemrut and Urfa.
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