Kapadokya
After hot-air ballooning and after a 2-hour nap we had a full day of exploration ahead of us. Our first item on the itinerary was to visit the surrounding landscape. We had to get a feel for our surroundings.
These were some of the caves we went into.
A contemporary cave-house (by contemporary I mean 400 years old!)
The entirety of the floor was covered by kilims.
After our exploration of the surroundings we finally headed off for Goreme (Gore-em-ay). This is where many backpackers station themselves, and this is where we later came to watch the Semifinals of the Eurocup. After arriving in Goreme we had lunch and headed to the Open Air Museum. The Open Air Museum featured numerous Byzantine churches dug into the tuft material that the mountains are made of. There were numerous paintings within each of these churches, and it was interesting to note that there were discrepancies between the facts presented in the guidebooks and the history we (and by we I mean Clayton) knew. One church in particular, the Dark Church, featured only 1 small window. This meant that the paintings were kept from the sun's damaging effects. The following painting is of Mary. How do I know? Well, you may be able to notice the Greek script to the left and rigth of Mary's head. The letters are Mu, Ro, Theta, and Gamma. These letters are the first and last letters to MotheR of GoD. Intersting eh?
After all of the exploring and awe-strucken looks, we headed back to our amazing cave-dwelling of-a-hostel where we had a delicious dinner followed by a return to Goreme to watch the Eurocup. Even though we may have lost the game, the Turks were definitely celebrating as if we had won!
The partying finally came to an end and we returned to Uchisar (ooch-hiss-ar) to our beds where we had peaceful dreams about the numerous layers of Turkish identity.My bed within the cave where I dreamt of Turkey's landscape, history, and people...zzz...
The next day we visited the largest excavated underground city in the world! Some say that it housed between 20,000-25,000 residents for a period of 2 or 3 weeks while the city above ground was under siege. However, Professor Shields brought to our attention that within the academic world there is much debate over the role of the underground city and the number of residents it housed. In other words, no one has a concrete idea of what the underground city was for, and everything one is told from the tour guides are fictional stories. Pictured below is Clayton crawling through one of the tunnels of the underground city.
This underground city must have catered to people of short stature
After an exhilarating time in the underground city we picked up our cameras and headed to Ihlara Valley. We hiked through numerous environments including, but not limited to, rain forests, deserts, meadows, caves, streams, and thistle-laden paths. Seeing all of these numerous caves, we could not resist from entering them! This particular cave, pictured below, had a few rooms. Oh, and it was PITCH BLACK! We resorted to flashes of our cameras and echolocation to determine where we stood in the cave.
After near-death experiences in the cave and dehydration we ended our day with a nice dip in a crater lake. Here's some context to our experience at the lake. Me, being a Kansan, and hardly ever experiencing large bodies of water such as lakes or oceans, I got pressured into swimming across the length of this lake! It was the longest distance I had ever swam without being able to touch the bottom. Good thing both of my legs cramped up half way, eh? Luckily, I made it to the other side without drowning. I've included a picture of Clayton and me standing in front of the lake.
I swam approximately 1 km!
Another amazing end to another amazing day. The next day entailed the ever-popular search for the fairy chimneys. Fairy chimneys are what Kapadokya are known for. They are a geological phenomenon that occurs when erosion takes sculpts a former large mass of tuft into a pillar-shaped mass topped off with a denser material on top that erodes slower than the rest of the tuft. The result is a fairy chimney, but they more closely resemble something else. :) See for yourself. The pictures I have of the fairy chimneys are not from our quest for them, as we hiked through hills and caves without ever seeing a single fairy chimney. The picture shown below is from my hot-air balloon experience.
While the excursion may not have reaped what we had imagined, we did find one enormous church in a cave with an interesting ceiling. The ceiling had these columns for purely aesthetic reasons. This is a motif none of us have ever seen.
After some hillside exploration we left Uchisar for Goreme one last time. This time we were leaving Kapadokya and heading towards Ankara. But before we left Kapadokya, we had to fill up our stomachs with a unique, local cuisine: pottery kebabs. Imagine a slow-cooked lamb stew inside a clay pot, cooking for 1 hour in the morning and 30 minutes right before you eat it--this is the succulent meal we had.
Here's a close-up for those of you with vision impairments.
While the excursion may not have reaped what we had imagined, we did find one enormous church in a cave with an interesting ceiling. The ceiling had these columns for purely aesthetic reasons. This is a motif none of us have ever seen.
After some hillside exploration we left Uchisar for Goreme one last time. This time we were leaving Kapadokya and heading towards Ankara. But before we left Kapadokya, we had to fill up our stomachs with a unique, local cuisine: pottery kebabs. Imagine a slow-cooked lamb stew inside a clay pot, cooking for 1 hour in the morning and 30 minutes right before you eat it--this is the succulent meal we had.
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