"3 Days in Cappadocia" a Nevsehir Ili Travel Page by SurfaceTravel

Send Photo to a Friend

Rose Valley, Cappadocia, Turkey

Cappadocia is located in the dead-centre of Turkey, in Nevsehir Ili. We flew in from Bodrum. It is a large area with a few cities and towns scattered around. Its main draw is the seemingly barren landscape covered by weird rock formations, locally called "fairy chimneys". Millions of years ago volcanoes spit out clumps of hard rock that landed on the softer rock on the ground. As weather eroded the softer ground, the areas that were supporting the weight of heavier lava stones were more compressed and therefore did not erode as fast. What is left is a ground that is about 100 feet lower with tall cone shaped towers of soft rock holding up big lava stones at the top. Click here for more details. Also, because of various rich mineral deposits in the area, any view of the area consists of different coloured hues to the ground: reddish, yellow, bluish, green, and others.

See the attached travelogues for photos.

The early Christians dug homes, churches, convents, and even underground "cities" right into the soft stone. Many were inter-connected with secret tunnels, used to hide from persecution. These days there are still many homes and a lot of hotels dug into the rock or into fairy chimneys themselves.

The thing to do is to stay in a "cave room" hotel, so we did. Our hotel in Göreme was pleasant enough with very friendly service, but "cave room" means "dark room" (see the tip on the Göreme page).

The first morning we went hot-air ballooning and watched the sunrise from the air. This is probably the highlight activity of any trip we have ever done. It was amazing! A van picked us up at the hotel at about 5:30 AM and took us out to the field. It was still a bit dark and it was cold. There were about 15 balloons within sight all getting inflated and ready. They gave us tea, coffee, juice and muffins on a wooden table. Then they fit 28 people into one balloon. The basket is divided into four corner compartments and one small central one for the pilot. Fortunately we were last on so we had an outer corner. There was a convenient little hand-grab hole in the wicker about a foot up so Emily could stick her foot in that and stand up high enough to lean over the edge of the basket comfortably. It seemed to take a long long time for the pilot to generate enough heat to lift us off. Everyone was muttering that there were too many of us; we were too heavy. And then suddenly, with no jar or warning, we were airborne.

It was amazing how fast and how high we climbed. We felt absolutely no movement. You look over the edge and suddenly realise how high up you are. We saw maybe 30 to 40 other balloons up that morning. The pilots took these balloons way up high, down low through crevices and valleys so that we were looking up to their top edges, sometimes coming so close to peaks that it seemed as if we could reach out and touch them. Often we would be directly over top or underneath another balloon. We would go one way, go up a few hundred feet, and then go back the way we came! It's like the pilot was driving it with a steering wheel. We flew over the Rose Valley that we would later walk. Eventually landed, rising up from a valley to its edge on top. There were about eight men on the ground to catch us. When we got low enough, the pilot threw over lines that they caught, and together they landed the balloon directly onto the trailer. We've never flown a balloon before, so we cannot compare, but there were some Australians on board who had flown in the Serengeti and in Australia. They claimed that this ride was by far the best they had been on, hands-down.

The truck pulled the trailer over, with all of us still in the basket and the balloon still above us inflated, to a larger field where they could lower the balloon. Then we collected our certificates, they gave us champagne, and we gathered for our group photo. The van took us back to our hotel.

Send Photo to a Friend

Belly dancer, Cappadocia, Turkey

Rather than rent another car, we took the luxury route and hired a private car with a driver and guide for the two days we were in Cappadocia. They took us around the region visiting the various sites and dropped us off at our hotel at the end of each day. The guide was extremely knowledgeable, explaining the geology, archaeology, history, and culture with more detail than we were actually interested in. She had a formal degree or diploma in tourism specifically, which required her to read the books of all major religions in the world and to learn their history. She explained the significance of the Muslim and Christian sites we visited, and even how some of them influenced Judaism.

Highlights of our two-day tour:

- The Göreme Open Air Museum, a cluster of Christian churches carved into fairy chimneys
- Love Valley, or Imagination Valley, where you use your imagination to see what all the weird rock formations appear to be
- A walk about two hours long following a trail along the bottom of the Rose Valley. This was another major highlight of the trip. The rock formations there are fantastic, and you can see the remains of major building structures carved out. There are also many "pigeon houses", square holes carved into the cliffs for pigeons to roost. The people would climb up via internal tunnels carved through the cliffs to harvest pigeon dung to sell as fertiliser.
- Kaymaklı underground "city", which is a large seven-storey-down underground hiding area with hidden tunnels connected to the backs of houses in the villages. The early Christians built these defences when they were still being persecuted. There are kitchens, wine cellars, bedrooms, endless tunnels, air vents, peep-holes for sound in between each room, and trap doors at critical entrances to block the enemies.
- A pottery factory in Avanos where they still do everything manually. We got sucked in and bought a nice bowl there with Hittite designs.
- Another walk along a valley floor, this one about two and a half hours at Ihlara Valley. This valley was not as unique as the Rose Valley, but it had more vegetation and was a bit wilder. There were far more tourists at this one. Our girl had a donkey ride at the end of it.
- Kale Manastırı (monastery) at Selime just north of Ihlara, carved churches in large fairy chimneys high above the road with great views.
- Various lookout points, including several that looked over to snow-capped Mount Erciyes.

We also went to an evening "Turkish Cultural" dinner show. There was music and various different dances. We saw whirling dervishes and a belly dancer.

This was the end or our Turkey trip. We finished by flying back to İstanbul for one more night, and then home.