91 Cappadokia....Wohoo

Tuesday 15^th Nov.

We woke to find that it had snowed most of the night and there were still flurries in the air. 

The view from our hotel balcony

We packed up and on greeting Gromit outside the hotel; he looked even more colder than he had the night before.

We set of looking for some mushroom shaped rocks nearby in a place called Pasaberg. It was only 20kms away and Karen drove. The roads were getting smaller and smaller as we approached the location in the sat nav but when we got near it we could not see the road and were not sure if we were driving on someone’s crops or on the road so we abandoned the idea. On top of that we were about to be attacked by the locals for driving into what was quite obviously their domain.

He has a snowball in his right hand. He got one of my looks and decided against the attack !

The village we imposed ourselves upon

They were actually very friendly as when we left we stopped to re program the sat nav and  4 locals,  who had passed us earlier in the village in a 4x4, pulled up to help us thinking we had broken down.  These people are ever helpful and we grow more impressed with them every day.

Despite not seeing what we had come to see, the scenery was amazing.

We passed this. God only knows what it was carrying.

We drove off then for the 300km drive to Capadoccia. WOW.....this place is amazing.

Our first view of the weird rock formations unfortunately included a pile of tourist busses. This tainted the view somewhat as remember, we are not tourists (except when asked by the police),  we are locals, as we live wherever Gromit is parked.

Our first sight of Capadokia

Apparently, the rock formations are all volcanic ash and the harder bits that sit on top are just as a result of being sprayed there (by the volcano)  when hotter than the ash underneath and making a more harder rock. When it all erodes, the softer rock is undermined leaving the harder sticking up or making a table top. The light was failing so we did not get too many pictures.

A view ocross the Goreme plain

The tunnels and houses that had been made in the roch were incredible

One of the table top rocks

One even had a Police station in it.

 

After a bimble around we drove to the village that was central to the area, Goreme. Once there we found a rock to crawl under...literally. We found a small hotel that was actually carved out of solid rock.  Our room was actually a disused church (a Christian one). Even the bathroom was carved out of a side annex. For this we paid the massive sum of £28. I was/am blown away.

The view from under our rock!

Captain Cave Man

We sorted ourselves out and placed Leon in our cave and then went out for some grub. We found a bar that appeared from the outside to be some sort of travellers meet and once inside found that the landlady was from Melbourne Australia (again !) and the landlord was a Turk. It was a very friendly place and full of English speaking people which for us was a pleasant change. We were earwiging on the group next to us and it became apparent that they were balloon pilots. We were thinking of doing a flight so I butted in my usual gobby style and managed to get two flights for the next morning for the price of about £86 each. The down side being that we had to be at their office by 6am. This means that we had to set up alarm clocks and things like that we had left behind 18 months ago. Oh well....needs must.

Karen and Leon in our little cave.

The altar area of the church as was.