Gorreme, Cappadocia and Nemrut Dagi

The following entry was written at the time of the activities listed, however a ban on our blogging website by the Iranian government has prevented us from posting them until now:

The next 3 days of our adventures saw us travel to the area of Gorreme and Cappadocia famous for it’s buildings and caves created out of sedimentary and metamorphic rock formations.

On the day that we travelled to the campsite, we stopped for a couple of hour long trek through the Ilhara Valley, which is a river side walk littered with a number of caves in the rock face that we converted into churches. By now of course all of the churches are no longer used, other than as a way of extracting 15 Lira (or around £4.50) from tourists wallets! A lot of the details painted inside the churches are still visible however, and so it is worth dusting off your head torch to go and have an explore.

Painted caves in Ilhara Valley

We then carried on to the main town of Gorreme, where we stopped to take a look at the popular “underground city”. Unfortunately the site was lacking in a lot of historical details to read about, but what we were able to gather was that the city was excavated underground to be used in the event of an invasion with the main city being captured. The structure consists of 8 levels of rooms from a church to food storage facilities, and employs features such as round stone doors with weapon holes to holes in the floor / ceiling to pour boiling oil on any potential foes.

The afternoon then saw a very unfortunate development. After we stopped off to buy the food for our dinner that evening, we reboarded the truck only for it to refuse to start! Around 90 minutes later a team of specialist Scania engineers were called and a faulty starter motor was diagnosed. So whilst repairs were taking place, the amusing sight of 19 people and all their bags attempting to fit into a minibus was witnessed by several astonished looking locals.

On the second day Vicky and I spent the morning scrambling around some of the rock formations opposite the open air museum (we were too tight to pay to go in as the free stuff on the other side of the road was actually more fun and with far less people!).

In the afternoon we went to a carpet shop that was owned by the same guy that owned the campsite we were staying at. The highlight of the afternoon was the free lunch that we got for going to listen to their talk about carpets (it might actually also be the reason why several of us actually went at all!), and as Derek bought 2 carpets we didn’t have to feel guilty about just going for the food!

Crazy rock pillar formations in Gorreme

The highlight of our stay in the region though was taking our very first hot air balloon ride, soaring above the amazing landscape and drifting with the wind for an hour. The pilot was able almost effortlessly to guide the balloon up and down between the valleys, often with only a metre to spare between the basket and the cliff edge. It certainly was a rewarding experience and something that I would like to do again in the future. During the flight we made use of the 2 cartons of wine that Mat and Saskia placed in a “secret box” that we were forbidden to open before we crossed the border into Asia, and they went down very nicely considering it was only 6am!

Thanks to Mat and Sas for the in flight drinks!

The next morning we made our way to Nemrut Dagi national park, which is the home of the fallen headed statues on top of the mountain there. We climbed the final stretch of the mountain at both sunset and sunrise the following morning, but unfortunately it was so cloudy that the views were not spectacular at all. The statues were discovered on top of the mountain during the mid 19^th Century by a German transport official who was looking for new transport routes, but what he was doing on a mountain in Turkey is anybody’s guess! The heads of the statues are all on the ground in front of the bodies, and this is thought to have resulted from a number of earthquakes, as the parts of Eastern Turkey that we are now in are prone to quakes. Since the middle of the 20^th Century work was completed to make the statues into a tourist attraction, with entrance to the national park costing 8 Turkish Lira (or around £3.50).

Headless statues at the top of Nemrut Dagi National Park

From here we make our way out of Turkey and into Iran for 2 weeks, before we make a break from the main group to head to India for some independent travel, while the remainder of the group travel through Pakistan.

Olympos

For the last 3 days we have been staying in the Saban Pansion tree house hostel in Olympos, Turkey. The hostel is basically a group of wooden houses on stilts that are capable of sleeping 2 to 3 people.

Toby posing in the door of the treehouse

The campsite also has several areas for sitting and relaxing (and a lot of relaxing has been done here!), with a table tennis table to make sure that we do some exercise at least!

Everybody sitting in the comfy relaxing area while the midday sun is cooking everybody outside

Olympos is a fairly small place and there is little to do without spending a large amount of money on extreme activities, but we did find time to take a walk down the river and explore the ruins on the way to the beach. Most of the ruins are from the middle ages, but there was not a lot of information available to read around the site.

This sarcophagus was among the ruins that run alongside the river to the sea

Our first night here was David's 70th Birthday, and to mark the occasion we decided to have a fancy dress party with everybody coming as something beginning with the letter D. Choosing not to simply come to the party as "Dan", I came as a DJ while Vicky decided to come as a diver. Other popular costumes came in the form of Darth Vader and a dalmation amongst others.

I will add a photo when one becomes available.

The most famous attraction in the surrounding area are the Chimera Flames. A rocky hillside in the village of Chimera has pockets of natural gas, that when they make their way to the surface instantly combust to create around 2 foot tall flames on the hillside. 

A few examples of the flames burning on the hills in Chimera

The site is best viewed at night, as a lot of the smaller flames (just a few inches high) would go unnoticed during daylight hours.

An earlier than normal start tomorrow as we hit the road at 6am. We have 14 hour journey ahead of us, and we will be camping in the wild for the night before we continue our journey on to our next main campsite.

Pumakkale and Oludeniz

After leaving the sunny (but mosquito infested) beach at Selcuk, we made our way to Pumakkale to see a mixture of the Roman ruins and the carbonate mineral hot spring pools that line the hillsides there. 


Feeling a little worse for wear, after my bites had swollen very badly and combined with a very poor nights sleep, I very nearly decided not to get off of the truck. But in thee end I was very glad I did as the hillsides are really something to experience!

Bathing our feet in the warm salt water at Pumakkale. Looks like a giant snowfall all year round!

We spent around 2 hours in the blisteringly hot sun walking down the hillside, stopping to paddle in the warm salty pools of water and to take plenty of pictures! Once we reached the bottom a well deserved ice cream was in order, before we hopped on the truck and made our way to a small clearing where we prepared to spend the night. 


Before long we had attracted the attention of a couple of locals, one of which came proudly sporting his Fenabache football shirt. I showed him my Dover Athletic shirt, but the only English words he could speak were "Manchester United", "Chelsea" and "Champions League". I don't think he was overly fussed by Dover!


The next morning we made our way to our campsite for 3 nights at Oludinez. We stayed at the Sugar Beach resort, but to be honest I did not think it was all it was cracked up to be. For the camps size, it seems to focus on getting people who are not staying there to come and use their beach and bar, with the camping area being very small and basic.

Vicky and Janet testing out the latest addition to the tent, the hammock!

During our dinner on the second night, one of the residents came out of his shack with a gun and shot one of the cockerels that are running around the site here. He then said in very good English "That will stop the f***ing thing waking me up in the morning!" From what we gather, we think (and hope) that he owns the birds, as he then tried to sell what was left of it to us for our dinner. We said no.


During the second day here, many of the group decided to go paragliding, and whilst I stayed on the ground to play photographer,Vicky drove up to the top of the nearest hill to throw herself off into a 15 minute glide to the floor. She has now declared that she would like to take up the sport to go alongside scuba, skiing and blo-karting. I have suggested she might like to take up a cheaper sport such as darts (note: this suggestion was not met with great enthusiasm!).

Although it is difficult to tell, this is Vicky during her sky dive. I wasn't nearby when she came in to land as I was distracted...bad husband!!

Today, our final day at Oludinez, we took a day long boat trip around the local coastline, stopping at a number of places along the way for swimming and refreshments. Both of us ventured off of the back of the boat, but there was little to no sealife to take in unfortunately. The water was pretty cold as well, and it being a cloudy day did not help everybody's enthusiasm to stay in the water too long!


Tomorrow we head off to Olympios for 3 nights in a hostel, including David's 70th Birthday party, so we will try to update again as soon as possible.


On the way out of the campsite we came across this friendly little fellow who we decided to name Alfie. He's only a baby, and about half the size of one of our hands.

Alfie the tortoise