Kaymakli, Turkey

There are 36 underground cities in Cappadocia and today we decided to visit one of them; Kaymakli. Kaymakli is said to be the widest while the other popular one, Derinkuyu, is the deepest. We rented a car from our hotel, it was an older car with a lot of kilometers on it. It looked like it was the owners' brother's car or something like that. We left Goreme around 9 am. We had to fill-up the car as soon as we left and that is when we realized how expensive gas is here; it is one of the most expensive places we have seen so far at almost 5 Lira per liter  We followed the signs to Kaymakli Underground City, only to arrive in front of what looked like a market. There were no indications on where the ticket booth and main entrance were located. We waited a little while watching tour buses coming in, we followed them through the little market and up the street filled with shops to the entrance.

Guides were there, ready to take people on tour and trying to convince us that without a guide we were not going to understand any of it. We politely declined and bought our tickets. The tour is clearly indicated with arrows once you are inside. At the same moment we started our descent, a big group walked by us. During our exploration of Kaymakli, we saw many tour groups. They were all going really fast, just walking by the rooms, not having much time to take good pictures or even try to imagine what was life like for persecuted Christians. We were glad we didn't pay for a guide as they too were rushing their clients through. We spend a good amount of time in almost every rooms, looking at all the nooks and crannies, taking many pictures and even exploring paths that were not lit. Good thing we had brought our head lamp. We really enjoyed our tour but it probably wouldn't be as fun if someone was claustrophobic! We had to walk bent over pretty much the entire tour as the rooms and passages were very small. After over an hour, we came back out and drove to Ihlara village to visit the valley and it's many churches (pictures and story in the next post).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Goreme Day 3, Turkey

This was our third day of hiking in Cappadocia. After our breakfast, we grabbed the backpack and headed towards the Open Air Museum again, but this time we walked to the end of the parking lot to start the trail. While we were walking to the museum, some hot air balloons were being deflated. They are really big! We thought about doing a tour, but it was very expensive and we already had very good views of the valleys on our first day when we hiked over to the top of the plateau. The first part of our hike was a small trail going through some gardens and more caves. It was about three kilometers long before we had to cross the main road to head toward Red and Rose Valleys.

We walked down in Red Valley, before coming back up in order to go in Rose Valley. In between we stopped for lunch on top of a big rock overlooking Red Valley. The views were so great, it felt like our eyes were not big enough to be able to take everything in all at once. After our rest, we walked down Rose Valley. The trail was fun, and we walked by many caves again, some of which we could easily explore. One of them had a little wooden bridge, so we decided to have a look. Turns out it was an amazing church carved inside the rock. From the outside it didn't look like much, but the inside was definitely worth seeing.

When we got out of the valley, we followed a little trail that was on the GPS map but not on the paper map. We arrived in another little valley filled with cave buildings that we could explore. AA made friends with a really skinny stray dog before we continued our walk back to town. It was getting very hot and the sun was pretty strong as well. We came back to the bungalow after 11.2 kilometers.There is the hiking trail link:

Goreme Day 3

And some pictures of our day:


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is what the church looked from the outside

 

 

 

 

Please read carefully so you don't get lost!

Goreme day 2, Turkey

We started our second day of hiking in Cappadocia by finding the head of the Pigeon Valley trail that starts in town. It was not easy to find as the paths are not clearly indicated. We finally made it to the beginning of the trail and hiked our way down the valley. At one point the path was unfortunately blocked so we decided to try to climb the rocks to go over it. It didn't quite work, we made it up but then we would have had to do some serious rock climbing, so we decided that coming down and trying to find another path was a better and safer idea. Thanks to Seb's GPS application in his phone, we were able to follow the path we had originally planned on taking. There are no indications to follow to make sure one is on the right path so we had to guess most of the time. After enjoying the apple trees, we crossed the main road to get into White Valley, which led to Love Valley.  Walking in the valleys was really cool as we got to see more rock formations. It was also pretty quiet as in October there are not that many tourists in town and in the trails. We had a great time and really enjoyed being out in the nature and seeing amazing scenery. After our 11.8 kilometers hike, we went back to the bungalow to relax and shower. Later we went out again to mail a few things back home and buy some food in the supermarket. We settled on a traditional Jordanian meal as making supper without a kitchen can be challenging! We had some delicious bread, lebaneh, hummus, olive oil and homemade za'arta.

A couple night shots around Goreme:

 

These are in the town of Goreme:

Old flourmill

Buildings in Goreme

The Pigeon Valley:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The White Valley and the Love Valley:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And there is the trail:

Goreme Day 2