Antalya and Cappadocia

Welcome to Cappadocia

Not knowing where you are heading when you arrive in a town usually makes for a little adventure, especially when you have been warned over and over not to trust the taxi drivers.... Antalya was no exception.

The taxi man at Antalya Otogar (bus station) tried to convince us he was the best deal, but the bus was much cheaper so we took that option to get to town (Otogars are never in a convenient place in Turkey). So we rode the bus... we saw lots of the main town, some old walls that looked really cool and a stunning coast.... then we started to wonder how long we should be on this bus. Things were starting to look familiar and neither Dean or myslef have been here before... hmmm. When se started to see signs for the Otogar, where we had caught the bus about an hour earlier, Dean and I both decided to hop off before we embarrassingly had to face that taxi man again. So we hopped off, appreciating that we had just had a cheap city tour, and went to a taxi rank that didn't recognise us. In the end, the price was the same. At least we tried the cheap way first:)

Antalya was really just a stopover enroute to Cappadocia in central Turkey via an overnight bus. Braving the overnight buses in Turkey is no longer much of a concern. Sure i had to sit through Mousehunt in another language once again, but really, it is such a simple movie and i'm sure the lines are lame.

Slightly phallic...

Cappadocia is cool. Three volcanoes in the region led to volcanic matter eroding and leaving formations in the shapes of fairy chimneys and phallis' behind and wavey valleys to boot. We spent hours and hours on the first day checking out many of these valleys by foot and visiting the Goreme open air museum. Many of the caves and chimneys had been carved out as homes because of their stable inside temperature of 16 degrees, pretty handy when outside can range from minus temps to over 40 degrees. But they've stopped this now, except for hotels of course. The pictures give you the best idea. Apparently this is where the Pod races from the new Star Wars trilogy was set/based on. Such a funky landscape. And yes, there were Flinstone houses everywhere, even Deano felt at home hehehe

On day 2 we took a tour, because there is just so much to see here. We visited the underground city - began by Hittites thousands of years ago, the city is a series of tunnels and enclaves that could house thousands for short periods whilst a war was happening. I would much prefer to be in this place than an underground bunker like the one we saw in Berlin. It had a temple, morgue, kitchen (but just one for the whole city), ladders, booby traps in case any of the enemy came in, communication tunnels and even a 10km tunnel to another city! This place was huge.







We also took a nice easy walk through the Ilhara valley, a pretty green valley with curches built into the walls. Also saw some pottery being made... yawn. And a camel hotel. Yep a place to rest the Camels for a few days whilst travelling along teh old silk road back in the 1300s. And lots of other stuff - this tour was packed.

This place is definately worth a visit. Even with overnight buses on either side.