~Not All Who Wander Are Lost~: Cappadocia Day 1: Goreme

We arrived in Goreme, the most popular town in Cappadocia, on Monday evening (after a beautifully air-conditioned 7 hour bus ride!). It was a shock to the system because of the large number of tourists who come here (probably second to Istanbul and the Mediterranean). Before coming here, we were primarily in the Southeast and Kurdish Turkey and on a busy day, we'd see 2 to 5 other tourists out and about. Cappadocia is that times a lot lot more...

Cappadocia is a beautiful region of Turkey akin to some of the wonders of the western part of the US. It's famous for it's rock formations and it was the reason why I wanted to come back to Turkey. The rock formations were created from a mix of volcanic eruptions, lake water, and sand, which made the rocks very easy to carve. As a result, people over time have created chapels, monasteries, houses, fortresses, and underground cities in the rocks. On Tuesday, we started off with the Goreme Open Air Museum which was once used as a monastic settlement by the Byzantines and is comprised of many chapels and churches, some of which still have beautiful frescoes inside. The insides reminded me a lot of the paintings inside the tombs in Egypt.

Hot air balloons are very popular

Three types of rocks

Fresco from the "Sandals" Church

Outside of a few churches

Above the frame of the Dark Church (it only has one window
and, as a result, the best preserved frescoes

Fresco inside the Dark Church

Another one!

You gotta do, what you gotta do

Road back to the town center

Town center and bus station

After our early morning jaunt (we were there when it opened to avoid the tourist rush), we rested up to go on a hike through one of the valleys. We chose the one through Pigeon Valley which started from the nearby fortress/town of Uchisar which was really cool (and built into the rock of course). Then we started down a path into the valley (only to later find part of the path impassable and realize we had doubled the route and the path actually was a lot shorter). But we figured it out and saw some turtles and a fox along the way!