Cappadocia: the land of fairies

One of the first things that came to our mind after we crossed the border into Turkey was the wish that all places were the size of most Middle Eastern countries. In Lebanon we managed to travel through nearly half the country in one morning. Unfortunately the same is not true in Turkey.

Our journey started in Aleppo at 4:30am. From there it was off to the Syrian border where after some pocket money to the border guards (paid by the bus driver to speed things up) and another expensive border tax, we managed to successfully leave Syria. The next step was to enter Turkey while swapping passports to avoid the $60US visa required of Canadian citizens (Polish citizens only had to pay $20US for a visa). The problems began when the Turkish border guard could not find the Syrian exit stamps in our Polish passports. Eventually, after showing them our Canadian passports as well, they let us in.

We arrived in Antakya, the first main Turkish town across the border, at 8:45am. Our bus for Cappadocia was leaving at 9am giving us just enough time to withdraw some money, purchase the bus tickets and grab a quick sandwich. Then it was an 8 ½ hour bus journey from the south of Turkey into central Turkey. Temperatures dropped to about 12 degrees and we had the first rain in the course of the last 3.5 weeks. Rain, however, might be a bit of an understatement. Although we were riding in a bus, we felt like we were inside an aquarium. The water just poured down in drapes down both sides of the bus. I had not seen a rain storm like that in a long time. The depressing part was that the black clouds seemed to cover all of Turkey with no prospect of the rain easing up.

Fortunately, once we arrived in Kayseri at 5:15pm the rain had stopped. We again had 15 minutes before our next bus and at 5:30pm settled down for another 1.5 hour journey. We finally arrived in Goreme (Cappadocia) at around 7pm after around 14 hours in transit.
Cappadocia has proved to be absolutely amazing. Just outside the bus station was a tourist information office offering pictures of the hundreds of little cave hotels and hostels in the town. The guy working there refused to offer recommendations saying that he had to stay impartial. He could tell us the prices of any that we chose and would call to inquire as to availability. We finally picked one of them, were picked up and driven a short distance up the mountain and dropped off in front of a little fairy chimney hotel where we secured a cave room and settled down to our first meal since the prior day.

Over dinner we met some fantastic Polish travelers: two who had spent 4 days in Cappadocia and were about to leave, and later another Polish girl who had just arrived.
We spent a fantastic evening chatting and relaxing.

The relaxation ended on the following day. Together with Judyta we started early in the morning into the local valleys and in a matter of the day probably did well in excess of 20km of up and down trails amongst fantastic hooodos like formations, fairy chimneys and picturesque countryside. True heaven!

It has been an absolute constant everywhere we’ve travelled: in all these tourist destinations there are endless busloads of pre-packaged tourists. Stay to the main road, main view points and main trails and you will have a hard time avoiding the hoards. Walk off the main path for 5 minutes and you will not have a soul in sight. This was true in Petra, in Palmyra and the same thing here in Cappadocia.

Enjoying this fairyland we have now decided to spend another couple days here. Photos to follow soon.