Friday 12th May We got in to Goreme, Cappadocia at about 7am. I was supposed tobe staying at the Nomad Caves but when we got there they said, no, go to the Shoestring cave pansyion instead because we have no heating...bit random I thought.
The others (tara, george, pheobe, tom and james) were going to stay at flintstones, but they didn't tell me this, invite me or even ask where I was staying so I took this as a hint that they didn't particularly care for my company or something. To be honest I was quite relieved, they are really full-on, and a bit cliquey and superficial as a group; I was a bit over them! So I stayed at Shoestring and while I waited to check-in and sleep (at 9am) I found heaps of nice people to hang out with, I think this will be a cool place!
I was dead tired so I slept in my 13 bed cave dorm until like 1pm and then got up and went to check out the town. I had a small lunch of saksuka at a café and then went on the internet for awhile. When I got back to the Shoestring I played backgammon with an English guy called Anthony, and lost miserably! I went out to dinner with a couple of Aussie girls, Anthony and an Aussie honeymooning couple and Troy, we had a nice time.
Saturday 13th May Another lazy day of doing absolutely nothing today. I went on the internet applying for jobs for an hour or so and then was going to do the Shoestring Valley walk, but it started to rain so I piked and went to lunch with Anthony instead. I hung around the hostel later in the afternoon, played backgammon with Sulo (Turkish guy who runs the Shoestring Caves) – he was teaching me some strategies and I even managed to beat him once! I played with Ugly (or Chilcgen (phonetic) in Turkish) the gorgeous little puppy at Shoestring as well.
I met a Sydney girl, Amanda and we hung out for awhile before deciding to hit the town. Sulo and one of his mates came with us luckily because it was a private Turkish birthday party at the Flintstones Cave Bar, but they got us in. It was really cool because we were the only tourists there, myself, Amanda, Troy, Eric (a Canadian guy) and a NZ friend of Amanda’s. They played pretty good music and we all drank and danced till the wee hours and had an awesome time.
Sunday 14th May After a breakfast of menemen (Turkish scrambled eggs with tomato, onion and peppers – yum) I went to call mum for Mothers Day – it was really good to have a chat, and then headed to the Open Air Museum with Eric. There were a lot of churches in caves with fresco’s all over the walls and roofs , and while it was interesting I didn’t find it all that impressive. The highlight of the day would have to have been the UFO museum that we went to on our way back into town for laughs. We had no idea what it would be like, but it only cost 3 lira, so we thought, why not? It was pretty much lots and lots of written material (it would have taken hours to read it all!) and lots of dubious photos. The best bit though was the life sized blow up aliens operating on a life sized human model! There were also clay models of aliens and a scene with toy soldiers fighting aliens at Roswell!
Eric and I had lunch at a patisserie, really good sweet and savoury pastries ad then I headed off to do some more internet time.
When I got back to Shoestring I headed back out again almost straight away with Amanda and Sarah and Rod (a couple from Bunbury) to go and see the film Troy at a wine bar. It was terrible quality but we got a free beer so It was all good! Afterward we had dinner and then got an early night.
Monday 15th May Today I did the 40lira Ilhara Tour with everybody who arrived on the Fez bus this morning (Renee and Nicole from Olympos plus others). After all of my slack days off I though it was definitely time to start sight seeing! First up we went to the underground city (there are actually several of these, but the one we went to is the larges – 3 levels, 4km long!) It was pretty awesome, there are so many rooms and corridors that you would get lost really easily without a guide. The stairs were really narrow and steep and had low ceilings so you had to stoop right over, not that this precaution stopped anybody from hitting their heads!
We then went to the Ilhara Valley where we walked along the bottom of the gorge next to the river for about 3km. It was absolutely stunning and all along the way there were these really weird trees that constantly dripped water, apparently because they suck so much up at night. At some points it actually felt like it was raining.
At the end of our walk we went to a restaurant for lunch. It was pretty good food and a great location right on the river banks. One of the waiters was really funny, he wasn’t very old and everything he did he had to do at a run – maybe he was ADD or something!
After lunch we had a couple more stops, at a monastery which we had to climb up really steep rocks to get to (me as usual in thongs – not fun!) and a Caravan Sarai (camel stop on an ancient trade route from Asia). We then had an hour or so drive back to Goreme where most of us elected to get off the tour, thereby missing the pottery display and shop. It wasn’t that I’m not interested in pottery, but I had decided to go to the Turkish night and needed to pack and organise myself.
The Turkish Night…well what can I say! It was heaps of fun, we were all a bit dubious when we first walked in as we were the youngest group by a good 10 years and apart from one other table the only non middle aged Korean ones! Still once the food and drink started flowing it was all good. The food itself was uninspiring, a cold mezze entrée and some weird lamb and rice dish. The lamb was super tender, probably the best I’ve ever had. It was all the alcohol you could drink, something the guys especially took advantage of, although I can’t say that us girls didn’t do out best!
There was some pretty good entertainment in the way of whirling dervishes (not as good as the sufi dancing in Egypt), Turkish folk dancing and belly dancing. They dragged the boys (Darren, Louis, Paolo (the Fez leader) and a Korean guy who had the worst coordination I’ve ever seen) up to belly dance and then got everybody up to conga .. all the way out into the carpark/otopark and around a bonfire. The night (well the organised Turkish part of it) ended with debaucherous dancing and even some MC’ing ice-cube style from Darren.
We kicked on to the Flintstones but it was pretty dead so we went to the Pasha Bar where they were letting us DJ – we danced etc until about 3 or 4am. When we got back to Shoestring a couple of people were hungry, but Goreme at 4am doesn’t have many, actually any, choices so we ended up raiding the shoestring kitchen (very naughty!) and eating stale bread with vegemite and honey, and stale chips – yum-o!
Unfortunately I had to get up pretty early as check out time at Shoestring is 9am (to cater for the overnight buses arriving form Olympos), but I got woken even earlier by some rude people in my dorm – could they not see that despite it being the extremely late hour of 8am there were at least 4 people still asleep!
I didn’t do a lot in the morning, just internet (I think I’m addicted!), book exchanging etc. I um’d and ah’d over doing the Shoestring Valley Walk because it had been raining and thundering, but eventually forced myself to do it as I’ve been putting it off all week and today was my last chance. Although it was pretty tough climbing at some points and lots of downhill slippery bits where you literally had to run or fall, I’m glad I did it. We say Pigeon Valley, Honey Valley, White Valley and Love Valley (named so because to the phallic resemblance that the rocks bear).
Rachel (the girl who I did the walk with) and I went out to dinner – I had my first (and best) iskender kebap and then before I knew it, it was time to catch the overnight bus to Istanbul.
The ride was pretty average; I had the very front seat and was thus privy to all of the drivers scary mobile phone answering, very driving habits. Also I was really cold because he kept the window down the whole time and kept having to defrost the front window.
