Another early start, up before the crack of dawn, but I didn’t mind given the scenery. I counted at least 100 balloons in the air at once this morning. They were everywhere, such an unusual but pretty sure.

A quick workout, breakfast and I was being collected for the ‘green tour’ today. It was going to be a long day. The tour guide, funny man. Ozan “Ozi” for short. A scraggy goats beard, long frizzy hair and a funny accent but full of knowledge. He was friendly.
Was on the tour with Russian, Ukrainian, Italian, Belgium couples and a mute Korean man that throughout the day proceeded to take random photos of everything and anything, loved the zoom feature aswell. Not sure he actually got any decent photos of the day or actually understood anything that was being said.

First stop was a look out over Goreme the town we were staying in in cappadocia. Already learnt a lot, too much to remember every fine detail but the reasoning for the unique shape and look of the valley of mountains and what they called fairy chimneys (sculptures/rock formations) was due to the two huge volcanoes nearby one that’s still classed as active (Hassam) and the other that’s inactive and used as a ski resort, and they believe that Hassam will erupt at the slight movement of tectonic plates. But due to the explosions and implosions throughout the millions of years, the weather and the climate (they have heat, snow, rain, lots of wind) it’s shaped and moulded the valley to the way it is today.
The colours of the rocks are different because of the sulphur in the ground, light/white is lime and calcium mineral rocks, pink has iron minerals in them and the yellow has sulphur minerals in them. That’s why they have so much farming here because the ground is so fertile and helps to mould the landscape with the vast amount of trees here too.
Ozi went on to explain more about the landscape, how they only have to dig directly down between 50-100m to strike fresh water source that will feed their crops. They’re massively popular for growing pumpkins here they’re everywhere! As well as wine, lots of vines but not the usual rows you would find in a vineyard they’re just dotted about the place.

So this place became a UNESCO site years ago and became more and more famous with tourism after Turkish tv shows were filmed here, locals obviously latched on and started building their tourism empires whilst still living in/near to the caves and some have fairy chimneys on their land, they call them fairy chimneys because when they’re lit up at night they look like fairy houses. Kind of cute! They have a magical myth aswell where the fairies used to live there but humans came and took over the land so they flew but left their houses to watch over us. Anyways I think I’ll stick to the logical story of evolution and thousands of years worth of history and people coming here to live, instead of building huts they used their heads and mined they’re houses into the rocks. Very very very clever people!!

It certainly wouldn’t have looked the same way back then, they say every few years the landscape is changing because of the activity underground and the weather, the sun changing the colour of the stone, the wind knocking the tops of the chimneys off or the rain and snow being absorbed into the rock and changing its colour and shape. The white stone is actually very powdery and soft, it breaks off easily.

Next stop, pigeon valley. Pigeons were used as messengers and were apparently precious/sacred to people many moons ago, hence the little holes on the chimneys. The pigeon houses.
Ozi gave me a pot of barley to feed the birds, clearly being the only single (non mute) person on the trip I resembled the bird lady in Mary Poppins or Home Alone 2. Fabulous, I just love birds and pigeons… even better! The rats of the sky.
Their s*** is apparently extremely good for fertiliser and they would use the white egg shell and the clear yolk from an egg to make a think paste for making paintings on the walls in their caves. The things they used to do, baffling! Who thinks one day, I know!! I will use pigeon eggs and shell to make a painting.

The reasoning behind more and more cathedrals and churches they think probably because of the Romans invading from the south but also the reason for them building small caves so they could look out for intruders and attack fairly easily.
Cappadocia is in the middle of Turkey, the migration point of the country where most would go through or stay if they were being invaded/going through war or just migrating for the fun of it.
Third stop if the day was across the road to the gem workshop, they worked on the gems that they found in the valley which looked crap before they polished it all up. Called Zultanite, changes colour under different lights so isn’t actually given a specific colour name. I was tempted but held off on getting any jewellery.

Selime cathedral was next on the list of visits, a big area in the Ilhara Valley, more wonderful sculptures and calvings into the mountains, it must have taken so much man power and time to complete with just a hammer snd chisel.

Last but one stop on the tour today, we were going for a walk in the canyon of the ilhara valley. Another spectacular view, scenery is so drastic and green!! I’ve missed green, real green!

After the short 4km walk we stopped at the bottom of the track on the river we had lunch on the wooden platforms balancing in the river with scattered floor cushions for us to sit on. Very pleasant! Chatted with the Belgium family whilst Asian Brian sat in silence and chomped on his food with his mouth open - delicious!

Lunch was filling; a small soup, salad, and choice of main. I had the Turkish meatballs with bulgar wheat which was surprisingly yummy. Then my first time (that I can remember) trying Turkish baklava with a slice of vanilla ice cream. I am not one for pastries I can leave them 99.9% of the time but you had to try when in Turkey. I must say it didn’t disappoint, delicious! However I was full and over it 3/4 of the way in. I think the amount of honey or syrup between the layers of pastry helped me keep going in for more otherwise I would have stopped after one bite I’m sure.

Last but not least the Underground City of Kaymakli. They believe these places took hundreds if not thousands of years to build. This one in particular we could only visit 25% of it safely, whilst the rest was not safe and went 100s of metres down below ground, the ventilation shaft that they had built proved that.
Again, all by hand and chisel. The poor guys!

It was pretty well thought out with the rooms, churches, tandoori ovens in the floor calved out. They had stone Boulder doors that would be used in emergencies and when intruders would be around. AKA Romans for example.

Fascinating! I’m not sure when it would have been a good time to tell them I’m claustrophobic… it was however better than the chu chi tunnels in Vietnam. At least here you could stand up and weren’t crawling. I think it was just the thought this time of knowing we were underground about 25/30 metres and if I needed to get out it would be a good few minutes to reach the top. Putting that to one side was a little challenging but I got through! It was so chilled down there, the rock actually acts as an insulation outside in. So if it’s cold outside it will be warm inside and vice versa. Clever monkeys!!!

Absolutely exhausted with the heat and travel today, reluctantly got out of the bus for Ozi to take us for some tasting samples of dried fruit, seeds and of course Turkish delight.
Im not a fan of Turkish delight but the sun dried apricots and the dried apricot nuts and sunflower seeds were delicious. He gave us a sample of a Turkish delight made with 40 spices, tasted like Christmas. I could only taste the Cinnamon as it was so over powering.
Sweets just don’t sit right with my tummy and they kept trying to give us tastes of all the fresh Turkish delight, too rich for me!

Once home I showered and went to the wine shop for a few beers to drink on the terrace and watch the sunset pleasantly. The alpine swift’s won’t give it a rest though.