By the time I managed to open my eyes, we were already in the Cappadocia region. And it was perfect timing for the sunrise!!! (Good thing, since I was never able to wake up early enough to actually catch the sunrise during my stay here...lazy)The bus arrived in the town of Goreme (headquarters for Cappadocia tourism) around 8am. We looked around a couple of hostels and chose the one with dorm beds in a cave room. Hey, we were in Cappadocia; we had to try out the cave rooms! I thought it might be a bit moldy, buggy, and cold, but no problems at all. The caves kept the bugs out and the heat in pretty well : ) FYI – Cappadocia gets very cold when the sun's not out.
It's a bit difficult to explore the region on foot. Most of the sights are spread apart (some more than an hour away by car), and there are a lot of hills.
Big question – join a tour or try to get around independently?
We decided to rent a scooter for the day to check out the more nearby places on our own, and then to join a tour the following day for those that are farther away.
Of course, I had no clue how to maneuver a scooter (I still don't), and I've never been on one before. Thank goodness those scooters are made for 2 people. I can just ride in the back. Easy : ) Works out cheaper, too, since we could split the costs.
To sum up the day's events...we did A LOT in one day!
We first started in the little town of Uchisar, known for its cave castle at its peak. It was a great first stop, providing us with a glimpse of the Cappadocia landscape. To get a good view of Uchisar itself, we rode to "pigeon valley":
Pigeon valley is so called because of the many tiny caves dug out into the side of the cliffs to serve as their nests. People used to collect their poop for...something...I don't remember. Sorry. Now, though, there aren't that many pigeons around, which suits me just fine. I hate those flying rats!
Before heading back towards town, we stopped by an ice cream stand for some of those famous, stretchy Turkish ice creams (dondurma). The guy wouldn't stop calling to us in his limited Japanese,「美味しいよ〜」,「美味しいよ〜」! Annoying. And our purchase didn't shut him up either! Anyways, I don't particularly like dondurma. Looks cool, but too sugary sweet for my taste.
Next, we headed to the other side of town in search for those mushroom-shaped houses that Cappadocia is famous for. But we took a wrong turn somewhere, and ended up in a little, old cave town. There were very few tourists there, and we basically had the whole place to ourselves! We went up, down, in, out...exploring all the nooks and crannies of the cave. Really cool. They even had cave churches with simple, yet beautiful, wall paintings. Being an unguarded sight, I admit that some caves were a bit gross...smelly garbage and stuff. Made you not want to think about what went on in there, you know.
On our way out, we got good directions from a local on how to get to the mushroom houses. Once we made the right turn on the road, we saw them immediately. How CUTE!!!
Wind and sand were a bit of a problem, but I had a lot of fun walking around. You can even climb into some of the houses to see the living quarters.
After seeing sooooo many caves earlier in the day, we were a bit caved-out by this point in time. But, we went to the Goreme Open Air Museum anyways. It was very similar to the caves at our unplanned stop, just a lot cleaner. There were more churches (and better preserved too) there as well, which was a bit different from what we'd seen:
I don't think we enjoyed the museum much, though. We were out of there in less than an hour. Just too tired. Remember, we've been moving non-stop since yesterday morning!
Back at our hostel, we finally got off our feet. If only for a brief period. Be
cause we wanted to go to Rose Valley for the sunset! A few km hiking path takes you there, but we weren't in the mood to walk. Since we had the scooter, why not ride?! The hostel owner looked at us a bit funny when we told him we were going there on the scooter. We couldn't figure out why he gave us that look until we started riding...the path is all soft dirt. Rough for the scooter, poor thing. We ended up falling over a few times, but that added to all the fun. Hehe. But when the path started to go along a cliff, we opted to walk the remaining short distance to the top to be on the safe side. Up top, we had a wonderful view of the entire valley. Needless to say, the sunset there was great!
Oh, and while we were waiting for the sun to set and looking over the valley, we realized that there was a paved path nearby. Why didn't the hostel owner tell us about this?!
And then the time came for us to return the scooter :( He was such a good boy. The scooter. I miss him already... Mr. Scooter enjoying the sunset after a hard day's work:
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