Cappadocia 2012
Up Urfa Turkey & Göbekli Tepe
Postcards from:

Las Vegas, Nevada USA
Istanbul Turkey
Cappadocia Turkey
Urfa Turkey
  UrfaPhotos
Mardin Turkey
 MardinPhotos

Erbil Iraq
  Erbil photos
Fethiye Turkey
  Fethiye photos

Aydin Turkey

  Aydin photos

Istanbul Turkey

After Kurdistan trip
Las Vegas, Nevada USA

 

map of turkey
Map of Turkey: click on map for scalable version.

 


Map of area around Cappadocia.

 
Goreme- One of the fairy chimneys near the Spelunca Hotel.


Goreme- One of the fairy chimneys near the Spelunca Hotel. This one seems to be occupied.


Goreme- One of the fairy chimneys near the Spelunca Hotel; this one is advertised for sale.


Goreme- Another view of fairy chimneys around the Spelunca Hotel.


Goreme- Looking down into the village from a hill behind the Spelunca Hotel.


Goreme- Throughout the village workmen prepared new blocks of the soft Tiff stone for repairs and new construction.


Goreme- One of the fairy chimneys near the Spelunca Hotel. All of them are being used for some contemporary purpose.


Goreme- One of the fairy chimneys near the Spelunca Hotel. All of them are being used for some contemporary purpose.


Goreme- Early morning hot air balloons as seen from the balcony of the Spelunca Hotel.


Goreme- Most of the fairy chimney caves are being used by current owners; this one is being used as a barn.


Goreme- Most of the fairy chimney caves are being used by current owners.


Goreme- Another view of the village built among and within the strange fairy chimneys.


Goreme- Nothing fancy, but adequate in my room at Hotel Spelunca.


Goreme- Some of the old guys I met on my walks through the village. The fellow on the left spoke good English and translated our conversation for his friends.


Goreme- More of the old guys I met on my walks through the village. The fellow on the right says he is 81 years old, the oldest of the lot.


Goreme- This old guy chased me down in order to practice his English.


Goreme- These ladies at first friendly and willing to have their pictures taken soon change attitude as one of their group expressed disapproval.


Goreme- Interesting sculpture sitting in front of the mayor's office. As I moved around to set up my photographic shots I noticed a woman on the second floor hanging out a window observing my activities.


Goreme- This is the woman on the second floor watching me. She turned out to be the mayor's secretary and invited me up for a cup of tea... which I accepted.


Goreme- Entrance to the Derinkuyu underground city.


Goreme- Entrance to the Derinkuyu underground city.


Goreme- Important notice posted next to the entry door at the Derinkuyu underground city..


Goreme- Lawn decorations in front of the Tourist Hotel where I stayed the last three nights of my time in the village.


Goreme- View of hot air balloons as seen from in front of the Tourist Hotel where I stayed the last three nights of my time in the village.


Goreme- View of hot air balloons as seen from in front of the Tourist Hotel where I stayed the last three nights of my time in the village.


Goreme- View of the front of the Tourist Hotel where I stayed the last three nights of my time in the village as seen from the hill across the road.

 

15 November 2012

 

Greetings from Cappadocia Turkey,

In Istanbul I booked two seats for Goreme as is my habit for long bus rides. The single seat fare of sixty Turkish lira meant I'd pay a total of about $66 for my two seats through the night. Ignoring the difficulty of sleeping, that is pretty cheap lodging and includes a free bus trip to the heart of Cappadocia. My two seats made the ride considerably more comfortable than it would have been scrunched into a single cramped place. The bus featured a personal entertainment system for each passenger and a seat belt! ... which few used ... naturally I took advantage of the added peace of mind it afforded, though we had particularly careful drivers for the entire trip. At various points during the trip the steward walked the isle serving coffee/tea, cake, and water... just like on an airline.

Like all modern long distance buses in other countries this one had an on-board toilet... but being used as a cleanup crew storage shed and without lighting! Upon discovering the unavailability of the bus toilet I asked the staff for alternatives and they soon stopped the bus at the next gas station! ... I felt like a little kid pestering his parents to stop so he could pee. As I dashed into the restroom the bus full of fifty other passengers waited while  the steward made wild gesticulations for me to hurry... mostly for the benefit of the waiting passengers, I suspect, as I already trotted.

I've been in Goreme, Cappadocia for the past week nursing a really persistent cold and for the past seven nights sleeping in a cozy cave! To be sure modern amenities like indoor plumbing and heating have been added since the ancient people carved it out of the mountain, but the walls still show the tool marks from the craftsman who hacked the hole into the mountain. The  hotel is appropriately named the Hotel Spelunca and my off season rate is about fifty six dollars... for room 104 which goes for eighty eight during the season. Sleeping in a cave has its disadvantages: the WiFi signal failed after the first night meaning I needed to take everything down to the dining room to do any work on the Internet. My first day in the village, tired and sick with the cold, I still managed to do a little hotel shopping before selecting the 120 Turkish Lira Sarihan Cave Hotel for my first night. At just $66 per night, I had found one of the better values in the Goreme valley for anyone wanting an authentic "cave living" experience.

Being so tired and sick that first day, almost anything soft and six feet long would have sufficed, but this exceeded my expectations for a first nighter. I'd planned to check at least four or five places before making that choice, but the feeble old guy assigned to reception at the time I visited offered what seemed to be objective commentaries on several of the nearby alternatives: "That place is pretty good I hear," and "No. They are very expensive." etc. So, with flagging energy I took the most deluxe room he showed me and showered and rested an hour before continuing my exploration of the hillside area behind the Mosque. The tall minaret made it easy to find my way back to the area of my hotel that first day. Good thing, too as there are hundreds of these cave hotels and many of them are indistinguishable from all the others. All of the hillside hotels required a small mountain climb from the village below, including the Spelunca where I spent most of my time recuperating from that damned cold.

Today my cold is much better and I've moved over to a fancy four star place called "The Tourist" Hotel, not too imaginative a name, but it is one of the best places in here Goreme and I negotiated a seventy dollar rate down from about two hundred during the season. This is not the "season" by a long shot: it has been raining off and on and the air temperature sits around five degrees Celsius... a little lower and it will be freezing! The Hotel Tourist does have a two terminal business center, so I spent a lot of time at the desktop screens.

Most of my time when not resting in cooperation with the healing process for this darned cold has been spent wandering the streets and hills around the village. People here are wonderful and quite a few of the oldsters speak good English and are always anxious to demonstrate their language skills to the others drinking tea at one of the many cafes scattered throughout the village.

One particularly friendly group invited me to sit a while and join them in blackberry tea. We exchanged information about our respective lives and I snapped pictures of the four old geezers. Invariably the conversation comes around to our ages and I'm not always the oldest in the crowd.

Another time an old guy on a motor-scooter chased me down to chat a while and at one point asked: "You look younger than me. How old are you?" When I told him he confessed to being "only" sixty-five and expressed surprise at my being so much older than him.

This is a return visit to the Cappadocia region to see what I missed during the 1998 exploration... and to take photographs with more modern equipment.

I have been taking quite a few photos with both my  old Philips GoGear "spy" camera, but also with the amazingly capable camera built into my Samsung Galaxy Note "phone." With it I am able also to take time lapse videos and regular video shots. So far I haven't figured out how to share everything that is now stored in the phone, but the capability is definitely there. I did manage to get one of the time lapse videos made with LapseIt copied to the netbook so you can see the dozens of hot air balloons flying over Cappadocia if you can manage to run the video.

The KodakGallery replacement provided by Shutterfly is also proving to be a challenge. I can upload the photos O.K. but without any captions. It may be possible to make the titles serve the purpose, but that must wait for another day. The Shutterfly album for Goreme Cappadocia is here. The slide show feature seems to work pretty well, so give it a try.

 Turkey is in desperate need of an active chapter of ASH! Nearly every male smokes. The government to its credit has banned smoking inside most buildings and strangely blocks out images of smokes in films shown on television. Of course, all that does is draw attention to the forbidden objects! To be sure, there is an active anti-smoking campaign underway, but evidence on the street suggests it has made little progress in this land of fabled Turkish tobacco.

I'm writing some of this with a Turkish keyboard and everything is screwy... can't find most of the symbols and most of the control keys have disappeared! What fun. The cramped keyboard on my tiny Acer AspireOne netbook is even better than fighting with the Turks.

After a few days here in the lap of luxury I'll head on south to Urfa near the twelve thousand year old archaeological digs of Göbekli Tepe before trying to find a way into northern Iraq. That is the "safe" Kurdish enclave the people wishfully call Kurdistan. O.K. I leave for Urfa by bus in a few hours so I'll close this postcard and polish it for the website version later.

Until I am again someplace friendly to netizens, I'll close.

 

Peace,

Fred L Bellomy

 

 


 


Goreme- Cats pester diners at my favorite near cafe near the Spelunca Hotel.


Goreme- Entrance to the Spelunca Hotel; the cave units are seen in the upper area.


Goreme- Some of the fairy chimneys which can be seen from the balcony of the Spelunca Hotel.


Goreme- Looking out at the scene from the balcony in front of my room in the Spelunca Hotel.


Goreme- One of the fairy chimneys near the Spelunca Hotel. All of them are being used for some contemporary purpose.


Goreme- View of hot air balloons as seen from in front of the Tourist Hotel.


Goreme- Another view of the village built among and within the strange fairy chimneys.


Goreme- Another view of the village built among and within the strange fairy chimneys..


Goreme- Another view of the surrounding from the balcony in front of my room at the Hotel Spelunca.


Goreme- These ladies at first friendly and willing to have their pictures taken soon change attitude as the lady in pink expressed disapproval.


Goreme- Front view of the hotel where I spent the bulk of my time in Goreme.


Goreme- The ancient people of this area used these roughed up boards in a novel way of thrashing wheat. Horses pulled these boards covered with sharp pieces of flint over wheat on the ground.


Goreme- Another view of the surrounding landscape from a hill behind the Spelunca Hotel.

  

End

 

 

 

 


Goreme- Another of the cave hotels near the Spelunca Hotel.


Goreme- This twenty year old boy looks something like a kid I met during my previous visit in 1998. The more we talked the more I became convinced he was the one..


Goreme- Looking down into the village from the balcony of the Spelunca Hotel.


Goreme- Looking down into the village from a hill behind the Spelunca Hotel.


Goreme- Cappadocia Pide House near the Spelunca became my favorite place to get some food.


Goreme- One of the fairy chimneys near the Spelunca Hotel. All of them are being used for some contemporary purpose.


Goreme- One of the fairy chimnies lined streets running through the village. New construction built on to the old caves.


Goreme- Sign on the wall in front of the Tourist Hotel where I stayed the last three nights of my time in the village.


Goreme- International flags in front of the Tourist Hotel where I stayed the last three nights of my time in the village. Notice the hot air balloon in the background.


Goreme- Most of the fairy chimney caves are being used by current owners; this one shelters a cow.


Goreme- Most of the fairy chimney caves are being used by current owners.


Goreme- Another view of the village built among and within the strange fairy chimneys..


Goreme- These hooks serve as a clothes closet in my room at the Hotel Spelunca.


Goreme- One of the many CCTV security cameras protecting guests at the Hotel Spelunca.


Goreme- And here is the last of the old guys I met on my walks through the village. They invited me to join them for blackberry tea.


Goreme- This old guy chased me down in order to practice his English. Wanting to inspect my little camera gave me the chance to grab his photo.


Goreme- Every Turkish town seems to have at least one of these traditional bath houses, called Hamams.


Goreme- Interesting sculpture sitting in front of the mayor's office. As I moved around to set up my photographic shots I noticed a woman on the second floor hanging out a window observing my activities.


Goreme- Large wall map of the Cappadocia area posted for tourists information.


Goreme- Entry door into the Derinkuyu underground city.


Goreme- Sign posted next to the entry door at the Derinkuyu underground city.


Goreme- Entrance to the Tourist Hotel where I stayed the last three nights of my time in the village.


Goreme- Bank in town with an ATM my card liked and where I replenished my supply of Turkish Lira before leaving for Urfa.


Goreme- The mayor's secretary loaded me up with a tourist package and I couldn't tell her it weighed as much as a tenth of my entire backpack and I'd have to leave most of it behind (I did keep the great DVD, though.).


Goreme- I found the name of this particular hotel amusing.


Goreme- View of hot air balloons as seen from in front of the Tourist Hotel where I stayed the last three nights of my time in the village.


Goreme- Map showing layout of the Ihlara Valley where steep cliff walls are honeycombed with ancient cave dwellings.


Goreme- Another view of the surrounding landscape from a hill behind the Spelunca Hotel.


Goreme- Hot air balloons over Cappadocia Turkey. (LapseIt video)

Reference photo author: August 2002  

Next Postcard

 

Quick reference materials from www.turkeytravelplanner.com

Capital of a Cappadocian province of the same name, Nevşehir is mostly a transfer point for tourists.

There's nothing wrong with the city of Nevşehir (NEHV-sheh-heer, "New City," alt. 4134 feet/1260 meters, pop. 95,000). It's mostly modern, having been founded only in late Ottoman times (a mere baby by Anatolian standards!) It's got a fortress on a hill, a nice big museum a few decent hotels, and Cappadocia's major bus terminal.

But there's also not much to hold you. Most people just transfer at the Nevşehir bus terminal on their way to or from towns such as Avanos, Göreme, Uçhisar, Ürgüp, or the Underground Cities of Kaymaklı and Derinkuyu (map).

You could use Nevşehir as a base for visits to Cappadocia and the Göreme Open-Air Museum, but Ürgüp and the town of Göreme are closer and more interesting.

By the way, many bus companies will sell you a ticket "to Göreme" or "to Ürgüp," but what they mean is that your big comfortable bus will go as far as Nevşehir, after which you must transfer to a servis minibus or taxi to be shuttled to the smaller town. (The transfer should be—and usually is—included in your bus fare. The major bus company serving Nevşehir—Nevşehir Turizm—is usually dependable in this regard.) More...

Some less-than-honest bus companies actually just drop you in Nevşehir and let you fend for yourself. Ask the ticket agent specifically how you will be getting to your final destination.

The airport at Tuzköy, near Gülşehir, 30 km (19 miles) northwest of Nevşehir, is called the Nevşehir Airport (NEV).

There are daily flights from Istanbul to Nevşehir, but more daily flights to to Kayseri's Erkilet Airport, making that the more common air route to and from Cappadocia. Airport shuttle vans serve both airports.

The nearest train stations are at Konya and Kayseri. There's direct overnight sleeper train service from Istanbul to Konya, but not to Kayseri.