I See Green: the Cappadocia Green Tour

This is why I came to Cappadocia, Turkey: to visit the underground cities.

Most tourists who come to Cappadocia, Turkey, come here for one reason. And like most tourists, I came to Cappadocia for one reason. But not the same one reason as the Cappadocia tourists.

Most Cappadocia tourists are here to take a hot air balloon ride. Not me. And that's a good thing because the balloons were not flying on three of the four mornings of time in Cappadocia. I'm here for what is best seen taking the Cappadocia "Green Tour".

But the reason for my visit was not our first stop of the Green Tour. The first stop was Selime Katedrali, Selime Cathedral.

This is another set of fairy chimneys that housed religious ascetics inside caves in the rock structures.

Goats live here now.

But not in the caves! These are not mountain goats. I'm guessing they're dairy goats, since Turkey is big on goat-based dairy. Even Turkish ice cream is made from goat's milk rather than cow squeezings.

The rains hadn't yet started, so the climb out the rocks had not yet gotten treacherous.

Who doesn't love an artsy framing of rock structures?

The religious ascetics moved out centuries ago.

I believe the small carve-outs in the photo below were pigeon roosts.

Pigeons served two purposes here. First, they were the communications system. Carrier pigeons really were the text messaging of the day in these parts. Second, the pigeon poop (which sophisticates call "guano") fertilized the crops. Apparently the pigeons of Cappadocia were more than simply rats with wings.

This is inside the "cathedral":

Not sure why I put the scare quotes around the word "cathedral" since this was an actual functioning church in Cappadocia's Christian era.

More church:

Time to move to the second stop, which still wasn't the stop that was supposed to be the first stop.

Ihlara.

Ihlara is a giant scar in the earth's crust that was ripped open by earthquake(s) in prehistoric times. In other words, it's a canyon.

We descended down an uncountable number of stairs to take a two, two and a half-mile hike along the canyon floor.

We stopped into a church ... we passed along the way.

The frescos inside this little church were amazing well preserved given that they were well over a thousand years old.

The section behind the altar area:

Here are six of the apostles:

And here are six others:

This is part of the ceiling:

As is this fresco of the ascent of Christ into heaven:

The frescos above the reach of human hands are well-preserved. The frescos at the level reachable by human hands have been defaced over the years, either through childish graffiti or devout Moslems erasing the haram human faces.

It's still in amazing shape.

As are these wooden donkeys.

And they let you ride them!

Even though the one I am riding looked very demonic, with blood red eyes and a blood red mouth that looked like the donkey had just been ripping apart human flesh. And yet, given that, this was the wooden donkey upon which I elected to take a joyride,

Upon reaching the waterfall, it was time to ascend out the canyon. The number of steps to climb to get out at this part of the canyon were much fewer in number in the descending stairs a couple of miles back.

After a lunch break, it was time to finally experience what I came to Cappadocia to experience.

Derinkuyu. The preeminent underground city in Cappadocia. This was supposed to be the first destination of the day's trip, but our guide got word that it was packed, so we delayed it to later in the day when the tourist horde would be more scarce. Considering how narrow some of the passages were, that was an excellent call by the tour guide.

The underground city complex in Cappadocia was ... what's the right word? ... built? excavated? developed? ("developed" doesn't sound right because it sounds like a suburban subdivision with space for retail and public parks) brought forth by the early Roman Christians to hide from Pagan Roman authorities who wanted the Christians exterminated.

 

This is not the only underground city complex in Cappadocia, but it's the largest and most tourist-friendly. Ask any tourist. Him, for example.

The complex goes 10 stories deep, eight of which are open to the public. Floors one through five are very easily accessed. In this numbering system, the first floor represents the highest floor, the one most easily accessed by all, including the pagan enemies of the Christian population. Six through eight, things get dicier.

I was a little nervous about claustrophobia. I knew the passageways were small and that people had smaller bodies back then and I have an "American-sized" body, so would I get stuck? Spoiler alert: I didn't get stuck. Second spoiler alert: no panic attacks.

The claustrophobia was not a problem. The lack of head clearance space, however, was, as I banged my noggin on the overhead rocks on several occasions. But only once hard.

There really was only spot, the descent to the eighth level, where you had to go through a tight tunnel of stairs, bent at the waist. No photos of this because I was concentrating on getting through this particular passageway as quickly as possible.

 

But I made it. And the ascent out, up that same passageway, was worse because for a large part the lights were out (they were on for the descent) and it was dark and I just kept moving as quickly as I could walking up stairs bent at the waist. Which, when you have sufficient motivation -- and I did -- actually can be completed quicker than I thought it would be.

If only all the tunnels in the underground city were this wide.

Or had this much headroom.

This is the church area of the underground city complex. Like the medieval cathedrals, the floor layout was carved into the shape of a cross. And, not too proud to admit this, going up and down some of these tight stairwell passages bent at that waist, I did the sign of the cross more than once.

The next stop was a jewelry sales pitch. There's usually one of these "sales pitch" tours in every full-day tour everywhere in the world. This was trying to sell onyx (a common jewelry stone in Turkey) and turquoise. Fun fact: turquoise. We associate it in the United States with the Four Corners region of the Southwestern USA. But embedded in the name "turquoise" is the name of the place it first became known: Turkey,

It was dark at the Green Tour continued on to its final destination: Pigeon Valley. Earlier in the day we could have walked through the fairy chimneys. Now, at dusk, it was time to appreciate the lights.

And some Hittite replica pottery overlooking the whole scene.

Not only does this conclude the Green Tour, but it will conclude the Cappadocia portion of the vacation holiday extravaganza. Tomorrow it's time to fly to the next stop on this Turkiye Trot.