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.

I See Red: The Cappadocia Red Tour

The weird rock world of Zelve Open Air Museum

Tourists who come up to Cappadocia generally have three options for organized tourism fun:  (1) hot air balloon ride; (2) the Red Tour; and (3) the Green Tour. I have three days in Cappadocia. This is the second day. For today, I elected the Red Tour.

First stop: the Paşabağlari Ören Yeri Giris, or the Paşabağlari Open Air Museum.

This was a center of monastic culture during the pre-Ottoman Byzantine era. In fact, the name means "Valley of the Monks."

These were hermit monks. Living atop a rock in isolation.

This is a rock-hewn church.

There still were very tiny fragments of the frescoes painted within. Time and sun and rain have washed nearly all of the frescoes.

We in the desert southwestern USA would call these rock formations "hoodoos," but out here in Cappadocia, they give them a much more evocative name: fairy chimneys.

You can climb up the rocks for better views:

Or for that perfect Cappadocia selfie.

Well, I guess it's "technically" not a selfie if another tourist took my picture of me.

 

Now, this is a selfie:

What's on my mind? Probably weighing the pros and cons of living life atop a rock in Byzantine Cappadoccia. Pros? Splendid isolation and a stress-free life. Cons? Lack of central heating in a land with brutal winters.

The second stop (of six) on the Red Tour was, for me, the highlight of the day: the Zelve Açık Hava Müzesi, or Zelve Open Air Museum.

 

This was a functioning community starting in the mid-5th Century, which dates it back to right around the time that the Roman Empire was being Christianized. This was a food storage/food preparation area:

Hence the grindstone:

The population here peaked at around 10,000, which, for its day, in these sorts of living conditions (rock-hewn caves) (I just remembered the word "hewn" and realized that is the right word for all of the caves in Cappadocia carved out of rock faces).

I'm not sure if this was the upscale part of the city, although I'm guessing that all of the neighborhood was the upscale part of the neighborhood, seeing that all of the homes came with fantastic views.

This was an unfurnished apartment:

But this is the view from said unfurnished apartment.

That is a view demanding to be monetized.

The Brits would call these "flats," which is ironic seeing that this landscape is anything but flat.

Tourist alert:

At this point, I had kind of separated from my group and was wondering the rock formations as a solo traveler. But the designated time for meeting back with the tour guide to get whisked away via tourist van to the third stop on the Red Tour was drawing near.

How to find my way back?

Or, I could move into an available apartment.

Actually, after one false (and brief) move, getting back on the main trail was super easy and super obvious.

I like that giant window in that giant rock up there on that formation.

And that completes the walking tour of the second (of six) stops on the Red Tour. Next up? Devrent Valley, a.k.a., Imagination Valley.

It is called "Imagination Valley" because, if you use your imagination, that rock looks like a camel. It actually does. Not much imagination is required. And if you use your imagination, this rock looks like a giant snail.

A little more imagination is required for that one, but only a little.

Next stop? The Avanos Pottery Workshop, a ceramics workshop (and store) to see local, historic ceramics techniques. No photos of the merchandize, so then it was onto Love Valley.

That is a rotating device that I think is there so that you can place your camera/video recorder on the arms and get a 360-degree panorama of Love Valley.

But if you look to one side, the rock formations give no clue as to why this is called "Love Valley."

Now, as you can see from the photo below, this is the place where lovers go to display some token of the permanence of their love. It is the same thing as all of those "love lock" bridges that you see all over everywhere, but especially central Europe.

But why here? And then I saw it. And once I saw, I couldn't un-see it. Look closely at the rock formations in the picture above. They look like something you would associate with the physical manifestations of love.

I was trying to use "gentle" language when I asked my question of my tour guide. You know, cultural norms and all. And you don't always know what is proper to say in what places. But I said to the tour guide something along the lines of: "I think this place is called Love Valley because those rocks look very" -- I was trying to come up with a clean word that would bridge cultures -- "masculine."

As in: phallic.

The tour guide laughed basically from the obviousness of the fact that Love Valley is named Love Valley because of the phallic rocks.

After a lunch break, and a very short walk from the chosen lunch spot, we reached the sixth and final stop on the Red Tour: Uçhisar Castle.

We all were tired at this point in the day, especially because all of us on the tour had beer or wine with lunch. I had a Turkish beer. Efes. A pilsner. It was on the sweet side. I'm not a beer drinker, but I was curious as to what a beer would be like in a Moslem country.

The tour guide gave us 15 minutes or so to do a self-guided walk through the Uçhisar Castle area.

It was about the right amount of time.

I'm not sure, but I think people might be living in the caves here.

And we will conclude the Red Tour with a horse grazing in the valley of Uçhisar Castle.

The obligatory camels and one lone donkey were at the entrance available to be ridden. I wondered why, what was the point. But then I saw a little girl, being led along as she rode on one of the camels, laughing and giggling and have a great time riding a camel. And that reminded me of one true fact of tourism: not everything is for everybody. Walking through weird landscapes of rock formations? My thing, totally and completely. Riding a camel or in the gondola of a hot air balloon? Nothing wrong with other people enjoying that sort of travel fun, but it's not my thing. And that's OK.