2-Day Tour of Cappadocia

 These really

cool rocky structures are

called

 fairy chimneys.  

We call them fairy chimneys today because historically, people used to think fairies made them. At least, that’s what my tourist guide told me.  

In fact, this is the only thing I learned from my guided tour. 

Disappointed was I to discover that wikipedia explains things differently. Consequently, I diligently reserve judgment on this important issue until the day we can travel backward in time and ask our erosion-ignorant ancestors just what stupid opinion they really had.  

***The views and opinions expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of the author, who retains the right to mock, offend, criticize and even lie if such provides the possibility to amuse, confuse or hamburgers*** 

And now...

A Conversation with my Tour-guide:

Her: We have only 25 five minutes here, and as you can see, that fairy chimney looks like an animal, doesn't it? It sure does! It looks like a camel. Can you see? And that one looks like a sleeping dog and blah blah blah.  Blah blah blah.Blah blah blah, blah blah?  Blah blah blah (etc. )

BM:  (wandering away, aiming his camera: ‘snap’, ‘snap’, ‘snap’, ‘snap’)

Her: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah (etc.)

BM: (out of earshot now, but presumably: ‘snap’, ‘snap’, ‘snap’, ‘snap’, ‘snap’, etc. )

(25 minutes later)

Her: Excuse me, but do you know what that one looks like?

BM: Uh, I guess it sort of looks like a sleeping dog or something.

Her:  No. No.  You do not know, because you did not LISTEN.  (storms off).

So, I'm not a fan of guided tours.

Aside from the fairy chimneys, there are also other things called pigeon houses, which are basically just rocks with holes carved into them (picture above). I thought the name  would have a similar weird story behind it involving cosmic pigeons pecking holes to protest burnt offerings to angry Jehova or whoever but I was wrong. They're just structures to house pigeons because pigeon crap is a great fertilizer.  Who knew?  Clever farmers did.

A lot of the other structures were for people. Centuries old churches and, more commonly, houses were carved directly into the rocks.

Back in Istanbul, the next day:

Another traveler: How long you guys been in Turkey?

BM: A little longer than a week.  You?

Traveler: Me too. I'm way into the history of warfare so accordingly, I've been spending time at the Istanbul military museum, surveying artifacts of the Ottoman blah blah blah blah. 

Me: Hm.  We went to Cappadocia.  It was really...cool. 

Traveler: Oh. That place with all the holes in the rocks. 

Me: Yeah. 

Traveler: Hm.

Sleeper Bus, Angry Bum, Cappadocia

BM and I had sort of ran our wheels over those parts of Istanbul we wanted to see and subsequently had stagnated into a period of watching youtube videos in the hotel room. Lamas with hats amused us.

We had checked our money and consulted the map. We’d hummed over Amsterdam, huhhed over Israel.

We opted for Cappadocia, a 10-hour bus ride from Istanbul (no toilets), but still in Turkey.  Also a 10 hour bus-ride back (no toilets). The set-up was not ideal for miserable bums needing to do miserable things often (I still don't know...parasites or bacteria??), but it gave me an opportunity to strengthen my anal sphincter.

 

I discovered that the difference between a "sleeper bus" and just a plain old bus is that a sleeper bus is driven at night, and you're sort of expected to sleep, whereas in a regular bus you merely can sleep.  OK then. Great.   

Cappadocia, in west-central Turkey, isn’t really a place.  Historically, it was a place (one that gets mention in the bible), but these days the word is kept alive for tourism purposes, but roughly coincides with the Nevshir province of Turkey. The word "Cappadocia" roughly means “the part of Turkey that sort of looks like this”:

 or this

 and has structures carved out of ancient volcanic ash, like this:

Stunning landscapes. 

Volcanoes made the place this way.  

Coming from Jeju (in S.Korea), I thought I was familiar with volcanic landscapes, and as usual, I was wrong.  Unlike Jeju, where volcanic rocks were formed by cooled magma, Cappadocia's volcanoes covered the land in ash rather than lava. By comparison, the rocks formed from ash are softer in color and composition, which is why the area has so many structures carved into them.

Also carved into the rocks are actual friggin' cities, as in underground labyrinths that go several stories downward, complete with (remnants of) churches, wineries, farms, and all you'd want in a city except for the sun.  They're old (think Byzantium times/Bronze Age) and, from what I understand, not used for daily life unless needed for protection. They were a safe place to go when the neighbors were in rape & pillage, warring mode.  

Going down (and down and down), the air gets different and your sense of claustrophobia starts to act up a little.  If you're a nervous, overly-imaginative human, you get the sense that the earth is just going to collapse itself and fill in its holes any second.

Many of the passage-ways were carved to be deliberately small so that invading armies would be slowed and ideally killed one by one in single file, leaving corpses to further hinder the invaders. 

My claustrophobia and angry bowels were fighting for attention after about an hour in there; I was happy to leave.  Here's BM's bum, climbing stairs to eventually surface above ground again.