We got up at sparrow fart (that's Paul's phrase) this morning. Following some hard selling by the hotel guy last night and then a few alcoholic beverages in a bar with bean bag chairs we decided it would be a good idea to go on a balloon flight at dawn. In fact I think we really both wanted to do it and were pretending to ourselves that we were trying to persuade the other one.
So, there we were waiting outside our cave hotel at 4:45am ready for a minibus from 'Balloon Turca' to pick us up. They plied us with hard breakfast biscuits and tea while we waited for the other punters and then we set off for the take off site somewhere in the nearby countryside. We all (about 25 people) fit in the same basket, had to climb in over the edge with varying degrees of elegance, and were strapped in and given instructions for landing (bend knees and hold onto some straps…quite difficult with 25 people in there). The whole experience was amazing.
As we took off, so were about 50 balloons of all different colours, and we all floated up into the dawn sky and drifted off. The reason the flights run at dawn is that the cold night air being warmed by the rising sun creates very reliable conditions for balloon flying, and allow the pilots to manoeuvre the balloons easily and precisely. They took us right down into some of the narrow crevasses created by rivers eroding the soft 'tuff' (volcanic ash packed down into stone) that the valley is covered with, and passed just centimetres from walls of rock. Then we rose up high above the ground to look down on the whole area which is covered with crevasses and little towers of rock called 'fairy chimneys'. These are created when a layer of basalt caps the tuff, which gradually gets worn away from underneath, making a soft pillar of rock with a hard lid - eventually this overbalances and without its protective cap the pillar weathers away. It's these kinds of pillars which are made into homes.
In the distance in the wispy morning clouds and haze we could see the volcanoes that had created the layer of tuff in the first place - it must have been a pretty massive eruption or series of eruption which laid down so much of it, between 50m & 400m throughout the area. After about an hour we descended into a field full of mouldy lemons and with impressive skill the pilot actually landed the balloon on the trailer used for transporting it back to its home - the other men from Balloon Turca had been following our progress and had driven up there ready. They then weakened our resolve with some gummi bear flavoured champagne and clapped when anyone tipped them. All in all an amazing and wonderful start to the day which we finished off by going back to bed for a few hours.
When we emerged again at about 10:30, and after I had completely soaked everything in the bathroom having a shower under the rogue shower head, we went to see whether there was still breakfast available and amazingly there was. No prizes for guessing what it was, although there were surprise ingredients added - strawberries, an apricot and some oddly pungent butter. We got directions from the hotel guy and headed up into the hills for a walk. The instructions sounded very simple (go under 3 tunnels and turn right) but turned out to be a bit more hit and miss, although I have to say this added to the charm. We followed the valley up, going up and down narrow and sometimes a little bit slithery paths, until we reached the top.
On the way we met some men transporting what appeared to be stuff for a barbecue, including one man on a dirt bike (clearly brave but mad) and one pushing a wheelbarrow (clearly just mad). At the top of the valley we came upon a cafe which is also where the men had been headed, and we got some Turkish tea and peanuts and on departure a statue of a tortoise wrapped in newspaper as a gift. We carried on up and came to some inhabited fairy chimney houses, then tried to get back to Goereme via the next valley ('Pigeon Valley' because the locals encourage the pigeons so they poo and they can use it to fertilise all their crops). However in spite of enthusiastic, determined and brave searching, we could't find a path down that didn't involve inching our way round a sheer rock face clinging on just by our nails, and we ended up having to go back up to the top and back over into the original valley, via some interesting tunnels chibbled into the rock. We passed the cafe again so went back for another cay (tea), a surreal moment when he took us to see some tortoises which were sleeping and turned out to be made of pottery, and another gift to take with us back to England.
We got back and hopped on the bike for stage 3 of our day of adventures and headed south to Kaymakli where there is an underground city. We resisted the overtures of a friendly guide but then gave in and were pretty glad to have done - i would have been a bit freaked out if we had got lost down there in the maze of tunnels. There were originally 200 of these underground habitations and only 10 have been excavated at all. There are 2 near here and Kaymakli is the smaller - there are 8 levels tunnelled down into the rock but you can only get down to the 6th level, and only 20% of the whole city has been excavated.
All kinds of people have lived there over the years, from Hittites to Christians, and it housed hundreds or thousands of people at any one time. We saw rooms which would have housed families, a massive multi-storey kitchen, little holes they used for communicating from floor to floor, stables, a 120m ventilation shaft going from the surface down to a subterranean river and a massive stone disc they rolled into place to stop unwanted outsiders getting in. It was not like anything I had ever seen, and was pretty much unspoilt by health and safety concerns. At some points the guide lent us his torch and let us have a scramble through some until passages which was a bit scary and exciting. Afterwards we went and had a cup of tea with him in a carpet shop, but presumably they were his friends as nobody even tried to sell us anything.
Earlier today we had been invited to a barbecue at the hotel by a random carpet seller buddy of the hotel guy, but we were distracted on our way back as we made a scenic detour through Goereme by lots of banging and ethnic sounds and happened upon an annual dance competition where the different regions of Turkey pit the loudness of their drums, shininess of their costumes and niftiness of their footwork against one another. We had a drinkette and a little watch and chatted to one of the singers. By the time we got back to the hotel we had missed the barbecue completely and had to go back into town to get a kebab (now there's a surprise). We returned to the same bar for dinner and blog writing, with an occasional pop over the road to check on the festival's progress. It finally finished at about 23:00, and even if the drumming did get a bit over enthusiastic at times it is impressive that so many people are so engaged with traditional culture and involved with keeping it going, and travelling several days to compete with other regions.
We got up at sparrow fart (that's Paul's phrase) this morning. Following some hard selling by the hotel guy last night and then a few alcoholic beverages in a bar with bean bag chairs we decided it would be a good idea to go on a balloon flight at dawn. In fact I think we really both wanted to do it and were pretending to ourselves that we were trying to persuade the other one.
So, there we were waiting outside our cave hotel at 4:45am ready for a minibus from 'Balloon Turca' to pick us up. They plied us with hard breakfast biscuits and tea while we waited for the other punters and then we set off for the take off site somewhere in the nearby countryside. We all (about 25 people) fit in the same basket, had to climb in over the edge with varying degrees of elegance, and were strapped in and given instructions for landing (bend knees and hold onto some straps…quite difficult with 25 people in there). The whole experience was amazing. 
As we took off, so were about 50 balloons of all different colours, and we all floated up into the dawn sky and drifted off. The reason the flights run at dawn is that the cold night air being warmed by the rising sun creates very reliable conditions for balloon flying, and allow the pilots to manoeuvre the balloons easily and precisely. They took us right down into some of the narrow crevasses created by rivers eroding the soft 'tuff' (volcanic ash packed down into stone) that the valley is covered with, and passed just centimetres from walls of rock. Then we rose up high above the ground to look down on the whole area which is covered with crevasses and little towers of rock called 'fairy chimneys'. These are created when a layer of basalt caps the tuff, which gradually gets worn away from underneath, making a soft pillar of rock with a hard lid - eventually this overbalances and without its protective cap the pillar weathers away. It's these kinds of pillars which are made into homes. 
In the distance in the wispy morning clouds and haze we could see the volcanoes that had created the layer of tuff in the first place - it must have been a pretty massive eruption or series of eruption which laid down so much of it, between 50m & 400m throughout the area. After about an hour we descended into a field full of mouldy lemons and with impressive skill the pilot actually landed the balloon on the trailer used for transporting it back to its home - the other men from Balloon Turca had been following our progress and had driven up there ready. They then weakened our resolve with some gummi bear flavoured champagne and clapped when anyone tipped them. All in all an amazing and wonderful start to the day which we finished off by going back to bed for a few hours.
When we emerged again at about 10:30, and after I had completely soaked everything in the bathroom having a shower under the rogue shower head, we went to see whether there was still breakfast available and amazingly there was. No prizes for guessing what it was, although there were surprise ingredients added - strawberries, an apricot and some oddly pungent butter. We got directions from the hotel guy and headed up into the hills for a walk. The instructions sounded very simple (go under 3 tunnels and turn right) but turned out to be a bit more hit and miss, although I have to say this added to the charm. We followed the valley up, going up and down narrow and sometimes a little bit slithery paths, until we reached the top. 
On the way we met some men transporting what appeared to be stuff for a barbecue, including one man on a dirt bike (clearly brave but mad) and one pushing a wheelbarrow (clearly just mad). At the top of the valley we came upon a cafe which is also where the men had been headed, and we got some Turkish tea and peanuts and on departure a statue of a tortoise wrapped in newspaper as a gift. We carried on up and came to some inhabited fairy chimney houses, then tried to get back to Goereme via the next valley ('Pigeon Valley' because the locals encourage the pigeons so they poo and they can use it to fertilise all their crops). However in spite of enthusiastic, determined and brave searching, we could't find a path down that didn't involve inching our way round a sheer rock face clinging on just by our nails, and we ended up having to go back up to the top and back over into the original valley, via some interesting tunnels chibbled into the rock. We passed the cafe again so went back for another cay (tea), a surreal moment when he took us to see some tortoises which were sleeping and turned out to be made of pottery, and another gift to take with us back to England. 
We got back and hopped on the bike for stage 3 of our day of adventures and headed south to Kaymakli where there is an underground city. We resisted the overtures of a friendly guide but then gave in and were pretty glad to have done - i would have been a bit freaked out if we had got lost down there in the maze of tunnels. There were originally 200 of these underground habitations and only 10 have been excavated at all. There are 2 near here and Kaymakli is the smaller - there are 8 levels tunnelled down into the rock but you can only get down to the 6th level, and only 20% of the whole city has been excavated. 
All kinds of people have lived there over the years, from Hittites to Christians, and it housed hundreds or thousands of people at any one time. We saw rooms which would have housed families, a massive multi-storey kitchen, little holes they used for communicating from floor to floor, stables, a 120m ventilation shaft going from the surface down to a subterranean river and a massive stone disc they rolled into place to stop unwanted outsiders getting in. It was not like anything I had ever seen, and was pretty much unspoilt by health and safety concerns. At some points the guide lent us his torch and let us have a scramble through some until passages which was a bit scary and exciting. Afterwards we went and had a cup of tea with him in a carpet shop, but presumably they were his friends as nobody even tried to sell us anything. 
Earlier today we had been invited to a barbecue at the hotel by a random carpet seller buddy of the hotel guy, but we were distracted on our way back as we made a scenic detour through Goereme by lots of banging and ethnic sounds and happened upon an annual dance competition where the different regions of Turkey pit the loudness of their drums, shininess of their costumes and niftiness of their footwork against one another. We had a drinkette and a little watch and chatted to one of the singers. By the time we got back to the hotel we had missed the barbecue completely and had to go back into town to get a kebab (now there's a surprise). We returned to the same bar for dinner and blog writing, with an occasional pop over the road to check on the festival's progress. It finally finished at about 23:00, and even if the drumming did get a bit over enthusiastic at times it is impressive that so many people are so engaged with traditional culture and involved with keeping it going, and travelling several days to compete with other regions.
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