We started off our second full day in Goreme very, very early. We all arose bleary eyed to drive to the balloon centre where we enjoyed a light breakfast and tea to warm us up. We stood around and chatted for awhile – I had a very interesting chat about design with one of our fellow travelers – we had a pretty good tour group actually – all very friendly, intelligent and worldly. It’s funny how similar interests like a love of travelling without just a superficial tourist’s –eye view of something helps you find kindred spirits. The balloon ride was fun – my second one but somehow a balloon ride over Goreme felt way more exotic than a balloon ride over Canberra. Maybe not for a Turkish person. We were in the air for quite a while and the most amazing part was the amount of balloons in the air there were more than 50. And that happens every day. Makes our local balloon fiesta look like a joke. Well maybe that was the second most amazing part. The balloon pilot actually landed our balloon on the trailer that was to take it home. It made for a more difficult exit but it showed some mad skills. Once on the ground we enjoyed champagne and toasted the birthday of two of our fellow travelers.
Our next destination was the Goreme open air museum. While it is easy to get jaded about what you are seeing – a few of us had already mused on how many more photos of rocks we could possibly take – the open air museum is well worth the effort and again the cave that you have to pay extra to enter (and aren’t allowed to take pics in is well worth it. The museum is littered with better preserved caves and dwellings than we had already seen and may included frescos, largely painted in what were Byzantine churches. The pay extra cave which was quite high up had only been discovered in recent years and had some spectacularly well preserved frescos. They were vibrant and exquisite. Of course since the open air museum is so popular, it, like all Turkish attractions has a rather extensive gift shop. And I got a present – A pendant with Arabic on it and a small emerald. I also bought a balloon like the one the girls had hanging from the escape hatch in our mini bus.
From here we went to the local castle – well really it was another tall dwelling carved out of the rock high atop a rocky mountain– we climbed up from the inside which was a little bit claustrophobic to begin with – and kept walking up steps until we got to the top – I was a bit puffed by the time we got there but it was a magnificent vista. We sat for a while and took plenty of pics. As we came down we spent some time surveying the little roadside stalls. There are roadside stalls near most tourist attractions in Turkey and none moreso than in the Cappadoccia area. This particular one had a produce stall that sold the best dried apricots and pistachios I have ever had.
Our next stop was pigeon valley – so named for the pigeonries that lined the valley. A lot of the places carved high in the rock around Goreme are actually not homes at all but pigeonries. Also most of what were dwellings in the past have been vacant since the 1960s and 70s as the rock falls became more intense then. We didn’t actually go down into pigeon valley. The most fascinating parts about it were largely tourist related. 1. At the top of the valley is a little shop advertising the sale of viagra. You can also purchase fertili8ty ststues – probably linked to the love valley phenomenon. 2. Just near the valley is this spectacular tree which looks like it probably doesn’t grow foliage anymore but someone had covered it in hanging evil eyes. You get these everywhere in Turkey. They are usually made of glass and are good luck symbols to ward off evil spirits. You get them on little pins with your change when you make a purchase in a souvenir shop. In the end you have so many you can’t see the money for the pins. But on the tree they looked spectacular. (Mystic Man – Peter Tosh – I can never go past a good raga beat and Peter Tosh does it better than most. Bob Marley might have some of the bigger ticket hits but Peter Tosh is also reliably good.)
The other thing we encountered along our journey today were two typical Turkish phenomena – an older lady selling embroidery (this time it was embroidered cushions – TC bought one for his grandma) and cats and dogs wandering aimlessly throughout the streets. We didn’t approach any of the pooches for fear of diseases savagery but they didn’t look like strays. In fact in Turkey people just let their pets wander about as part of the community. They all looked well fed and mostly well cared for. After our morning tour, we had an afternoon of free time. TC and I decided to go in search of the UFO museum I had read about in my pre=trip research. Apparently it was a café setup with a museum to the American past time of chasing UFOs. Supposedly it had manikins of the aliens at Roswell and all sorts of other cool paraphernalia. We walked for ages but couldn’t find it. Later that evening our American tour companions (who made most of the discoveries on the tour due to their ability to get out amongst it and their fitness) told us that they had come across the remnants of the museum – a pile of stuff out the back of another establishment. Dammit. The only thing better than a tacky UFO museum in the middle of the Cappadoccia moonscape, is the decaying remains of a tacky UFO museum in the Cappadoccia moonscape.
So the afternoon wasn’t a total loss, we decided to wander through the village to seek out postcards and other tacky tourist wares. Along the way, we found a shop selling beautifully crafted embroidered jewelry. At only a couple of dollars per necklace for these pieces, I didn’t have the heart to bargain. Besides, I’m not very good at it anyway. I bought three, with the idea that I would give some away as gifts. In the end, they were all so beautiful, and I couldn’t choose which one I wanted most so I decided to keep them all. We wandered up into the top end of the village, past little restaurants and cafes, some with Turkish locals smoking sheesha, and 711 style establishments with an assortment of necessities and stuff for tourists. Then we came to a jewelry store. Browsing the counter, I found a fabulous marquisate ring. The only problem – not my size. The fabulous thing about Turkey is that they are willing to do almost anything to get a SALE. At first they offered to resize it and have me pick it up the next morning. Of course that would mean being stranded in Goreme as our bus was leaving early the next morning. The store then resized it in an hour. We went back, had a swim, and wandered back up the street to collect it – perfectly re-sized, and polished.