Cappadacia

 

Gary here. 

I first learned of the existence of Cappadacia in about 2010. I was doing research on bicycling around the world, which I managed to do one quarter of, but that's another story. So I was reading other cyclist's journals. People have been just about everywhere on this planet upon a bicycle and written wonderful stories of what they saw and did and experienced. A couple cycled across Turkey and stopped in Goreme, the gateway town for this place. Being touring cyclists and aficionados of stealth camping, they spent the night in a cave. I was fascinated. This place immediately went on my bucket list.

So here we are in Ankara, and Goreme is a three hour bus ride away, so why not! So, just what is Cappadacia? During the Miocene, nearby volcanoes spewed out tremendous volumes of ash and small rocks. It settled on the land, still hot, and as it cooled it solidified into tuff. Tuff can be anywhere from impenetrable to fluffy, and this massive deposit was just right. Hard enough to hold its shape, soft enough to be carved easily. Wind and rain carved valleys and left behind standing columns and hoodoos, some of which look quite phallic. Some areas look quite similar to the Badlands in South Dakota. But there it's sedimentary, here it's volcanic. Trees and grass and wildflowers grew for millions of years. Then humans came along in about 400AD, possibly earlier. They were early Christians, and were being harassed by Arab peoples and others. Once they realized how easy it is to carve this rock, they settled in and dug homes into the cliff faces. They also made stables for their horses and other livestock (they were early aficionados of fine breeding stock) and often higher up, churches and burial sites. There are several valleys that wander off from Goreme, each one holding a plethora of abandoned caves. In the town itself, caves have been re-purposed into hotel rooms, restaurants and shops, and our choice of hotel for two nights is underground.

We happen to be here for an intermittent rainy spell, nonetheless we don our hiking boots, pick a valley at random and wander forth. It's amazing. Truly. Dirt roads and footpaths wander everywhere and we are delighted to find caves and rooms all to ourselves. This is a national park, but there's no rules, no gendarmes, no gated-off treasures. Go where you want, explore at your own pace, linger as desired. When a bout of rain comes, we linger in a cave until it passes. Quite unexpectedly we come upon a church. Carved into the rock. Domed ceiling, columns, alcoves, and red-ocher painted designs on the walls. People about 1500 years ago gathered here and prayed to their god. This was more than just a place to pray. The design was influenced by existing architecture from churches in other places. The columns have capitals, arches aren't simple: they're horseshoe arches. Columns are octagonal. Whoever chiseled this out of the cliff had visited conventionally built churches, taken some notes, and copied the architecture. And the paint varied from simple geometric borders like zigzags or straight lines, a grid on the ceiling like laid brick, to of course images of saints. Mostly dull red, but occasionally black and rarely green or blue. The one blue example that we saw was much newer than the others.

On day two we waited for the morning rain to abate, and explored another valley. This valley had suffered damage to many of the caves, and entire fronts were broken off, revealing the internal structure of multiple levels of living. Then we stumbled upon a cave with a river running through it, a tunnel. So we followed the river (nearly dry) upstream as the valley closed in. Soon we were in a slot canyon with both walls towering up 40 ft or 12 meters, with a width of 3-6 ft or 1-2 meters. By and by we came to a ladder, climbed, and continued until we found a second ladder, where we stopped and turned back. The stream continued.

Exploring further we found the most popular valley, with more people, neat boardwalks, idling busses, souvenir shops, and similar caves and churches like we saw yesterday. But with more rain threatening, it was not crowded at all.

In the evening we hiked up to a ridge and watched the fading sun play across the geomorphology.

Day three we returned to the slot canyon from the top side, and completed our tour of the creek. Along the way I noticed some laid blocks of rock, set transverse to the valley floor. That looks like a dam!. Just a bit further was another tunnel through which the creek flowed. This was an irrigation system! Dams to hold water, an aqueduct carved into the valley wall, and probably gates of some sort. We walked a half kilometer into the tunnel underground, which had periodic openings to let light in.

On our last morning, the weather cleared and winds were negligible. Many tourists took rides in hot air balloons, and we got to watch them from below. These are big commercial balloons, carrying about 20 people each plus enough propane to get them up and back down gently. There were about a hundred of them, at about $50 per person. In high season, summer, the rates go up to $400. They burn the equivalent of ten barbecue tanks of propane for a two hour flight. But they were certainly beautiful to watch as they drifted over the town and to the ridges beyond.