Wendy and Ian

First day in Cappadocia

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 20:31:17 +0200

The Melis hotel looked promising - it was smallish, around 20 bedrooms and had a nice pool and pool bar. Wendy, in her role of "information sign" spotter, spotted an "information sign" so we went in. We met Murat, the owner of the hotel, a charming man who spoke better English than I spoke Turkish and who set about the task of informing us. Ten minutes later we were much better informed and had, somehow, booked in for three nights and were down for two tours of Cappadocia.

We had skilfully haggled the price of the tours down to the absolute minimum at which he could still arrange them with Magic Valley Tours and I harboured a suspicion that the owner of Magical Valley would turn out to be a friend of his. I was wrong about that - Murat was the owner of Magic Valley Tours. We were hugely tempted to book a baloon trip as well but either the 150 euro price tag or the 4:30 am start put us off. I reckon that when you spend 150 euros you should at least be awake for the experience and I know I'm not at my best at that time of day. Maybe next time.

The Magic Valley map showed two other tours we were not going on and one of them looked quite short so we dumped the luggage and set of in search of the sights of Soğanlı Vadisi since we still had most of the day to play with. We drove into town and were pleased to find that our route involved no left turns and we were soon heading out of town and on to dusty and winding roads.

We took photographs of small houses and churches cut into the rock, visited the Keşlik Monastery and started to get the feel of the place. Mostly it felt hot. The main difference between churches and monasteries is that monasteries are harder to get to. The path to Keşlik Monastery is clearly an act of penance in itself. The man collecting a few lira for the admission charge was deeply, deeply impressed by the way I said "hello" in Turkish and might have been convinced that I was, indeed, Turkish were in not for the enormously heavy camera round my neck and the stupid hat. A real Turk would not have been so foolish on such a hot day.

We found the small town of Mustafapaşa next and stopped at a small cafe for a cold drink and a bite to eat. We ordered penerli tost (cheese toast) and a cold fanta each and relaxed under a shady canopy of vines and started to relax in the way we only seem able to do in Turkey and enjoyed the breeze which was so welcome on such a hot day. The map showed the journey to Soğanlı Vadisi would take us through some pretty interesting territory and life was good.

With the meal finished and coffee served Wendy and I just soaked up the relaxing atmosphere as the breeze quickened just a little and it was hard to find anything to worry about. I'm a skilled worrier and it seems a shame to let a talent such as mine go to waste, even on such an idylic day, but I was at a loss to find anything requiring my attention.

The breeze, perhaps with ambitions of becoming a gust, suddenly lifted the folded map from the table which launched the cup in my startled direction and deposited most of the hot contents straight down my right trouser leg from the loose change area down to my knee. I now had something to worry me and leapt to my feet like a scalded cat, though less nimbly, and remarked to Wendy that my day had taken a turn for the worse.

The manager heard my distress call, brave though I was, and hurried to my aid. The huge coffee patch on my very, very light coloured trousers told him all he needed to know and in no time at all he returned with a fresh cup of coffee. In fairness he also offered the use of the toilet facilities and didn't charge for the second cup.

I wondered if now would be a good time to tell Wendy that I had brought only the one pair of long pants with me from Side or if perhaps later might be better. I decided on later and we soon set off back to the Melis Hotel to wash out my trousers and for me to change into shorts for the rest of the day.

We restarted the journey to Soğanlı Vadisi, passed Mustafapaşa, and pressed on into the beautiful countryside stopping for a brief photo stop at the side of a lake formed, I believe, by a dam. When I restarted the car I discovered that the throttle was stuck wide open and the engine racing and my few brief wiggles of the pedal did nothing to cure the problem. I turned the engine off and rolled the car down a small hill to avoid leaving it on a tricky corner and then remembered how little braking power that leaves you with. Both feet were required to bring us to a halt at the side of the road, some 10 kilometres from anywhere (Mustafapaşa) and much further from anywhere else.

I popped the bonnet and did that man thing where you wiggle a random few items in the engine department that can be wiggled and give anything without sharp edges a few good clouts with the hand while trying to give the impression that you recognise most of the important bits and fully expect a miracle to occur.

Wendy, despite this confident display on my part, started to look for the emergency number of the car rental company, and I started to wonder if this was a good time to mention that my mobile phone was back in the hotel room with my only pair of long pants and that we were in fairly deep poo.

I employed a delaying tactic and slipped behind the wheel of the car where she could get less of a swing at me if things turned nasty and tried the engine again. It ran faultlessly and my tinkering had clearly done the trick. I put on my "I thought that would fix it" look and we were back on the road to Soğanlı Vadisi which translates, incidentally, as Onion Valley. It would have been Valley of Tears if that darn car hadn't let me off the hook and I took that moment to confess to leaving my phone back in the hotel room and also asked for a prior offence of only having one pair of long trousers to be taken into consideration. I like to live dangerously sometimes.

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Heading for Ürgüp

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 18:22:16 +0200

Wednesday 20th June

We awoke refreshed and got up in good time to enjoy the typical Turkish breakfast of cheese, tomato, cucumber, olives, boiled egg, bread and coffee. I now seem only able to take tea or coffee without milk, Turkish style, even at home. We packed the luggage back in the car and drove away from the hotel looking quietly confident until we were round the corner where we stopped and scrabbled for the maps.

The very first major junction seemed impenetrable and I was not even sure if I was going the wrong way down a one way street or not. A passer by, attracted by my heartbeat, pointed out the entry point into the mass of traffic and in we plunged. From where we were there is a fairly direct route to get onto the road to Ürgüp. In addition there is another way which takes a little longer and requires several changes of direction. We went yet another way which takes even longer and takes one through several seemingly identical junctions and several streets which have identical shops in them. Even the pedestrians looked familiar. What a strange town Aksaray must be.

The road to Ürgüp eventually gave us our first glimpses of the strange, strange landscape of Cappadocia - a moonscape of fairy chimneys capped by mushrooms; houses - entire villages even - cut into the sides of cliffs and all manner of views and vistas. It is a veritable photographers heaven and hell all at once. Heaven because each corner brought yet another amazing sight and hell because the photographs couldn't possibly do justice to what we were seeing. We were armed with both a fairly modern digital camera and a heavy and clunky SLR which I hadn't used for probably 10 years.

Only time and a large chunk of processing money will tell me if lugging that heavy camera bag was worth the effort. Photos by people much more talented than I am are on sale all over the area, of course, but I had great fun clicking away anyway. I wish the digital camera made as satisfying a noise as my trusty old SLR instead of the pathetic little beep it emits.

We pressed on to Ürgüp and stopped at another "Information" sign only to find we were in zombie territory. The man running the information centre had clearly lost the will to live and we were mumbled at for ten minutes and given a small map. Details of the only hotel in the entire area were handed over, run oddly enough by a friend of his, and we met his cat. The cat, even when it fell asleep, was more animated than its owner. I have no idea how good the Turkish health service is but charisma bypass operations appear to be available. We left in the way that people leave a really dull party.

Just 200 metres up the road we found a perfectly good hotel which had totally escaped the notice of the information chappy and since it was on the right and therefore easy to turn in to, we turned in to it. Had it been on the left we may never have discovered the charms of the Melis Hotel - Ürgüp.

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Another hot time in Turkey

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 12:44:15 +0200

This is my first attempt at Blog creation after being introduced to the concept by Rob, a travelling American, who we met in Cappadocia, Turkey, towards the end of June 2007. Wendy and I have been frequent visitors to Turkey over the ten years we have been together and, having read Rob's accounts of his travels round Europe and Asia, I wondered if anything I am able to write would prove to be as interesting to other people as Rob's observations have been to us.

Our holiday started Saturday June 16th from London - Gatwick and Wendy celebrated her birthday the next day in Side which is on the Mediteranean coast of Turkey between Antalya and Alanya. Side is a predominantly German resort which means that a little less English is spoken there than in other resorts we have visited where the British are the dominant force. That suited us fine as it gives us more chance to try out our Turkish without sounding too pretentious. It's kind of hard to struggle through in Turkish when the waiter speaks better English than some of the English do.

Rob, who hails from Atlanta, Georgia is an English teacher but addresses everyone as "Y'all" which is a form of English unfamiliar to the British ear. "Y'all" suggests a group of more than two since "Y'both" would be suitable for a pair and "You" would be for an individual so it is clear that Rob has a severe numeracy problem and made the right choice in teaching English rather than mathematics.

We enjoyed Rob's company for only a few short days in Cappadocia (more of Rob later) and I urge you to look up this part of Turkey on the internet and then pack your suitcase and go see the place for real. Seeing it for real is an unreal experience.

We hired a car in Side on Tuesday 19th having been assured that the car, a Renault Clio, would be no more than 5 months old. Another car company we flirted with told us his would be only 2 months old. Similar claims came from anyone we cared to speak to about car hire. These promises, I suspected, were part of some quaintly Turkish bullshit ritual and I believed none of them. Our car, when we got it, had clearly been round the world several times in its (short?) life and although I accept that it had been 5 months old once, it was not a recent event.

The journey to Cappadocia required me to drive some 500 kilometres on Turkish roads where any use of the indicators was taken as a sign of weakness. I generally solved this by indicating only when under severe stress and then by using the windscreen wipers instead of the flashers. Turkish drivers, in common with many other parts of the world, drive on the wrong side of the road. This may, in part, be the result of poor car construction since they don't put the wheel and pedals on the drivers side but, instead, place them where the front passenger sits. As a consequence almost all cars in Turkey are driven by the passengers which probably accounts for the high mortality rate.

Our plan "A" involved an overnight stop in Konya after crossing the truly spectacular Taurus mountains but when we saw the size of the place I immediately activated the wipers and turned right to head for the next town of Aksaray.

We found the signs for the centre of town and drove nervously in until Wendy spotted a sign saying "Information". Luckily it was on the right and I didn't even need my wipers to turn that way. We waited for a while for the traffic in the narrow street to unblock and as the way forward cleared I was passed by several cars who were quicker off the mark than I was. I finally tagged on at the end of the line, drove into a small square and parked. My trusty hikers GPS was used to mark the position of the car (to within 68 metres apparently) and we set off on foot to find a small hotel/pansiyon or whatever was available because the information office was closed. We walked round the block in circles (or possibly squares?) several times until we were convinced that the only part of Aksaray with which we were becoming increasingly familiar had no accommodation of any sort to offer.

We were greeted with several tentative "hellos" by the locals who had cleverly deduced that we were strangers in town. Wendy's strappy little summer dress was probably the giveaway in a town which doesn't see many visitors and where the typical female garb doesn't prize exposed female flesh too highly. We saw one man at least three times on our "aliens from another planet appear to be lost in town" walk and he approached us just as a friendly taxi driver took pity and was giving me a street map. Either man could have been working under wifely instructions to get Wendy off the streets before the menfolk got too unruly and the first man, who might have been a triplet actually, offered us any assistance we might require.

"We're looking for a small, cheap hotel in this area" I said in my best Turkish which also means "Take me to your friend's hotel" which is what he did.

We booked in to the Toprak Hotel for 1 night B/B and they loaned me a young Turkish chap to walk back to my car with me after Wendy made it clear that if I tried to get my car to the hotel without a native guide I would probably not be seen again. Someone else stood in the remaining car space to reserve it for me and I eventually made it back safely, despite there being several left junctions which required liberal use of indicators, wipers and worried looks. We were parked on a bit of a hill and a kind soul wisely slipped a piece of kerbstone behind my back wheel. They were obviously familiar with that type of rental car.

In the time it took me to walk to my car and get back to the hotel Wendy had joined the owners family, rendered a good portion of our life story and was slurping apple tea with the best of them. We joined our luggage in our very nice bedroom, freshened up a bit and then set off into town to explore and to eat after my having changed out of shorts and into light trousers in case it was my manly legs which were actually attracting so much interest.

As an (almost) vegetarian I generally do very well in Turkey but the place we inadvisedly selected must have been harbouring a grudge. They tempted me with the possiblity of an omelette but it turned out that all I was going to get was some pide bread freshly cooked with a little cheese in it. Quantity was not a problem, however. There was lots of it and I'd had quite enough before I was even half way through it. Wendy, on the other hand, had a generous portion of unidentified but well cooked meat accompanied by a very attractive salad. Wendy offered me some of her salad and I could have insisted on some of my own but the long drive and the lateness of the hour had taken its toll and I was a beaten man.

We paid the bill and wandered off into the night to explore a little more before finally returning to the hotel where we enjoyed a really good night's sleep in readiness for the final push to the small town of Ürgüp which we had chosen as our base for the exploration of Cappadocia.

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