Fairy Dusted

Friday, May 04, 2018
Göreme, Nevşehir, Turkey
Our nine-hour overnight bus ride was happily uneventful. (I say that because, for example, our overnight bus ride through Panama was NOT uneventful, as the bus snagged some overhead power lines while driving full speed at 2am, and nearly rolled us into a ditch. "Uneventful" is good, I'm just saying.)  We arrived at the Goreme, Cappadocia, bus station promptly at 7am. The morning was warm, quiet, and the town itself is so small that we only had to walk ten minutes to our guesthouse.
Goreme is a tiny town famous for its "fairy chimneys"- bizarre rock formations, resembling pointy hats and mushrooms, that rise out of the landscape. The formations are unique volcanic productions, and troglodytic people built entire homes and towns out of, and within, the rocks. In the 4th century AD, early Christians began building churches in the rocks, complete with stunning frescoes. The moonscape-like  terrain is bizarre and otherworldly, and feels a bit like the American Southwest mixed with Egypt's White Desert. It is truly like nowhere else on earth.     
After dropping our backpacks at our guesthouse- a cave hotel, hewn right into the rock- we set off for Goreme's Open Air Museum. Just a kilometer away, this is a fully excavated Byzantine settlement. There are no words to describe the utter beautiful weirdness of this place. 
There are multiple early Christian churches cut right into the rocks; many still retain their colorful wall frescoes of Biblical scenes. The site is set up like a park, with stone pathways and landscaping.  It nearly feels artificial, and dare I say it again....Disneyfied. It simply doesn't look real- the rock formations look like they are intentionally poured concrete.
But even inside the rock churches is breathtaking; frescoes from the 4th century are completely intact and vivid, due to the lack of any sunlight penetrating the rocks. I've never seen artwork this old look so....well, not old.
The vistas from the Open Air Museum are just incredible; there is nothing but fairy chimneys and open space and sky as far as you can see. The views were so amazing that we decided to explore the hiking trails nearby the Open Air Museum. I will state the oft-repeated mantra of The Joneses Do Not Hike, but the Rose Valley is apparently the best place in the world to see the fairy chimneys and abandoned rock churches. So we made an exception.
While gorgeous to look at, the terrain of the Rose Valley can best be described as hell-hot, dusty, and generally  unpleasant. At noon, the temperatures were in the 90s, and the heat radiated off the dry scrub. And I'm not gonna lie, while climbing some of the hills, I was questioning our choice of activity. But then....we reached the top, and walked through a tiny abandoned rock church, and the entire valley was laid out in front of us. It's truly one of the most fantastic vistas I've ever seen.
We continued through the Rose Valley to another abandoned church, this one with actual windows and wall frescoes. Unlike the Open Air Museum, this entire valley is free to enter, and  unregulated and unmonitored.  You can climb on, up, or in anything you can scramble up to. This is both good and bad, as we found lots of cigarette butts, trash, and graffiti in what should be a restricted treasure.
While the fairy chimneys were amazing, we finally succumbed to dust and heat exhaustion by early afternoon, and headed back to Goreme. We had lunch at a cafe selling pide, which is Turkish pizza shaped like a boat. Like the delicious menemen and testi kebabs (kebabs cooked in a clay pot), pide is also the bomb. I am approaching toxic levels of carbohydrate intake on this trip, however.  On that note, we also had Turkish ice cream after lunch- which contains tree sap for extra sticky deliciousness.
Tomorrow we plan to venture farther afield from Goreme to see Cappadocia's famous underground cities.

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