Floating over Cappadocia

Sunday 26th September

We were up at 4.45am for a 5.15 departure to the take-off point for a hot air balloon ride at sunrise. About 15 minutes in the bus and we arrived in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere with "fairy chimneys" around the horizon. We were served tea and biscuits while we waited for the balloons to be set up and get our flying instructions. As it began to get light, a number of balloons rose up from behind the nearby rocks and floated over our heads. A line up of maybe 10 balloons in our portion of the area were laid out along the ground and the sound of fans filled the air as they were each inflated to the point of beginning to lift vertically. We were loaded into the basket (19 of us) and drifted slowly upward to join approximately 50 other balloons. It was a truly amazing experience and felt like a slow and peaceful (except for the occasional burst of hot air into the balloon) drift across the valley. The sight of all the other balloons was quite lovely and although directional control is only up and down, balloon operators kept in touch with each other via radio phones and indicated what they intended to do to avoid each other. We had almost an hour in the air and then descended to land which went quite smoothly although at one point we were heading straight for this (red and white) balloon and had to go up in the air again to avoid it. We celebrated with the ritual of a glass of champagne and by this stage it wasn't even 8 am!!!

On our return to the hotel we had a quick breakfast and left for our day of sightseeing at 9 am. During the day we visited a number of rock formations in the Goreme, Avanos, Pasabagi and Red Valley areas. Some of the rock formations continue to be used as restaurants etc, or in this case, the Jandamari (Police Station).

We also visited a ceramics centre and an onyx factory (each with the standard demonstration and opportunity to buy). We also visited the Goreme Open Air Museum which contained a number of early Christian churches which had been created from caves in the hillside and were up to 2000 years old with primitive frescoes (2nd Century) through to quite recent (17th Century), sophisticated paintings. For much of the time the area had housed monks who also worked in the community. Photos were not permitted inside the buildings (which were basically unlit caves anyway).

Tomorrow we head off for Ankara and visit Ataturk's Mausoleum and the Anatolian Civilizations Museum on the way.

Cappadocia

We left Konya at 8 am and our first stop was at a 13th Century caravansary where traders in camel trains on the Silk Road used to spend the night as a point of safety and replenishment. This photo shows the small mosque (without minarets) that was located at the centre of the accommodation where people could worship. These caravansary were spaced at a distance where it was considered that they could be reached (one from the other) between sunrise and sunset allowing for the terrain. This encouraged traders to use the route as they avoided being targeted by bandits along the way and also gave them somewhere to rest, eat, and sleep under the protection of the caravansary guards. In the camel storage area of the one we saw it was said that up to 600 camels could be cared for at a time.

We then headed further into Cappadocia and went to the underground city of Kaymakli. These underground cities were used to hide from approaching enemies and would serve as temporary homes for the village dwellers for periods of up to 3 months.

After lunch we stopped at a couple of locations around Goreme to see the rock formations and installations. One valley (Pigeon Valley) had a series of pigeon boxes set into caves in the rock face to give them shelter and encourage them to congregate there. Evidently the pigeons are considered sacred birds and their droppings were also a good type of fertiliser for the type of soil in the area. Farmers would put lots of food in the boxes so that the birds ate, and then deposited the manure they needed as fertiliser. At one location there was an incredibly grumpy camel (you could pay to have your photo taken sitting on it if you were game enough) who tried to bite a couple of people who got too close. I kind of felt sorry for it though and was more on its side!

After checking in at our hotel we went back into a local village for dinner (where we were served a beef casserole that was cooked in a pottery urn which was broken to reveal the contents) so if we are suffering from pottery chip syndrome tomorrow you will know why!

We have a 5.15 am departure tomorrow to do our balloon ride at sunrise so its an early night for us. Hopefully we might have some good balloon photos tomorrow.

Konya

24 September

We had an 8am start from Antalya this morning and had about an hour in the bus before reaching Aspendos. This was once the easternmost city of the Kingdom of Pergamum and one of its main attractions is a well preserved Roman amphitheatre built around AD 162. It could seat about 12,000 and is still used on an annual basis to host the Aspendos Opera and Ballet Festival. This was by far the best preserved amphitheatre we have seen so far and this is due to the ongoing maintenance it has had over the centuries which has meant that much of the original construction has been retained.

We carried on toward Konya, over the Toros (Taurus) Mountains, over good but winding roads, up to about 6,000 feet and back down to Seydisehir where we had lunch at another "pit stop cafe" mostly catering for tourists. This photo is of our lunch, a "Gosleme" which is a thin pancake spread with cheese or potato, folded and cooked on a rounded hotplate. Less than a km away was an aluminium smelter as the mountains are apparently rich in the ore used in aluminium extraction. Over the course of the morning, the landscape changed from crop plantations and hot-houses to pine forest, then to enormous rock faces with almost no vegetation and then back to pines with some cattle and goat farms. As we came back to the lower hills, the landscape was strongly reminiscent of the McKenzie Country in NZ.

By 3pm we were in Konya where we visited the Karatay Koran School. Previously a mosque and now the resting place of the person who originally created not only the school but several other buildings that helped others less well off).

We then went to the Mevlana Museum which is an enlargement of the original dervish lodge and contains the remains of Celaleddin Rumi or Mevlana, the 13th century founder of the Mevlevi dervish sect - also known as the "Whirling Dervishes". He believed that music and dance were a means of inducing an ecstatic state of universal love and could allow the individual to free themselves of the anxiety and pain of daily living. In this state they were able to be closer to God. Also in the mausoleum were the tombs of his father and many other family members (about 60 odd in total) as well as important artefacts such as early copies of the Koran, carpets, etc. No photos are allowed inside the museum so the pictures are exlusively of the outside.

We are now in our hotel almost on the University campus in Konya. Konya is a very spread out city on a large flat plain (with a population of about 1 million) and we seem to be somewhere near the edge of it. Worth noting that late this afternoon, we passed an electronic thermometer which was registering 36deg C at the time but not sure how accurate this was as it seemed slightly cooler than some of our previous days.

Tomorrow we head off to Cappadocia and the land of the fairy chimneys. We are booked to do a hot air balloon ride on Sunday morning (weather permitting).

Day in Antalya

Thursday 23 September
Today was both fairly relaxed and fairly hot (somewhere in low to mid-30's would be our guess). The day started in an entertaining manner with David's "discrete kiwi clothesline" on the balcony coming adrift when he opened the door and sling-ahotting my remaining underwear from the 5th floor balcony on to the entrance footpath below.....lol. Needless to say he was hurriedly dispatched to retrieve it and he was hoping the security guard would not check his pockets on the way back into the hotel!! Luckily it was early in the morning and no-one seemed to notice anything, and the clothes line only had a couple of things on it. However, it was with some trepidation that I put more clothes back on the line for today!

After breakfast/brunch we spent a couple of hours walking round the Antalyian Museum of Archeaology which was really quite interesting and it contained a number of the statues and artifacts that had been found during excavations at Perge (which we visited yesterday). Not all of the artifacts are kept at this Museum as some are in the Berlin Museum. However, it helped us gain some perspective on how impressive the city would have been in its time when you integrated the remains of the city we saw yesterday with the statues, the tiles, carpets, etc which we were viewing today. One of these looked remarkably like a Hellenistic version of Lisa Simpson don't you think? but seriously the statues were quite memorable.

We then walked about 3 km into the city centre and saw the clock tower (which was built in 1244 and marked the upper limit of the Old Town) and the fluted minaret (a 13th century minaret dating from the reign of Seljuk Sultan Alaeddin Keykubad and which has become the symbol of Antalya). The red bricks were evidently once decorated with turquoise tiles but at the moment most of the minaret was encased in a covering as it was undergoing restoration.

After a couple of wrong turns we eventually found Hadrian's Gate which was built to honour the visit of Emperor Hadrian in AD 130. It has three arched gateways fronted by four Corinithian columns and has also had restoration work done on it. The area between the arches now has a glass covered walkway so that you can see through to where there is clear signs of wheel ruts cut into the stone.

We then walked back via the harbour area to the hotel and by the time we arrived we were quite grateful for our air-conditioned room!

Perge and Antalya

Wednesday 22 September

Today's travelling took us through a pass in the Toros mountain range and across wide open plains toward the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. Much of the flat land was planted in citrus and other fruits, melons, tomatoes, peppers, chilli, cotton and corn. Vast areas were under plastic "glass houses". It amazes us that the population of Turkey is fed at all by the relatively small cultivated area of Turkey (apart from countless miles of olive trees) and equally amazed that so much meat is eaten here when we have seen no more than a few dozen cows, no sheep, no pigs and maybe a few hundred goats throughout the whole of our travel. It seems not a lot to go around a population of 73 million.

We had our lunch near an irrigation lake where a breeze was a welcome relief in the about 32 deg heat then drove another hour or so to Perge - another city which has not been occupied since the earthquake-prone 11th Century but whose history goes back about 3000 years and includes some time as being the main city of the area. It originally also had a port (like Ephesus, it is now about 3.5 miles inland). It was part of Alexander the Great's empire around 340BC and occupied by the Romans for hundreds of years once the King Pergamum bequeathed it to his friends the Romans in his will (feel free to correct me if I got that story wrong, I have heard so many stories of conquered, destroyed or rebuilt cities in the last couple of months, I may get mixed up). Since the Romans built over the top of and extended the original city of Perge the only feature remaining from pre-Roman times is two towers forming the gate to the old city. These are currently under re-construction by a Turkish archaeology team. The main (Roman) "street" is a clear feature and a second major street of the Roman city is about to be excavated. The usual constructions of a Roman city - the Gate, the Agora, the Bath house, a Stadium (now collapsed), a central "main street" were apparent but, of course, mostly in ruins. I know they just look like fancy broken rocks, but they are starting to make more sense now after seeing so many Roman remains. This whole experience was so much pleasanter than the two previous buried cities as the crowds were much less today - although the heat from the sun was just as great.

We drove on to the city of Antalya where we now spend two nights. This hotel has reliable and free internet wifi so we should be able to update again tomorrow night as well. We are planning to have a more relaxing start tomorrow as we have a day "free" but hope to visit the Museum (which has some of the statues which were rescued from Perge) and we may even get a dip in the Mediterranean.