Flying with the birds and down to 42 below

I've been having way too much fun so haven't posted in a few days but the end of the tour is near and I'm relaxing under the verandah in the hotel waiting for my transfer to the airport to arrive.  The rest of the people are taking a 12 hour bus trip but I decided that was a bit of a nightmare and managed to find a cheap flight.

I think my last post was after Kas and we spend a night in Konya after that.  There's not much to say about Konya apart from the felt making demonstration we went to - way more complicated and time consuming than you would think - and the museum.  Whirling dervishes are big in Konya and there is the tomb of Mevlana who is big in dervish circles.  I have seen his tomb so this means I will have a long and happy life.  Combined with Cleopatra's pool of youth in Pamukkale, I'm pretty much set.

The highlight of Goreme has been the hot air balloon ride.  We were up before dawn yesterday morning and then sat around in a room waiting for nearly an hour (what a waste of sleeping time!) before heading out in the van.  We were with Graham, and englishman with 30 odd years ballooning experience.  We were up in the air just in time to see the sunrise and then floated for about an hour looking at the rock formations, grape vines, pumpkin fields and drying grapes below.  Some of the best photos are of the other 80 balloons that were up at the same time - about 1500 people in the air.  Graham thought that it was too congested and stayed away from the other balloons as much as possible.  On landing, four men grabbed onto the side of the basket and stopped it from turning over.  I  thought they were a bit skinny for the job.  Cherry juice and cheap bubbles finished the trip.

On the way from Konya, we stopped in an old caravan shelter on the trip to Goreme, and that was interesting for a short stop.  The shelter's were so important for trade that everything in them was provided free by the  Sultan.  This one is on the silk road.

Goreme is a nice little tourist town full of cafes (including one that makes a decent flat white!), restaurants and tourist shops.  This seems to be very much a backpacker destination rather than a British tourist enclave like some of other destinations.   We went out to dinner last night and had pottery kebap which was quite interesting.  Then we went to Fatboys bar for a few drinks and trying the hookah pipe (we had apple flavoured).  It was quite nice and I felt very chilled out but not sure if that was the wine or the hookah.

Cappodocia is full of interesting rock formations - those of you who have seen my facebook pictures will know that some of these formations are a wee bit phallic.  People made their homes in these and you can stay in cave hotels still today.  The open air museum we visited is full of churches some of which have fantastic frescos on their walls.  Apparently they had to keep the churches secret because of the frescoes as icons - even in paintings - were considered to be sinful.  The churches were quite small and there were lots of people so we started taking turns peeking inside to see if it was worth the others making the effort.  They are quite interesting but they start to look a bit same-ish after a while.  We did a bit of a hike to one of the valleys with rock formations yesterday and went quad biking to a few other locations today, including one which dominates the skyline at Cavisun (or something like that).  I accidently went off-roading on the bike for a wee bit, but it was a quite fun, if dusty, way to spend the morning.

Yesterday we also went on a trip to Derinkuyu which is this big underground city.  It is from a something or a rather century BC and was build by the Hittites who were clearly quite short.  It was only used for protection during times of war but it is quite a large city. They have excavated 8 floors and there are apparently 13 into total (or was it 14?).  It was really interesting but very low ceilings in places.  Ozan told us that if went round this one semi-circular tunnel three times we'd be lucky in love and then once we'd all done it told us he'd made the whole thing up!  We went down to the 7th floor which is about 42 metres down.  If I'd planned ahead we could have drunk some 42 below vodka.