Cappadocia: Fairy chimneys, caves and 3 cheers for hitchhiking!

Our picnic spot while hiking Rose Valley in Goreme

Erosion shaped the incredible landscape of the Göreme valley, but thousands of years ago humans began carving an incredible chamber and tunnel complex into the soft rock. Beginning in the fourth century AD an underground cultural landscape was created here.

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Thousands of cave houses in Goreme, Cappadocia

Ancient volcanic eruptions blanketed this region with thick ash, which solidified into a soft rock—called tuff—tens of meters thick. Wind and water went to work on this plateau, leaving only its harder elements behind to form a fairy tale landscape of cones, pillars, pinnacles, mushrooms, and chimneys, which stretch as far as 130 feet into the sky.

But human hands performed equally incredible works here. The place is honeycombed with a network of human-created caves: living quarters, places of worship, stables, and storehouses were all dug into the soft stone. Tunnel complexes formed entire towns with as many as eight different stories hidden underground.

Göreme was inhabited as early as 1800 to 1200 B.C. and later sat on the boundary between rival empires; first the Greeks and Persians and later the Byzantine Greeks and a host of rivals. This precarious political position meant that residents needed hiding places—and found them by tunnelling into the rock itself.

The site became a religious refuge during the early days of Christianity. By the fourth century Christians fleeing Rome’s persecution had arrived in some numbers and established monastic communities here. The monks excavated extensive dwellings and monasteries and created Byzantine fresco paintings in cave chapels beginning in the seventh century, which endure in well-preserved isolation to this day.

The primary threats to this World Heritage site come from the forces that created it in the first place. Erosion is returning and extensive preservation efforts are meant to ensure that the wonders of Göreme survive for another millennium. With increased tourist trade, however, humans have brought modern development and damage or destruction to some of the ancient sites they once created.

Posing in the doorway into an old church carved into the rock found during our hike.

I wanted to climb up there and explore but didn't look super safe!

To this day most of the tall rock pinnacles are still inhabited and many of the rock-cut storerooms are still stuffed with grapes, lemons, potatoes and flat bread waiting for the winter.

We are staying in the little charming town of Goreme and almost everyone here lives in a cave...rooms are chiseled out of the stone and usually balconies and front parts of the house are added on with modern constructions. Our hotel is a cave even! Cool except no wifi in the rooms due to the thick rock walls.

Today we first went to the Goreme Open Air Museum.
This is a must-see site in Cappadocia and a member of UNESCO World Heritage List.

The museum is a vast complex composed of scores of refectory monasteries placed side-by-side, each with its own fantastic church.

It contains the finest of the rock-cut churches with beautiful frescoes (wall paintings) whose colors still retain all their original freshness.

It also presents unique examples of rock-carved architecture and fresco technique. Most of the churches here belong to the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries.

After the museum we went on a 5Km hike through Rose Valley that pumped us out in a neighbouring town called Cavusin. It was a great hike...everywhere we looked the steep rock walls and fairy chimneys were filled with doors and windows of old long abandoned houses and churches...you could explore whatever you could reach but most entrances have long since lost their stairs and it was impossible to climb the shear rockface in.

That's me after a little rock climbing...I was quite a ways up and it was harder to get down then up!

We even had a sweet stray dog that trekked along with us right to the city limits...he would even patiently wait while we took photos.

Our stray puppy.

Getting a drink of water.

The last part of the hike was about 5Km further along a hot dusty highway back to Goreme. Cars full of Turkish men kept driving by and honking at us...we were so hot and tired we kept jokingly yelling for them to stop honking and pull over and drive us home already...about 10 minutes later our prayers were answered and 2 nice guys offered us a ride into town (saving us easily an hour of hot highway walking).

At this point we didn't care if they were serial killers we just jumped in their car gratefully and were dropped a short distance to our hotel where the swimming pool lives! We spent the rest of today soaking in the sun. Tomorrow we ride hot air balloons! So early to bed as they pick us up at 5:30am!