Day 8 of Turkey Vacation: Red Tour of Göreme on August 26th, 2016
This morning, much to our displeasure, we found Metro company dropped us off at the Nevşehir Bus Station (which was on the outskirts of the city of Nevşehir), rather than in the center of Göreme Town. And to our greater displeasure, we were reminded to get off the bus not by the bus conductor, but by some travel agent guy at the bus station. (One possible explanation other than the bus company’s blatant unprofessionalism was that the bus conductor didn’t speak English very well, which we took it.)
Then we were informed (by this travel agent guy) that Metro company would provide us free shuttle to Göreme Bus Station, but we were supposed to wait at Nevşehir for the Istanbul bus to come, and/or that the shuttle vans of Metro company wasn’t currently available. Well, since he’s basically the only one at the station that spoke English, we sort of had to trust him.
That was quarter past 6 in the morning, and the whole bus station was literally a ghost town. The Istanbul bus and our shuttle van came at quarter past 7, and during that hour some magic happened (yes, I was summarizing it this way) and the travel agent guy somehow managed to persuade us to book tours with him, since he was offering better quotes than our hotel (80TL or 90TL for red tour, I forgot the details) and we hadn’t finalized all the tours with our hotel yet.
Conclusion, tours around Cappadocia should be better booked in person than through emails, and to do that it’s better to arrive in the afternoon (or evening) than in the morning.
The first time my hotel put two beds on separate floors.
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So after the Metro company van dropped us in Göreme and we checked into our hotels (thank God there were rooms available early in the day), we caught some naps and waited for the travel agency guy to pick us up at 10.
Since we booked the red tour only a few hours in advance, our tour was actually guided by a friend and licensed Turkish tour guide of that travel agency guy, who was driving a family car instead of the standard tour vans. It felt almost like a private tour.
The first stop of the red tour was Göreme Panorama, a spot overlooking the town of Göreme and its neighboring valleys, designated for people to take souvenir photos.
The next stop was Pigeon Valley, just outside the town of Uchisar. Since Göreme was in some sort of geologically basin, it’s hidden from distant view. People from Uchisar used to send pigeons to Göreme carrying military information. So to raise the amount of pigeons required for that messenger use, people dwell pigeon holes in the valley so that pigeons could hatch eggs, and since the valley was full of pigeons.
The next stop was Çavuşin Cave Village. It used to be a Greek cave settlement, but the population exchange after the Turkey-Greece war meant the caves were long abandoned.
This used to be a Christian Church, and our tour guide told us the concave on the left should point to the Christian Holy city of Jerusalem (or Bethlehem, I forgot). Later Muslims conquered this place and converted it to a mosque, and the big concave on the right should point to the Islamic holy city of Mecca. The problem was that, Google Maps told me these two cities were roughly the same direction.
Since it’s considered inappropriate in the Islamic religion to place Quran below one’s belly, they carved into the wall concaves to place Quran.
The tour guide told us more interesting stories along the way, about the expenses to obtain a "cave permit" to turn them into hotels, and so on.
After that we climbed to the top of that hill with some wonderful views.
The next stop was some pottery showroomworkshop near Avanos. The town of Avanos was famous for its pottery product (maybe this has something to do with the river that flowed through the town). But since I was pretty bad at pottery, I will skip this part.
Next stop of the day was lunch, buffet style in a restaurant (Han’s) outside Avanos. Since we were a small group that didn’t need to spend time waiting for people, we finished the tours pretty quick, and were the first to arrive at that restaurant.
After lunch the next stop was Pasabag, also known as Monks Valley, and it’s said Pasabag has the highest density of chimney rocks in the whole Cappadocia region. There our guide gave us a brief geological lecture about the formation of such rocks (different levels of erosion), and then we roamed the rocks.
Mostly visitors to Pasabag would just stay on the ground level, however, my exploration spirits found me this very steep trail up to the top the rocks.
Looks like waves.
The next stop was Devrent Valley, also known as imagination valley, where the rocks resemble different animals. Since I lack imagination of this sort, I won’t go into details.
The next stop was some wine shop. The whole Cappadocia region was covered by grape plants where there weren’t rocks. I don’t drink alcohol, and I was wondering how such massive alcohol production could possibly exist in a Muslim country.
The next stop was Family Chimney, where there were three chimney rocks of various heights resembling father/mother/child two parents and a child in a family of three.
There was some consensus among everyone in the car to skip Göreme Open Air Museum, which was the usual final stop of the red tour. Since it was an overnight bus the previous night, we didn’t rest very well (especially true for my father), so we said goodbye with our guide and went back to the hotel room and got more sleep.
I woke up some time after sunset and did a little exploration of the little town of Göreme.
After that, I took some more photos of the starry night, some of my most satisfying photos thus far
END