kapadokya, turkiye

I am tired after today's tour. We began just after breakfast, on a tourbus chartered by the hotel (for an extra fee). A half-dozen other hotel guests joined us, and we piled into an old-school Mercedes mini-bus with fold-down tray tables and attendant lights above the seats. It wasn't actively snowing, but the landscape was covered in a layer of white, with patches of earthen layers showing through on the steeper hills and towering rocks. We stopped at an overlook where we got the first explanation of Fairy Chimneys and the history behind them. They're basically the effect of erosion, and only about 5% are inhabited today. Some of the remaining homes have tiny holes above the door which serve as entrances for pigeons. Turkish farmers use their dung as fertilizer (although these days, most use artificial chemical fertilizers -- and pesticides, we were told -- I cringe to think of what residue remained on the strawberries I ate a few days ago).


When we landed yesterday, it was actively snowing and I was actively suffering from SADD. This was the worst-case scenario for our ill-planned spring break destination: we had packed for the cold, but not for the snow. Earlier that morning, the airport shuttle had stopped abruptly at the offramp for domestic flights, parking at an acute angle to the triangle of orange trash cans filled with sand. "Domestic?" he asked a few times before we realized what was going on--that he was booting us out at the offramp while cars whizzed past at 60 mph because he didn't want to pull through domestic departures. We de-vanned and wheeled our bags along the shoulder, shaking heads in amazement.

The trip from the Kayseri airport took over two hours, as we rambled from town to tiny town and dropped off other travelers. The towns looked like combinations of shantytown and ski villa, some suburban areas with new homes shouldered up to crumbling cave houses. The landscape was unreal; the highway between each town rose and fell as it ambled through fairy chimney valleys and crept up stratified hillsides.

Back to today: the tour van dropped us at a row of souvenier stand leading to the entrance to Kaymaklı, one of the many underground cities used by Christians in Turkey centuries ago. In my mind, I had pictured a cave the size of two football fields, with brightly-lit huts and multi-story cave houses. I thought it would resemble the Lost City of Atlantis in Duck Tales cartoons. Instead, we entered the cave and descended down a tunnel barely wider than Jordan's shoulders and lower than my tallest measurement. Anyone with claustrophobia would not do well in ancient Christian Cappadocia. We stopped to hear about the first room, a small living area with cubbies off each side to store the children during the days of war (no joke--so they wouldn't play and make noise when enemies prowled). We descended deeper down another path into more and more rooms, weaving back and forth down four stories like ants in a plastic-sided ant farm. The kitchen was larger, and housed a giant round of basalt for grinding--a type of rock not found that deeply in the earth, meaning it was somehow rolled into this space. The air circulated through ventilation holes 70 meters deep and carved perfectly square all the way down. It was unreal, like navigating a video game or a movie set. They also guess that these cities may connect to other underground dwellings over 5 km away. It's hard to imagine how the builders estimated the thickness of the ceilings/floors, and it was only discovered in the 1960's. The tour guide's friends used to play in the caves before they were privatized and regulated--can you imagine such a fort?


We resurfaced and went wine-tasting. The Cappadocia region is known for its wine,but because of the soil type it can only grow dry varieties. The owner poured us a white, then a red--and frankly, both tasted like cheap wine, watered down (not all cheap wine is gross--I am a frequent conniseur of 2-buck Chuck). Not one bottle was taken home. We had lunch at a Medieval Times-style restaurant, with spectator seating holding over 100 tourists and two Turkish musicians playing in the center stage. It was quite a spectacle, and we had about 30 Japanese tourists at the tables in front of ours. Next stop was a pottery factory, where artisan painters hand-glazed amazing detail into pots and vases that were thrown effortlessly by potters. They asked for a volunteer, and the tour group had collectively elected Jordan in advance. He did a fine attempt, but they didn't let him place the clay for himself and it wasn't quite centered, so he was at an unfair advantage. I think that was part of their plan, before leading us to their shop, to how us how very difficult the craft was.

Our tour mates turned out to be really nice people--one pair was a brother and sister, both Berkeley alums, both know my friends from Cal and the sister now goes to NYU law. It was quite a coincidence that we ended up on the same tour, with a similar spring break itinerary. We have the same flight out tomorrow evening, so we'll probably exchange email addresses. The other family was from Georgia, made up of a young couple and the girl's parents. The father was a greyhaired, glasses-wearing man named Jeff--couldn't help but make me wish Dad was on the trip too.

The day ended with a hike and more spectacular Fairy Chimneys and rock formations. The colors are beautiful, and the stratified layer of rock on the sloping cliffs look like tablecloths thrown over a plateau. We crunched through fresh snow and orange clay-soil, and breathed in the silence of an otherworldly terrain.