Cappadocia
What a weekend! Once again, I left Istanbul to travel through Turkey. This time I travel to Cappadocia in central Turkey. With caves, incredible geology, and an interesting history, Cappadocia is a beautiful region. First, the location of region (between two techtonic plates) has left it vulnerable to volcano eruptions in the past. The left over ash combined with caves, mountains, and dry weather have created incredible rock formations. Check out these pictures.
Historically, the region was actually Christian and Greek. Between the 6th and 12th century, the town of Grome (where I stayed) was home to a cave dwelling order of monks. Now you may think that sounds like no fun, but I assure you it was much cooler then Fraggle Rock. They actually had caves that were churches with domes that housed mosaics and paintings. Some of this has been recovered and can viewed at the open air- museum.
Today, the region is both beautiful and corny. The formations take your breathe away, while it is clear that tourism is the region's only source of income. We stayed in cave hotel called Bedrock. Cave hotels are everywhere. Ours was actually a hostel, but it was pretty sweet, and we had our own bathroom and shower. Our hosts were very accomdaating, they sat us down with a map and gave us a full explanation of the area. What cave cities were worth seeing and which weren’t, what attractions we would enjoy. They understood that we had a short time there and helped us make the most of it. After an 11 hour over night bus trip, it was a relief to have the information right in front of us. 
We headed to the open air museum in which we could see the remenants of the monks. It was pretty cool, surely impressive. On the walk over there, we ran into a guy offering camel rides, as this was one of my goal, how could I say no? So I got to ride a camel along a mountain path. Once on the camel, I couldn’t believe how high up I was or how bumpy the ride was. All in all, it was great time.
Next we opted for an atv tour of the scenery. I think this was the highlight of trip for me (other then my camel ride). For the tour, we were able to ride an ATV through the sand and mountains seeing views no hotel could offer. We were able to stop and take pictures whenever we wanted. As a part of it, we were allowed to see a cave home. Literally, this family lived in cave with a living room, kitchen, dining room, and bedrooms. The rooms were small, the floors, ceilings, and sometimes walls were all rock. The appeal is they're warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Many of them have been in their families for generations. Touring from sight to sight meant riding through Grome, which was very interesting. It definitely was a poorer area that only knew tourism as a source of income. It played up the caves, traditional Turkish this and that even the town bar was called the Flinstone cave. Some parts were abandoned or very run down. It was sad to see the steep comparison between overpriced hotel and rundown/ abandon home.
Later that night, we attended a traditional Turkish dinner in a cave. It had traditional folk dancers, belly dancers, and whirling dervishes. It was definitely a super tourist thing to attend but it was really, really fun.
The next morning we successly navigated our way from Grome to an underground city by way of minibuses and then to Nevshir to some museums. The underground city was cool, but for someone of my height it was not very fun and quickly I was over it. After that, we spent day museum hopping. At the end of the afternoon, we had to catch our bus to the next destination.... more to follow on Konya tomorrow.
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