Monday, January 7, 2013

The Green Tour & the 12km walk

As a rule of thumb, I am somewhat against taking organised tours through travel agencies but in this instance it was well played.

Our tour guide, Efe was well informed, funny and had a michevious sparkle in his eyes, all in good humour though. The tour started at 0930, ended at 1730, covering a distance of 220kms with a group of 14.

Places visited:
a. Goreme Panorama - for a full view of the city atop its highest point.
b. Pigeon Valley - as it's name suggests it was once a valley full of pigeons, evidence of their existence is still apparent through the pigeon houses but numbers have dwindled drastically.
c. Derinkuyu Underground City - for me the highlight of the tour. There is a 9km underground cave complex connecting Derinkuyu to Kaymaklir. We only went down up to level 8 and it's quite obvious there's a lot more to explore.
d. Ihlara Valley - a 4km walk across nature, beautiful scenery all throughout, tranquil too.
e. Selime Monastery - A church built into the rock formations with pristine frescoes still very obvious. Sadly it doesn't invoke a feeling of reverence anymore, maybe because any sacredness left has been eroded by tourism.
f. Artisanal Handicraft Centre - a handicraft centre where we were showed the different kinds of precious stones endemic to Turkey and no before anyone gets any ideas I did not buy any jewellery.

So that was yesterday and today, 15/12, we decided to take a walk in the valley on our own.  A walk turned out to be about 12kms in distance covering some beautiful canyons, churches and nature. A rather perfect day it was, we'll be leaving Goreme for Kayseri tomorrow, it will be bittersweet me thinks but memories of Goreme will stay for quite a while I'm sure.

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