As we arrived last night at about 8:30 p.m. we didn't have a chance to check out prices for the around Cappadocia as well as hot air balloon flights. We Simply accepted the package that the hotel offered. This was a package costing 145 euros, and included what's called The Green tour which takes you to a number of different sites which are quite far from Cappadocia, as well as a two-hour ATV ride, and finally the balloon flight itself. We organized to have the green tour today. We had breakfast at 8 a.m. at the hotel and then a bus came to pick us up. After a number of different changes of buses were finally on our way to the first site, Derinkuyu, which is an underground city. Our guide wasn't particularly good, he didn't really know exactly the history, or at least he didn't seem to know the history surrounding the underground city, but from what I gathered it was basically a refuge for early peoples from around the 10C BC. The caves pretty narrow with low ceilings, so you have to hunch over quite a bit. The deepest we went down was 55 meters and it was quite cold, one of the guys did not bring down a jumper and I think he was really suffering. We spent about 1 hour in the caves exploring and then returned to the surface. I'm not sure what I was expecting but the caves were a lot more rudimentary than I would have thought. I kind of envisioned a large open space like a large cave that have been carved out, but it was rather some tunnels which had been widened out at points. I guess it was more of a refuge than a place to live.
The next place that we visited was called Ihlara, which is a gorge that has been carved out in the soft tuff Ash Rock by the snow melt and rain that comes down from the mountains. I think for this particular place it's from a mountain called Hasan. We went on a very easy four kilometer walk through the gorge to a lunch spot.
After lunch we visited Selime Monastery, which was a Christian a monastery carved into the rock formation, dating from the 8th to 10th century. It was pretty interesting, but Jackie and I both wanted to explore at our leisure , but the guide said we only had 40 minutes. We don't really enjoy these types of tours , where you are forced to be with a whole bunch of other people, and you must stick to a rigid schedule. Jackie and I managed to wander off alone and we enjoyed this time much more than when we were part of the tour group. After this, we were herded up together back into the van, and were driven to a very tourist lookout point.
More details of the sites we went to are here http://www.captivatingcappadocia.com/cappadocia-green-tour/
As you can see this is a very well worn trail. As I said before, Jackie and I didn't really enjoy the tour. It also didn't help, that our guide did not speak English very well, so we were struggling to understand him. What was good was that the tour picked us up from our hotel and returned us there, Jackie and I are not used to this kind of service. We returned to our hotel at around 5:30, and then went out for a light snack, before heading up the hill behind our hotel to the Sunset Point Lookout, to watch the sunset. Once the sun went down, we went back to our hotel and had dinner. Tomorrow it is meant to rain with thunder storms so we don't know what we are going to do. I am quite keen to explore some of the rock formations without a tour, allowing us some time to simply enjoy the scenery, but not if it's raining all day.
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