Fast & Furious in Cappadocia

On Thursday morning we took the train to Ankara, where we then caught a bus which went to Cappadocia, the journey lasted around 9 hours with waiting for buses, so we arrived in Goreme, a town in the heart of Cappadocia just before evening. We then found a hostel for 15 liras a night and set about checking out the local scenery. The hostel was nice, clean and set in a cave as many of the hotels/hostels are in Cappadocia but we were never quite sure who was a guest and who was staff, we found a Japanese guy, who was travelling around the world, serving us breakfast! Also met a Welsh guy, who quit his job to see the World, he has done 9 countries in 3 weeks, a very interesting character!

We hit the sack quite early, although i found it tough to sleep due to the amount of snoring in the Dorm, not pleasant! Made me soo glad that I don't snore myself. We woke up and planned on hiring motorbikes for the day but the owner of the hotel advised us to rent a car instead as we were planning to go quite far and it would cost the same as the tour of that area. Having not driven for a while i jumped at the chance! The car was a Renault Symbol and the interior was much the same as my Clio back in the UK, apart from the fact that the steering wheel was on the other side. It was the first time i had driven on the right hand side, but i was soon into my stride, checking out what the car could do! It was fun and we drove down to see one of the underground cities, which is not recommended for those who are claustrophobic, as there were a couple of tight squeezes. It was a city built underground back in the times of the Byzantine Empire, to protect civilians from invading armies. Soon after, we drove to a small village called Belirsirma, which was as rural as it gets! Very refreshing however and we then moved on to Ihlara valley. We made a few more stops at some monuments and old churches, aswell as another underground city. We then made our way back, I loved driving on the empty roads, made some sandwiches and walked around Goreme.

The following day we planned to use the mini bus transport service they had in Goreme, however Mario, one of the guys who came, was adamant he wanted to hire motorbikes, so we did! They were Mopeds really, but having never really driven one, and then driving them on dirt tracks and up mountains, It was much more of an adrenaline rush then it may seem! With the bikes we did a radius of about 20 km around Goreme, going off road and into dirt tracks and along the highways around the mountains and up into the mountains. It was a great experience, although it gets quite cold even with the sun shinning. We definitely conquered most of what there was to see.

The journey home was more than eventful, the two Spanish guys wanted to hitchhike, but we were such amateurs, in the end we settled on buses and trains. We eventually got back home around 2am. Cappadocia, calm, dusty and enough to do, definitely worth a visit.