travelling never goes as planned.
David and I have looked back on our journey so far and even the simplest of days have been
full of surprizes and shocks. Why bother making a plan? It gets you on your path to find
what God has planned for you.
We arrived in Cappadocia at 9am, I call our new, mysterious couch surfer and hear that
we cant go to the house until 7/6pm and to call him then frm the bus stop...
no problem. Problem yoke.
We arrange with a "french speaking" man to leave our bags at the bus stop and hitch hike
to another local villiage where more tourists go.
info centre tells us to go to the Goreme open air museum, so we go and on our way we meet
a Bosnian who shares with us tea and tells us a good hike to take. We first go to the museam.
OK so Cappadocia is amazing.
The people who originally settled in the mountanous landscape were all christians, around
9th century, earlier even. The Romans (until the Romans gave it over to the Byzantines etc)
So many churches built into the rocks, with the most intricate pictures and designs depicting
the bible. As the biblical script was in latin, and many people were against latin at this time,
the only way to teach people the stories were through this art work. So it had a lot of
care put into it.
It's the afternoon, over 30 degrees, food's too expensive to buy here, we have until 6/7,
why not start a hike? We started walking through Red Valley, jumped into Rose Valley,
found ourselves wandering up the sun set view etc.
Stunning.
The next four days we based on such hikes around the huge land of cappadocia (which is separated
into many different towns). Only the photos can try to explain the beauty of these days.
But four days hiking would leave us weak at the end of our days...
We couldn't have asked for better couch surfing hosts.
Mahmut picked us up that evening and drove us to his home in a little town of cappadocia.
A more suburban town, though carrying it's fair share of history and treks.
Mahmut lives with his mother Hatije and sister Pillin and they welcomed us warmly -
Whilst Pillin speaks good English and taught us much about turkish history and culture, their
mother could only say 'oh shit!' which she'd learnt from TV. The mother was unwell after hurting
her back some time ago and remained on the couch mostly, though with a smile always she was
a pleasure to talk with. We spent the evenings cooking turkish food - which I've learnt
consists of a lot of really good butter bought from the farmers. Mayonaise and tomato sauce
is also used a lot... We ate turkish ravioli, Mousakha (with meat), and a dish with bread cut up
and mixed with chicken bits, a tomatoe cooked with butter sauce and yoguhrt.
We had so much fun together. We left with them drawings I've drawn, a lot of food (sweets)
we bought for them, a card, and many memories. In turn, they gave me a book in turkish...
not sure what to do with it...a t shirt each, a knitted love heart thingy each and it
gets crazier - Their neighbour, in turn, gave us a bag of hazlenuts each.
I loved them, as they're only grown here in turkey and italy and i'd never eaten hazlenuts
not in cadbury chocolate before.
But by a bag each I mean 10 kilos each. A Huge shopping bag each.
While I'll be leaving some at each couch surfers's home, and nibbling on some myself
throughout the day, i'll try and bring some home to share with my family and friends (which
is what they wanted me to do) but for three months I am not carrying this extra weight
around.
Oh but on maybe our third day of hiking through Pigeon valley we found ourselves at a very
dangerous point. Imagine a thin fence with spheres lining the top of it. The fence was
made of sandy rock and was about 100 metres high, dipping vertically into a deep valley.
The trek we'd wandered into demanded you to walk over these spheres (which have a four
metre diametre). To climb up them was impossible. We would be climbing and bits of the rock
would crumble in our hands and we'd slide down again.
We thought we'd have to go allllll the way back on our path, past the viscious viscous dogs
(which I think was the real worry) and maybe find another path, some 4k behind us.
But I saved the day!!!
I went wandering through the rose bushes leading over the mountain to the other side of the valley -
you could see that the valley was like a Y shape. It was the same old sturggle - climbing
over a steep sandy cliff, but I started climbing anyway and I got to the top !!!! From there you
could walk around and over to another path leading down another valley. I called David up
and from there (a magnificent view of noses - all shapes and sizes!) we found our new path
Every day was similar - a wonderful hike, coming home to a loving and beautiful family. Only the photos can really try to share it with you, really
No comments:
Post a Comment