Blog 4: Oludeniz to Capadoccia

Kia Ora Koutou!

It’s early morning, 630am, on Tuesday 7 September local time. Simon and Nic have just left us to head for their flight back to London.

We’re about to leave Urgup in Capadoccia, which has been our base for the last three days, and where we’ve had a fabulous time. The odometer says we’ve so far travelled 2800km since picking up the car in Milan! And that doesn’t include the ferry!

But first, to pick up from where we left off in Oludeniz/Fethiye.

We changed our plans a little, because we worked out we need to be further east along the south coast if our itinerary was going to work sensibly. We were going to stay at a place called Kalkan, for Patara beach. We had a swim there on the way, and lunch at Kalkan. We visited some ancient ruins at Myra – very impressive bar the sole Turk trying to scam a few Lira out of MC!

We’d chosen to stop at a place called Adrasan, which is on the east coast of the peninsula that juts into the Mediterranean south-west of Antayla. About a 2 hour drive from memory. Great choice. Handy to see the ruins of Olympos, and the natural phenomenon of Chimaera – flames leaping naturally from the rocks. Both well worth seeing – we did Chimaera at sunset, though another steep, stepped climb.

Then another 90 minute drive around to Side (“see-duh”) east of Antayla. What a gorgeous surprise. Lonely Planet had been a bit cynical about it, and I guess I can understand why. It was in parts a little touristy, and there was nothing special about the main town, or the expanse of beach along the coast studded with fancy expensive resorts.

But we stayed in the old city. It had been an ancient ruin, but was re-populated by Turks who were repatriated when the Greeks annexed Crete – one of a number of forced or voluntary movements of Greeks or Turks you regularly hear about in Greece and Turkey, as national boundaries settled down, and populations were shifted.

This means the town was integrated with the old ruins and grew up among them. Charming. We stayed in a Lonely Planet recommended hotel called the Beach-house. Owner a Turk Australian couple, she from Tasmania. Fell in love with the spot 30 years ago, married and never left. Lovely hotel, on a cobbled street, directly across from the beach steps. We were a little disappointed we hadn’t known and planned to spend more time there – strongly recommended for any future Turkish tourists. Buy hey, we didn’t know and probably the fist instance of Lonely Planet under-rating a place.

Then an early start for what we expected to be a day driving to Capadoccia. ‘Emily’ our satnav/GPS, went crook for the first time in Turkey and we wasted 40 minutes going too far east along the coast – she didn’t know the road we needed existed. Once on it though, it was rat. Windy beautiful mountainous terrain at the start, then it seemed like hundreds of km on a long straight rad.

For the first time, Ramadan hit us, and we couldn’t find anything to eat for miles along the road – until big crossroads at a place called Aksaray.

Capadoccia has been fabulous. The hotel, Elvan, great value at 70 lira (about nzd 65). I’m out of time to post too much and will come back to it, but quick highlights:

• Our local tour guide, Hamdi Ege, who Phil had bumped into a few moths ago in a Porirua kebab shop. Married to a Kiwi diplomat, lives in wellington when they’re not posted, but spends a few months here every summer with his elderly mother - lovely man, and boy did he help us see the sights.
• Dawn balloon trip over Capadoccia. Stunning
• Everywhere you look, houses, churches, monasteries, dug out of the rock. Many still being used as homes, others on the tourist route. Thanks to Hamdi, we got invited into one still functioning house inside one of these ‘fairy chimneys’
• Amazing Christian history. The residence of people like St Basil (who was the equivalent for Greek Orthodox monasticism of Benedict), Gregory of Nyssa – one of the fathers of the church. Gorgeous frescoes, especially in the “Dark Church’ in Goreme (dark because the frescoes could not previously be seen – they’d been blackened by cooking smoke. but now beautifully visible
• Turkish night – great all-u-can-eat food, Turkish folk-dancing, belly dancer – and Simon dragged onto the floor to make a fool of himself. Some nice video obtained for Face book!
• Wonderful old Underground city - Kaymakli. Used as a place of temporary refuge for centuries, by the Hittites originally, then Christian hiding from Romans, then Byzantine Christians hiding from Arab raiders etc etc. Again, Hamdi hooked us with the most lovely man, who gave us our own personal tour in impeccable English. He I retired but had been one of the people ho had opened the place up. One of 36 known such underground sites, of which 8 are open to the public. This was the largest – going down I think 10 levels of which 5-6 levels were open to the public. Old chapels, wineries, living quarters, stables – everything. And big round heavy stones for doors that brought to life the sealing of Jesus' tomb.

• We’ve taken what seems like 5 million photos.

Must go. Till next time

Phil & MC