Dr. Seuss, I Found Your Inspiration

It was a day to tour Cappadocia solo. The sun was shining, there was a breeze in the air and people were smiling. Hey, let's be honest, it's been like every other day in Turkey :-). Since the sights in Cappadocia are so far apart, you can't exactly walk to much. However, a lot of the interesting valleys are very much in biking distance and there are shops in town to fill the need. Plus, today there was also a mountain biking festival and race in town, so it's only appropriate to rent a bike to see the sights.

The bike itself was pretty bad. The gears weren't stable and slipped often, but it worked I suppose. I wanted to head north out of town towards Zelve and then loop around to Ugurp and back to Groeme. Total distance only about 20 km that was very hilly. This is an absolutely perfect mountain biking area even though I spent most of my time on the roads. Of course, on my first turn, I headed out of town in the wrong direction right up a nice long hill. There was a good view up top, but I figured out I went in the wrong direction. Instead of taking the boring road back, I saw a dirt road and I was pretty sure Love Valley was that way. So why not. The path took me along the rim of the valley and yep, it was definitely Love Valley. Off to my left were a few dozen rock formations that looked exactly like giant penises.

After coming down off the rim, I went by the small town that I forget the name of. Just on the other side is a rock church that I decided to see. It has some incredible frescoes. Of course I can't get pictures of it because they don't allow cameras. It's really annoying that a lot of places in Turkey won't let you take a picture. I understand the no-flash rules to preserve the art, but no pictures at all. Maybe they just figure that too many stupid people will use flash that it's better to just say no photos at all.

After the church, I kept heading North and then turned onto the road to Zelve. Zelve is now an open air museum. It's the confluence of three valleys with a whole city built into the fairy chimneys and cliff faces. Apparently, people lived there up until the 1950's when the government decided that it was too dangerous and they moved everybody a few km away. Now, it's just a tourist destination although you can't see all of it because of the risk of collapse. For the lunch I at here, I had a spinnach pancake like thing that was then grilled. Quite simple and tasty.

After Zelve, I headed towards Urgurp through more beautiful scenery. Urgurp is a fairly built up town. However, it's still mostly for tourists, but compared to Groeme, which specializes in caves, Urgurp is known for its fancy hotels and apartments. So, it's a little bigger and has a bigger downtown area. I did a quick circuit of town and settled down for a cold apple tea and some reading.

Before leaving town, I stopped by the supermarket for my third 1.5L bottle of water for the day and some energy snacks. What can I say, it was bloody hot and so I needed a lot of water. On the way out, I stopped by the local winery for a tasting but their wines from local grapes were pretty bad and expensive. It's disappointing because the house wines I've been having in the restaurants have been quite pleasant.

Now, I just needed to get back to Groeme. This involved a long climb up over the ridge. Fortunately, on the top of the ridge, there was a great opportunity for a view of the valleys and some snacking on one of the random grape bushes around. Heading back down the hill, I kept stopping for more photo shoots and stopped by a place with lots of ventilation holes in the hills. My guide yesterday had said that one of the main sources of income in the region is to dig caves for storage and keep citrus in there because the caves are always so cold. In the winter there's plenty of snow to give you an idea. Anyway, painted on the hill beside the ventilation shafts was a sign that said "Lemon Storage Caves" I laughed and started to take a picture, but was interrupted by a guy waving a grapefruit at me miming to ask if I wanted one. Sure, why not. Over the next 15 min or so, we talked (his English was half decent) and he fed me not one, but two of the best grapefruits I've ever eaten. He asked me where I'm from and I said Canada. He runs back to his shack and pulls out some notebooks and starts leaving through them. I see writing in all sorts of languages and he stopped on all his entries from people in Canada. Basically, his hobby is to flag down tourists, give them fruit and get them to sign his guestbook. I gladly added an entry :-)

Finally, I rambled down the hill into Groeme and returned my bike. Then back to the hotel for a quick shower and I headed out to the town as the sun was setting to get some pictures. Then, I had dinner at Alaturka, which is probably the most expensive place in town. They were highly recommended by Lonely Planet, but may have taken it a step far considering that their check books are imprinted with the Lonely Planet logo. Anyway, I had a great dish which was stewed beef in a light tomato sauce over an eggplant puree. Yum.

Overall today, I saw a lot of jaw dropping rock formations that come right out of a Dr. Seuss book, got a good workout, met a citrus man and enjoyed some good food. I'd say it's been my best day in Turkey so far.