Day 25: Goreme, Turkey - Reluctantly, a Packaged Tour

Up in some place called Selime.

Cappadoccia is qutie a bit larger than I thought. To fully see the area, I would need transportation, and directions, and someone knowledgeable with me. Unfortunately, that means a packaged tour. I hate these things. I loathed the groups of 50 people obstructing my view in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Seriously, what's the point of traveling if you're following someone holding an inflatable object and speaking into a megaphone? But alas, compromises must be made.

Our first stop was Selime, another site similar to the Open Air Museum but significantly farther away, and significantly less crowded. My guide also pointed out to me that the cubby holes I kept seeing in the tufa was made for pigeons to roost so people could collect their droppings for fertilizer purposes. Resourceful.

Church inside Selime.

After Selime, we moved to a valley for a short hike. Nothing too special -- two sides split by a river at the bottom.

Hiking at the bottom of the valley.

Third stop on the tour was an underground city. I mean, what else should people do with super soft rock? Living in it seems to make sense. The Hittites first had this idea almost 4000 years ago, and various groups of people have used/expanded upon the city since. There are 12 levels to the underground city, though we were only given access to the first eight. Narrow and windy properly describe walking through the underground city, and poor Indonesian Danish Thomas is claustrophobic.

Underground city.

So that's the end of the tour, right? I mean, what else could there be. Well, of course, the last element of any packaged tour is a tourist tout. In Egypt, I was brought to carpet and perfume shops. In Cappadoccia, the item of choice is leather. I expected to see leatherworkers tanning, curing, and cutting leather, and maybe some old men making sandals and such. At the end we would be led into their store where we would politely refuse to buy anything. Right? Wrong.

This is what we saw.

Instead, we were subjected to a full on fashion show. Five models paraded themselves in front of us, showcasing various leather jackets. I was wearing a 3 lira baseball cap, a sweaty hand-me-down shirt, and my convertible shorts that I had worn for a week. I thought, "Is this really the crowd to buy expensive leather jackets?" I think everyone else had similar thoughts. Amusing, if nothing else.