Puts the Cap in Cappadocia

Thursday June 16

This morning we were granted sleep in rights and fully exercised these unexpected privileges. This is only our second breakfast here at the Stone Cave Hotel but I have already developed a bad habit. Very low carb is the most consistent descriptor of my breakfast menu back home, but now Nutella on bread is drowning me in mouth water.

We hit the road for a 90 minute drive to the Ihlara Valley for an out an back hike. The road trips in Turkey have been pretty good. Apart from a general ignorance of the speed limit and the non-'about' nature of the round-abouts things have been good. There is an overhead speed tracking device in about every other town. Whenever we pass under the tracker I seem to be doing 10 over what I think might the limit while everyone is passing me at another 20. Who knows. 

Today we had something unusual happen on the way to Ihlara. A car passed us on the inside of a round-'about', honked his horn, got in front of us and the passenger stuck a gun out the window and shot a few rounds (busted a few caps to you hoodies) up and to the right of his car. I slowly drifted back until he finally turned off the road. The thing looked very real. Don't need to see that again.

The Ihlara Valley hike was along a river the whole time and offered some nice photo ops and had a few ancient churches and a number of other cave dwellings. The valley seems more like a gorge with its almost 500ft sheer cliffs and narrow floor.

We tested our skills on Monkey Bridges in Vietnam, here Patti and Tara get after it on a Turkey Bridge.

On our drive back to Goreme we visited the second largest underground city in Turkey. This one was the equivalent of 8 stories high (the largest is 18) and as many as 20,000 people lived in this cave system one time including there livestock.

It was a crazy maze of tight tunnels that you had to duck walk through which opened to relatively spacious rooms that were used for all kinds of purposes.

Here is a ventilation shaft that you could not see the bottom of.

It seemed that there were passages everywhere. Some tunnels terminated in rooms others kept going, but the 'go towards the light and do not die here' illumination ended and it was go at your own risk. 

We had other plans for late afternoon/evening but decided we would just chill in the cabana.

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