Our second stop after Istanbul was Göreme. Right smack bang in the center of the country, at 1100m elevation, this stunning little town is the tourism capital of the Cappadocia region, particularly famous for its alien landscape and hot air ballooning.
The panoramas begin as you crest the hill that overlooks the valley within which Göreme is nestled. The valley is made of mostly of tuff, a soft volcanic rock, which has been weathered to create astounding pillars and chimneys stretching into the distance. The region’s trademark rock also provided ancient settlers prime location to dig underground cities and cave houses. Basically, there’s a whole lot to do and see, and we only had 2 nights to make it all happen.
We arrived at 8am after spending 11 hours on an overnight bus from Istanbul. Although we were pretty shattered, we didn’t want to waste a day, or jetlag ourselves by sleeping, so we got straight into walking around and taking in the sights. From my research I had the impression that Göreme and the surrounding valley would be quite large, based on the amount of activities on offer. Luckily for this group of budget backpackers, it’s actually all quite dense, so there’s a lot within a short walk.
Our first stop was the Göreme Open Air Museum. About a 20 minute walk from the town center, the museum contains some very well preserved cave houses and some churches that the ancient Christian settlers dug into the cliffside. Many of these caves have paintings and frescoes in excellent condition still covering the walls and ceilings. Sadly, photography wasn’t allowed inside most of the rooms, so we only really have pics from outside.
As you walk through the various churches, dining rooms, store houses and wine presses, you can really get a feeling for how these ancient settlers lived. The highlight of the museum is called ‘The Dark Church’. Because very little sunlight can get into this particular cave, the paintings on the walls and ceilings within are incredibly well preserved. The colours and detail are still vibrate and clear.
However, as impressive as the museum was, we couldn’t help but feel it was slightly over priced. At 20 Euros entry fee, plus an additional 6 Euro to enter the Dark Church, we agreed it was hard to recommend. If cave houses and churches are your jam, we found another way to get way more bang for your buck (more on that later).
I had hoped that the prices of food and drink would get cheaper once we left the streets of Istanbul. As it turns out, Göreme seems to be the most touristy place in all of Türkiye outside of Istanbul, so we did not uncover any cheaper prices. What we did discover, though, was BIM. BIM is a supermarket chain with heaps of cool stuff on offer and great prices too. The best find at BIM was precooked and sliced chicken kebab meat, so you can imagine what was for lunch and dinner the next few days…
The next day we woke up before sunrise at 4:45 AM for the main attraction to Göreme – 160 hot air balloons all taking to the sky as the sun rises over the valley. Originally, Milly and I had planned to go for a ride in one of these balloons, and had put around $200-250 aside for a ticket. Turns out it was actually going to cost double that, each. And apparently it goes up to about 800 NZD during peak season. Something to keep in mind if you’re planning on visiting the area.
At that price we decided we’d get a decent enough view from the ground, so we hiked our way up to the main lookout point in town (stopping to pay a small entrance fee for the privilege of course. This was quickly becoming a common theme in Türkiye, just about every attraction has a price tag attached). From there the sights were stunning. Stretching to the horizon in almost 360 degrees was a rainbow cloud of balloons rising into the sky. With a sip of beer that Sam managed to haggle off the kiosk at the top of the hill, it really was an incredible feeling, that even the small horde of like-minded tourists couldn’t put a damper on. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves…
Later that day, we took the bus to Kaymaklı, via the nearby city of Nevşehir to visit the ancient underground city. This wasn’t the cave homes and churches dug into the side of hills like in Göreme, no this was a proper underground labyrinth of tunnels, passageways and rooms. Dug by the same ancient Christian settlers that came to Göreme, the city is huge. There are many layers of tunnels and every new room you enter looks virtually identical to the last. All sense of direction quickly gets eroded. Basically, not for the claustrophobic! Some of the passageways are very narrow and short, so you have to stoop to get through. Other passages deviate from the main tour path, but aren’t blocked off, so there’s nothing to stop a curious individual wandering down to get lost in a dark tunnel somewhere. It’s a truly eerie and otherworldly experience.
After resurfacing, we stopped for a delicious lunch of authentic Pide, and somehow got dragged into a carpet shop for the whole run down on turkish rugs. The very friendly man loved that we were Kiwis, and absolutely insisted that we come in for the whole spiel (“Looking? Free! Touching? Free! Information? Free! You like? You buy!”). Unfortunately, none of us could buy a rug due to being povo as, but we had a great time listening to the bro rattle off the differences between rugs that are knotted and embroidered and cotton and wool and on and on.
For our last day in Cappadocia, we decided to explore some of the many hiking trails in the area. In lieu of planning something, we kinda just picked a direction from the hostel and then started walking. This turned out to be a fantastic idea. Almost immediately after we had left the town limits and hit the walking trails, we were stumbling into more ancient cave houses completely open and unattended. The tracksides were littered with them. We eventually found some signs for a ‘Red Valley’ that we ended up following, and explored almost every cave we could along the way. What could have been an hour or so of walking, ended up being closer to three with all the stops we made. Some of these random wild caves still had paintings and ceiling carvings adorning the inside. Many were above the quality we had seen in the Open Air Museum.
The walk was beautiful too. The rocky cliffs are very colourful, with reds, oranges and yellows mingling with the green shrubbery, and the rock formations are completely alien. About halfway up the Red Valley, we almost literally stumbled into a little drinks stand, where a man was selling fantastically overpriced fresh pressed juice and drinks. After restocking on water and demolishing some BIM döner chicken, we continued walking, this time though, a random stray-ish dog decided to start walking with us. After about 10 minutes it seemed that he was going to stick around, so we named him Ekmek (bread in turkish, one of the few words we knew).
Ekmek just continued to plod along with us, even after we decided we were gonna try get to the top of mountain we could see in the distance. As we started the summit, so to did our new doggy friend. Each time we stopped for a drink, or passed another group we thought he might leave us, but he continued to stay faithfully by our side. (Might have had something to do with the water and salami we kept giving him.) Ekmek made it all the way to the summit with us, and the stunning panorama of the entire Cappadocia region was made all the better because of our new friend. He even followed us all the way back down the mountain, through another town and back to our hostel in Göreme, waiting for us as we popped into the supermarket on the way.
The hike quickly became one of our favourite days on the trip, and as mentioned earlier, if ancient cave houses and churches are your jam, give the Open Air Museum a miss. For completely free, you can get unlimited access to these abodes without the crowds of tourists just by going for a walk. You still get frescoes, tunnels, living rooms and more. The only draw we’d recommend the museum for is the Dark Church, which is a-whole-nother level of preserved paintings, but the rest of the museum is a 50 dollar replication of hundreds of other caves open 24/7 just along the road.
However good our stay in Cappadocia was, of course we couldn’t get away without any hiccups. After our stay came to an end, we prepared ourselves for another uncomfortably long overnight bus to Antalya. As the midnight departure time started to roll around, we rugged up warm and went to wait at the bus terminal a healthy 30 minutes early.
Eventually, midnight rolled around without any sign of our bus. Then 12:15. A different bus to Antalya came and went; we checked with the driver and he assured us we were not his passengers. 12:30 came and went. 1AM. We started to wonder if it was just late or not coming at all. After mucking around trying to get hold of the bus company for ages, finally at 1:30, Gizem on the online help chat helpfully informed us that our bus had skipped Göreme entirely, and was not going to be coming. Excellent! With cold and weary hearts we trudged back to the hostel and regretfully woke the receptionist. Luckily, they had an empty 4 bed room open, and we managed to get a decent nights sleep in before rebooking on a midday bus the next day. Overall, it ended up being just about the best possible outcome for a situation like that, with the only incurred cost being an extra night in the hostel.
That’s the Cappadocia wrap up! Sorry it’s a bit late, it’s been another hectic few days (which Milly will update you on soon). The final recommendations for the region for anyone looking to visit in the future are as follows:
Kose Hostel (Kose Pansiyon): Absolute 10/10. Bit of a weird layout, but the staff are so incredible and the included breakfasts are busting!
Open Air Museum: Skip, unless you are dying to see Dark Church. If you do go, absolutely pay the extra 6 Euro to see the church, otherwise the price/experience ratio is a bit sucky.
Hot Air Ballooning: If you can afford to go for a ride, I’m sure it’s spectacular! Otherwise definitely make an effort for at least one early start to watch them, cause most of them have landed by normal breakfast times. They only fly weather permitting so allow a couple days in the area to make sure you catch them.
Kaymaklı Ancient Underground City: Very accessible by bus from Göreme, a really fun day trip if you don’t mind underground. We didn’t explore the rest of the town after doing the experience, but it seemed a lot cheaper and less touristy than the rest of Cappadocia, might be a cool place to explore more. This is actually one of two underground cities in the area, recommended to us by the hostel owner to be the better of the two. We didn’t go to the other one, but I suspect that once you’ve seen one you’ll have gotten the idea.
Hiking: This should honestly be the main attraction in Göreme. It’s so breathtaking. We almost wish we’d spent another couple days just exploring more of the local trails. But bring loads of water! It got ridiculously hot and we got pretty dehydrated (probably not helped by giving loads to Ekmek haha!)
Sivas Turizm Bus Company: AVOID AT ALL COSTS. They’re probably fine most of the time but we are now firmly set in the mindset of paying the extra 5 Euros or so to book a bus through Flixbus, just to know it will actually come to pick you up. Trust us, it’s not worth the hassle.