Cappadocia Cave man…

Cappadocia is a large area with many villages joining to create this special place. What makes it special is that the entire area thousands of years ago was covered with a massive explosion from a volcano leaving a splash like formation of these huge cone shape or stalagmite type pumice stone towers… And then just to top it off about 4000 years ago people from the area carved an amazing amount of homes into these rocks which have not changed to this day… even so far as to say there are people still living in them.

So we are by the hairy camel and wondering what to do next to add to the glory of the view behind the tourist shops there is a layer of snow everywhere and I notice a friendly guy who shows a little interest in our car… so In a way which has now almost become second nature I invite him to see the map which is laminated onto the side of the car and shows the rough route we have driven along with our destination…

He invites us to go and see his home in the caves. Jonny at this point is wandering back from a break in the toilet and is unsure about the whole idea of wander of to strange caves with a feral looking and slightly smelly wanderer. He is fairly rough looking however it’s also clear to see strangely enough, that he is not a strong guy and certainly not a fighter… which I suppose is something I have learnt to spot when travelling into bizarre situations.

So I lead off Jonny takes the camcorder slightly and cautiously lagging behind as we wander up a steep slope towards loads of this incredible Castles as our pigeon English friend describes… In fact the whole time we spent with him was a little like being in an episode of hello hello from the eighties, for not quite being able to understand and for the unusual double meanings which can arise when English has not quite been mastered…
We had a lot of fun. He led us to his awesome home which had been carved high up one of the previously described towers of rock and showed us inside where many beautiful rugs where hanging ….

We where introduced to his very sweet lady and then after a small chat invited to their living space and to see a real slice of what was going on instead of if you like the show room…. We pulled back a heavy rug to go through to a smaller room which in the centre had a potbelly stove blazing away and a small baby girl nine months old and sleeping in a cradle on a wolf skin, I can’t remember her name although it was surprisingly epic considering what had gone before… what an amazing contrast to the shop fill Istanbul which had been starting to become our norm….. this was a treat of the top order to see who simple and fantastic some peoples daily lives are… these guys loved their home and everyone who visited also loved it very very special….

Several cups of chai later and also we showed him as we had others the newspaper cutting from the Istanbul Turkish Newspaper, explaining our adventure and recent crash, which sign language and mime can’t quite express… we then made a move back to our car where we launch one of Jonny’s Chinese lanterns much to our new friends delight and headed of to the next village in search of a good hotel hopefully in our own cave…
Love it!