THESE VOLCANIC ASH FORMATIONS ARE NOT LIKE ANYTHING ELSE WE HAVE SEEN. WE ARE AS IF SURROUNDED BY MODERN SCULPTURES. SEEN HERE IS THE ‘MOTHER, FATHER, AND DAUGHTER FORMATION
We are the first for breakfast. We wake up very early every day in spite of the 6-hour time difference, and thus are the first to appreciate the morning view and the wonderful dishes set out for us. The Turkish breakfast is healthy and plentiful and includes cereal, fresh and dried fruits, milk, yogurt, eggs, sliced tomatoes, cucumbers and meats, a kind of pound cake and, the best of all, a thin pancake, similar to the Arabian version, folded over and grilled with cheese filling. It is cut into crispy little squares when served. With all these healthy ingredients I always wonder why the only bread is a white crusty loaf. My system yearns for whole-wheat, which would seem natural with this combination. This is not to say that I don’t eat more than my share. There will most certainly be a moment of reckoning, when I get back to the bathroom scales. Traveling seems to have this effect of opening all your senses. Soon we are joined by the fluffy white cat that Adrienne made friends with and combed yesterday. She is hungry and makes this very clear, so we furtively feed her cheese with slices of the local summer sausage.
Back with Mehmet in the van we decide to start the day with the important Goreme Open Air Museum. We arrive together with many other tourists in landscape like the moon, except with sun and trees. The volcanic rock formations form the surface of a warren of tunnels and caves, many of them converted into churches around the 8th century, when Christians lived here. You can still see the frescoes on the wall - each church seems to have its own color palette - from chalky orange and green to deep lapis lazuli, and even black. We visit the Apple Tree church, the Dark church, the church of the Sandals, the Tokali church....and outside it is growing hotter and brighter by the minute, as we go from the darkness of the caves to the sun, much like the monks who lived here. Their dining table was hewn out of the rock - a long slab in the middle with a lower bench on each side and a deeper groove for the feet. The stove was a deep hole in the ground shaped like a frying pan, and they had a barbecue with a groove for putting the spit at an angle over the embers.
Our next stop is on a high point overlooking a cluster of Fairy chimney, like a petrified forest from a...yes.. fairy tale, Down the road we spot our first camel, who stands in a dignified manner waiting for his next task.
On to Ürgüp, a bustling market town, where we wander around looking at the many shops. We manage to extricate ourselves from an otherwise promising carpet shop, where the owner goes into that long routine they have of telling a roundabout story of, for example, a destitute Kurdish woman from whom he bought this carpet basically to help her out, only to arrive much later at the price, which is invariably startling. Our time is nearly up when Oswaldo and I spot the fascinating Ali Baba shop, which sells beautiful antique silver jewelry, for us reminiscent of the many wonderful things Nanda in NY has collected from her trips. But we have to leave for lunch, the lovely and secluded Dimkit restaurant, which we to our surprise recognize from a photo in an October 2007 Globo travel article.
After the lunch we get to walk around amidst the fairy chimneys and take many, many pictures. Finally, exhausted by the heat and light, Oswaldo and I find a spot in the shade of a big rock, where we can look at a dromedary and a camel tethered nearby right in the sun (the owner explains they prefer the sun) chewing slowly on something like old men with loose dentures. We buy lemon ice-creams from the friendly owner, which turn out to cost a surprising $4 in that desolate spot. Ah well, but he gave us a chair, sprinkled water on the dust and there were those camels... On our way out we observe two peasant women making those delicious thin pancakes. We finish the day with a visit to a ceramic and pottery factory, built partly in caves, where we observe how both clay and pottery are made and buy a couple of pieces after fierce bargaining, which my father would have been proud of.
It is time to return to the hotel for an early night, since we have to be up at 4:30am for our balloon ride. I have, however, two final observations: one is that it is better to be a man in Turkey than a woman - even Mehmet says so. Everywhere we go we see the men in friendly clusters sitting outside the bars smoking, chatting and playing backgammon The women can be found, swathed in many cloths, for example rump in the air hoeing her (his?) field or plastering a wall. The other - and maybe there is a connection here - is that the door to the women’s WC’s never seems to either close or lock properly. Just imagine trying to negotiate the non-western toilet, sweaty and tense (in shorts), at the same time as pressing the door shut. Not easy.
No comments:
Post a Comment