The Ham Nomads

10 Jun 2015. <TR> Göreme, & Kaymaklı, & Nevşehir, Cappadocia —

Today we drove out to Kaymaklı Underground City, about 30km south of Göreme. The day was wet and miserable, just the right kind of day to spend our time underground!

On the way, we noticed a road crew filling potholes in a uniquely Turkish way. Their truck drove slowly forwards, with a couple of men in the back shovelling out tar mixed with gravel, tossing it onto the potholes, and then a couple of others following behind sweeping and raking it roughly into place. They then rely on the day-to-day traffic to compress the material into the potholes. A quick and messy way of doing it — but it gets the job done!

When we got there, we parked in the shadow of a large mosque — at least, it would have been, but there were no shadows whatsoever on this very grey day!

We went up to the entrance, and with our 3-day museum pass, we could go straight through. But we were sandwiched between an English and a Russian tour. There were a lot of people who were also trying to escape the weather!

Anyway, we were able to go through the tunnels and rooms within the part of the city that is open to tourists — which is not the whole city, by any means. But we checked out the stables, the church, the winery (most important!) and a number of the sleeping rooms. Good thing we're not claustrophobic!

A rolling stone security door

Steps ... and corridors

A ventilation shaft

By the time we came out, the rain had all but stopped. We went to a cafe there for a drink, and were totally entertained by the antics of an icecream vendor, using sleight of hand to tease his customers, doing all he could to appear to give the icecream to the child, without actually doing so — with huge bursts of laughter from them and from all onlookers. He knew just how far he could go without causing distress — a great talent! And we tried sahlep, a hot milk drink popular in Turkey, that tastes somewhat of cinnamon and vanilla, but apparently it is made with an orchid flour — beautiful!

We drove back towards Kaya Camping, going through Nevşehir on the way, where we noticed a whole hillside of what looked to be abandoned stone dwellings cut at least part-way into the hillside. Nearby, there was a hilltop citadel, with a rather beautiful mosque glinting in the sunshine against the black clouds.

As we drove through Nevşehir the sky was black, truly ominous.

We got back to our beautiful valley view.

And then the heavens cut loose. We had the wildest storm, with lightning flashes constantly and spectacularly lighting up the valley below us. At one point, a huge thunder-clap was absolutely simultaneous with the flash of the lightning — there was a ground-strike within 200 metres of our van!

But we had a good night's sleep — the Hams could probably sleep through Armageddon!

Distance driven — today, 39 miles ( 63 km ); to date, 21,868 miles ( 35,194 km )