The Ham Nomads

12 Jun 2015. <TR> Göreme, & Tokalı; Kilise, & Nevşehir; & Göre, & Ortahisar, Cappadocia —

Another day in Cappadocia. Today we started off by dropping in to the Al Nazir Church, not far from the Göreme Open Air Museum. This is one that allows unrestricted photography, so Warren was able to shoot away. Unfortunately, in the comings and goings of religious groups, some of them made a concerted effort to deface Christian religious painting, and this church was not exempt. Apparently they went for the eyes first, and than any other mayhem they wished to perpetrate. But, in spite of this, you can get a good idea of what the works were like!

Must say that the photos here are a bit of a cheat — a bit of disk corruption put paid to all of our photos for today, but after the last episode, we have a good piece of software that allowed us to retrieve all but the first few photos from the camera card — we had already shot a few photos of tomorrow's lot before we discovered the problem. But the lost photos were virtually all from the Al Nazir Church, and it was a simple thing to go back and reshoot. So there's a bit of a time slip — some of today's photos are from tomorrow (bet you science fiction nuts are in your element here!).

From Al Nazir, we went to Tokalı Kilise (the Church of the Buckle), the largest and most magnificent of the churches in Göreme. We were blown away by the interior, which is intricately carved and magnificently painted. A 'no photography' regime means that we will have to rely on others' photos for this site.

Then we drove round to Paşa Bağı, the Monks' Valley, the valley with some of the most spectacular 'fairy chimneys' in the region. We had already viewed them from above, on our balloon jaunt, but we wanted to meet them from a more grounded perspective. We arrived, and made a beeline for a çay bahçesi (teashop) just as you reach the valley. From there, a little exploration, with heaps of others who were doing the same thing, and making it a great photo opportunity for themselves. In fact a bridal couple were making their own photo opportunity — we were most amused watching her legging it through the underbrush in her full bridal dress! After our exploration, we returned to the vçay bahçesi for more tea and coffee — and a dürüm kebap for Warren, a gözleme (with cheese and spinach) for Suzie.

The Jandarma office at Paşa Bağı

We then drove round through Nevşehir to Göre, where we had noticed a Post Office with a convenient parking area. Convenient it may have been, but the blighters did not handle parcels -- they pointed us into Nevşehir, where the traffic and parking were utter chaos! But on the way, we noticed another deserted Greek village on a hillside!

After this, we drove around to Ortahisar Castle. This was a castle carved out of a large 'fairy chimney' by the Romans. It had the potential of being a most interesting site, but the mood was set by the ticket seller, who sat in his office playing computer games on his phone and didn't once make eye contact. When we climbed up into the castle, we found that we could only go up to the first level — all higher levels were fenced off. As we said, the site has potential, but misses out seriously — although it gives a fantastic view over the village of Ortahisar.

A fine collection of recreational vehicles!

Anyway, the day was about done, so we returned to the campsite for dinner, a movie, and bed!

Distance driven — today, 37 miles ( 59 km ); to date, 21,905 miles ( 35,253 km )