May 25 - Cappadocia

(I wrote this entry Tuesday on my blackberry while on an 11 overnight bus ride from Cappadocia to Pumakalle, but haven't had wireless to send it until now! We arrived tonight in Kusadasi and tomorrow we go to Ephesus, but here is an update from yesterday before we arrived in Pumakalle, which I'm sure I'm spelling wrong!)

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Cappadocia is a magical land of "fairy chimneys" and underground cities where 2,000 years ago the earliest Christians fled in order to escape persecution from the Roman Empire. Everywhere you look you see sandstone cones left behind after a million years worth of wind and rain carved the structures out of a lake a solid lava. Swept away were the softest, most easily corroded sandstone particles and left behind are these towering beehive cones in which the people dug caves that stayed cool in summer and warm in winter. The "fairy chimneys," as the sandstone cones are called, rise up from the earth in all directions creating an environment reminiscent of some planet in Star Wars.
The underground cities, more than 20 of them in the region, are a web of carved out villages extending 80 meters below the earth's surface, where the hidden communities had stables, wineries, bedrooms, kitchens, ventilation systems and round stone doors that could only be opened from the inside (to keep unwanted persecutors out). They lived in these subterranean labyrinths for as many as 5 years at a time, until the time of danger had passed.
We are leaving the Cappadocia region now and heading back west. We're on an overnight bus towards Pumakalle (sp?) where on Wednesday we'll explore the famous "cotton castle" (the translation of Pumakalle), cliff terraces of pools flowing into one another all turned white from the calcium deposits in the warm spring water. At the top of these cliffs are the ruins of the ancient Roman and Byzantine city of Hieropolis and it's famous amphitheater. Then we'll continue on to Kusadasi Weds night for a Thurs tour of Epheses, before returning to Istanbul for two more days (Fri and Sat) and Sunday we come home! Unbelievable how quickly time passes, even when on an overnight 11 hour bus ride across a bumpy terrain, with frequent stops!!
Speaking of the bus ride, before I go back to sleep... There seemed to be a rally going on when we arrived at the bus station. Crowds of men, women, and children, music, dancing, tears... What in the world (literally)!? Well we found out that this is the time of year the young Turkish men of a certain age go off to serve in their military (for I'm not sure how long and I don't know if it's mandatory?), but the send off their loved ones give them is so touching. They practically won't let them go, and yet they send them off with such national pride, singing their anthem, waving their flag, FOLLOWING the bus and riding alongside the bus hanging out of their cars waving and honking and cheering, and one group at one of the stops along the way even STOPPED the bus (surrounded it with their little jettas) and pulled their two men off the bus to sing and salute to them one more time before letting us continue on. The reason I'm awake now at 12:39 AM was the third or fourth joyous sendoff of the night woke me up at our last stop. Enrique has some great videos of the revelry.
I decided to write this while it was fresh in my head, but who knows when I will have wireless again and be able to post it.
Signing off now at 12:44 AM Weds morning on a bus filled with patriots heading west towards the coast! Love, Meagan