Circumcised Rocks and Other Natural Wonders

Between the village wedding at Kiralan and the village farm at Kinalitas, we spent three days frolicking in the tourist haven of Goreme, a town in Cappadocia. The Cappadocia region is characterized by unusual and impressive rock formations. Some were naturally formed by volcanoes, earthquakes, and erosion. These include the oddly-named 'fairy chimneys', which tour guides also refer to demurely as mushroom rocks, but which anyone who has been to middle school knows really look like towering phalluses. Others were manmade, including numerous monasteries built into the sides of cliffs, cave churches, and underground cities. We had fun exploring these. The Goreme Open Air Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage site, contains the best churches, with 12-1500 year old frescoes impressively preserved. Some of the frescoes were made during the iconoclastic period, when the church banned the portrayal of any human or animal images as idolotrous; these are mainly ochre-colored geometric designs. There were also paintings of humans made before and after the iconoclastic period-- the earlier of these were viewed offensively by the iconoclasts, who scratched out their eyes and sometimes their entire faces.

On a lively group tour-- our guide said we were the youngest group she'd ever had, but we all knew that she also meant we were the cheapest, buying one beer and two waters between us all day-- we visited an 8 storey underground city, going 65 meters down. The city was dug out by hand over the course of several generations, and was for centuries used by Christians as a hideout when the area was invaded. They had a school and a winery, a kitchen, and a torture device (see photo), and could live underground for up to six months. Each underground city was connected to a couple others by a series of tunnels (now off limits to curious tourists). We also stopped at a ceramics studio, where we watched artists creating labarynthine designs with no templates. The owner wooed us with tea and playing with the pottery wheel, and the finished projects were beautiful, but still not a lira parted from our group's hands. The best part of our time in Cappadocia, though, was a half-day hike between the cave site of Zelve, and Goreme that we did on our first day. We walked on thistle-strewn goat paths along the ridges of the steep hills, passing high over the souvenir stands and camel rides (see photo) of the fairy chimney area and instead seeing just the incredible rocks themselves. Further on, the rocks surrounding us wavered between pink and green in color, scattered vineyards provided sweet snacks, and we didn't run into a single other person for hours. When it was finally time to return to touristland, we ran into a little challenge finding a path down into the valley that didn't involve a sheer drop of some uninviting distance, but eventually we found a hill we could scramble down, and made our way back to town.