Day 25 - Aleppo

In the morning Farhad's mother and sister (and maybe Leila and Farhad too) prepared a traditional Aleppo breakfast for us. We had pancakes with sugar and nuts on top, cake, and many things to dip bread in. It was delicious!

We have a plan. Farhad and I will go to get his Turkish visa, see about renting a car and maybe use a bank machine. Unfortunately Syria is a land of changing regulations, and now only Syrian nationals can rent a car - Farhad does not have his license as he is living in the UAE so we are out of luck. As well, travel agencies are no longer allowed to handle the submission of passports for a visa application, so Farhad must apply in person in the next morning. To top it off I can't find an ATM on the Plus network, probably because I'm distracted by Farhad's dialog on Arabic history.

Leah and Leila have more luck shopping; Farhad and I bump into them as we pass through the market on our way to the hospital museum, as I wanted to confirm my memory of the place before I led everyone else there. So the rest of the day passes in a relaxing way, and we had dinner at the very classy Sissy house restaurant.

Day 24 - Aleppo

This morning Leah is at 80%, so we think we can visit Farhad's house, and hopefully leave for some adventures outside of Aleppo tomorrow. Today is Friday, the Muslim holy day so many of Aleppo's shops are closed so when Farhad and Leila arrive we go check out the train times to get to Turkey, and explore the city a bit more. As Friday is a holiday everyone is outside enjoying the warm night air. It seems like there must be a festival happening with families eating ice-cream in the dim light of the park lights but Farhad assures me that this is an ordinary Friday night.

In the evening we slept at Farhad's house, a large ground floor apartment. We stayed up late talking about travel plans and laughing about our experiences so far.

Day 23 - Aleppo

This morning Leah had some serious stomach pains and general sickness - but since we ate a variety of suspect food the night before we're not able to nail down the culprit. Thankfully I am fine so Leah just laid up in bed all day.

I met a Tunisian/Belgian man that morning and we walked for lunch. I led him to the restaurant where Leah, Leila and I had so much fun and enjoyed the food but for some reason he was really miserable about the whole thing and was quite rude to the staff. I made a mental note not to become friends with this man, but he is to lead me to an ancient medical/mental hospital museum so I can't extricate myself just yet.

The hospital is very peaceful, and it is full of descriptions of historical Arabic scientists and philosophers. They have quite a few examples of early medical tools, but without descriptions in English or Arabic we can only guess at what some of the pieces are for. The corridors are very high and narrow, and despite the brutal heat outside the air here is cool and comfortable.

By the afternoon Leah is feeling 50% better, so this is good news. I have a few beers with an Englishman, and Dane and the Tunisian and we talked about politics, travelling and pretty much everything.

Day 22 - Aleppo

We were planning to meet with Leila today, but as luck would have it she had some food poisoning so we were without our fun guide for a couple of days. Nonetheless she dragged herself to our hotel and aimed us at the Christian district to explore, and then went home herself for rest.

Leah and I wandered around old churches and through markets but this only takes a couple of hours, and without a guidebook we don't know what we're missing down the narrow streets. We walked to a huge park and relaxed on a bench, but somehow as we left the park an 8 year-old boy started to follow us from here. Everytime we turned a corner he was right there, 3 meters behind us. When we would stop suddenly he would either stop right beside us, or continue for about 3m past us and pretend to look into a shop window. Eventually we get back to the Christian district and we bought some ice-cream for ourselves. The kid sat at a bench about 10m from us, but before long he has moved to a bench right beside us.

To me, this means this is no longer some secret agent game - he is angling for some kind of attention from us. Instead of giving in I decide to outsmart him and we lose our shadow in a crowd of tourists. A few tiny alleys later and we've lost him - I win the game!

Lots more aimless wandering around Aleppo and that is our day. But all the time we keep looking back, thinking that we heard the shuffling feel of that kid.

Day 21 - Aleppo (Halep)

The Turkcell SIM card I have bought isn't working here, I guess the card isn't allowed to roam in Syria so we're just making due with our Canadian roaming plans.

Leila joined us in the morning and we walked to the Omyiad Mosque. Leah and Leila have to wear funny robes but as I'm a man I'm okay with pants and a T-shirt. In our bare feet the stone floor is really hot from the sun, and we try to avoid the hotter black stones. The mosque sports an unusual square minaret at one corner, and some sections of the mosque are closed to either men or women. Of course I blunder and am pushed away from the Ladies hall. We actually get to see the man singing the call to prayer, which is neat as this is usually blared out of loudspeakers on the minarets, but we never knew if it was a person or a recording.

Later we walked through the markets, and we're all immersed in the smells and sights of the place. We pop out into bright sunlight and we're at the Citadel, a huge Muslim castle. It has a huge moat, sloping walls pierced with narrow vertical windows for archer placements, and a long and narrow entry bridge into the castle.


The castle door is at 90 degrees to the bridge, a defensive measure to make it difficult for elephants to bash in the doors. Above are round holes in the roof, apparently portals to pour boiling oil on attackers. Many narrow windows line the walls, flat to the outside but apses on the inside to protect the archers, but also allow them a wide range of attack.

Once through the citadel walls things get more jumbled. Leila explains that there are so many layers of history buried here that in some places archeologists are unwilling to destroy valuable upper layers to expose the lower layers. We're in the sun again at the top of the castle and we stop for water at a little cafe. From here we relax and look out upon massive Aleppo, its name comes from the white stone that makes up most of its building material, and you can really see it as the city stretches for miles and miles from up here on the Citadel.

We go inside the castle walls again at stumble upon a very impressive royal chamber, with very beautiful and intricate woodwork. I say we stumbled upon it as there is no signage, and another couple we met actually missed this section entirely. We follow what was once a secret passage for the royals into a defensive chamber above the main entry hall. Here we can look down through holes into the hall, holes through which boiling oil may once have passed.

We eat a late lunch/early dinner with Leila and puff away on the nargileh (water pipe, or hubbly bubbly in the Aleppo tourist lingo).

Day 20 - Syria?

Today we plan to enter Syria, but without visas we know that there is a chance we will not be allowed to enter. If this happens, we will go to Gaziantep because there is a Syrian consulate there that might give us a visa, but right now we think our best bet is to go to the border as some people have been successful this way.

Before we leave, we visit the Hatay Archeological Museum. There is a lovely white marble sarcophagus here, and the preserved/restored bones of a man, a woman and a young girl. The museum has a huge collection of beautiful mosaics, some are so finely crafted they actually look like paintings from a distance.

So now we want to go to Syria. We get our bags from the hotel, and sweat our way to the dolmus stand to Reyhanli, a Turkish border town that doesn't have much to captivate a traveller. From there, we pay a dolmus driver 20 Lira to drop us off at the Turkish border. Now we get an offer from a taxi driver to take us to Aleppo for $100, but this seems steep to us. We think there must be a bus, or dolmus or at least a cheaper taxi at the Syrian border so we decide to walk. As the Turkish border guard stamps our passports he tells us it is 5km to the Syrian border crossing, but now it is too late to go back as he has already stamped us. So on we go in the baking sun.

At least our water bottles are full, we start walking. At about the halfway point a truck driver feels sorry for us and takes us the rest of the way to the Syrian border where we jump out. A guard directs us to an administration building a few hundred meters away. The heat is stifling.

When we enter we are relieved to be out of the sun, and we mentally prepare ourselves with our plan to get visas. The official rule is that if Syria has an embassy in your country, you're supposed to get your visa there - since Canada does have a Syrian embassy in Ottawa we're prepared for this eventuality. We plan to explain that Ottawa is very far from Vancouver, and we also have a letter from Leah's Syrian friend inviting us to Syria and a photocopy of his passport; but we will only use these tactics as a last resort - our primary plan is to just ask and be polite and hope they don't notice we're Canadian.

We're not looking forward to walking back to Turkey if we're knocked back from Syria. At the counter we are directed to a side office but when we arrive there is a big scene, and two men are led out in handcuffs. We hope we don't share their fate. After sitting in the room for a few minutes they shuffle us out into the foyer again and we're told 'six'! We don't know what this means, six minutes, six hours? Six o'clock, or are we 6th in line? We do as we're told and we sit down on a bench to wait.

After an hour and a half, six o'clock is approaching. Many men have come and left, some shouting, some pacing and many plain-clothes men going in and out of the offices. I talked to a Turkish man who was also awaiting a Syrian visa, and he assures me that soon it will be time; but he has no room in his truck for us to get to Aleppo.

Finally around 6.30pm the Turk and I enter the office again and we make our applications. I hand over our passports, and give the names of our parents, then we're instructed to pay so we run down the hallway to pay our $56 each and we run back to the visa counter with the receipt to get our stamps. We're questioned in more detail about our jobs, and where we are staying in Aleppo. We say we're staying with our friend Farhad, and the customs agent has the same last name! He thought that was very funny, and when customs people are happy I'm happy.

With visas in hand we can now give some more thought to how to get 100km to Aleppo. As we approach the baggage inspection area a stone-faced Syrian man holds up his hand and says (shouts) 'Open ze bags!'. So we put our bags down on the stone bench and open then, and almost immediately we hear 'Close ze bags!'.

Here is a video of the border guards!

And so begins the next two hours, quite possibly the most fun I've ever had at a border crossing. Our predicament is that there aren't any major towns between the border and Aleppo (a city of 7 million) and this is 100km away. There is only one bus a day that runs in the morning. We're still hopeful (hope is all we have at this point) that we can catch a ride with someone or a taxi somehow, so instead of rushing things we just sit down and have tea, coffee and laughs with the border guards. They give us our first few Arabic words, and around 9pm they find someone who is driving to Aleppo for us.

Some memorable moments are the moustacioed Abu Faris, his facial hair the butt of some gentle ribbing. We talk about Canada and try to describe how huge it is - this is probably difficult for Syrians to imagine as they can drive across their country in 5 or 6 hours.

Almost hilariously to us, the driver picks us up and then stops about 100m past the border, gets out and leaves us there for about ten minutes only to return with two more people for Aleppo. Finally in Aleppo we meet Leila, and she takes us for dinner and to our hotel.

Day 19 - Hatay

Today we plan to leave Urfa for Hatay, to position ourselves for crossing the border into Syria. As we're exploring we bump into Ali and Onur (our Kurdish Urfa friends) and they join us on an excusion to buy bus tickets, and then to buy a fancy nargila (water pipe). We grab a 4pm bus and arrive in Hatay at 10pm.

Day 18 - Urfa

We walked to the prophet Abraham's cave, where he was born and spent the first 7 years of his life. Apparently King Nimrod feared he would eventually be usurped by one who was newly born had all babies in the region killed. This was not very rewarding, and a little uncomfortable for us as it is an active place of worship for Muslims, so there were many many people jammed into this tiny space as we both felt (separately as men and women have different viewing rooms) very out of place. You don't actually enter the cave, but a tiny room with a window into the greenly lit cave. The little room has a tiny door that essentially forces you to bow as you enter, and some of the men will back away through the door as they leave, apparently so as not to show their backside to the prophet Abraham's birthplace.

We climbed the stairs to the Kale (citadel, or castle) in the burning sun. There is a fantastic view of Urfa at the top, but only two huge columns remain of the citadel interior. Everything else is buried under centuries of silt and ancient rubble. Once again we are struck that so much of Turkey's history is still hidden beneath tonnes of dirt!

We decide to catch a dolmus to Harran, an ancient madrasa - the University of the ancient world. We were able to check out the mosque only from behind a fence, due to archaeological excavations, but I have to respect this. So little of Turkey actually gets excavated that when they finally get to it I think it is a big deal.

There are some traditional 'bee-hive' houses that are still maintained for tourists, although modern life has the locals in the usual square houses. These bee-hive shaped houses are built in rows, with each little bee-hive having a door to the next chamber. The conical tops allow warm air to escape through a hole right at the peak so despite the beating sun outside it is cool and refreshing inside.

Harran also has a big citadel, and it looks like they're preparing an excavation project here too as they have just erected a fence to keep the goats out, but thankfully we're able to go in there and explore.

Day 17 - Sanliurfa

We missed our 7.30 am bus this morning, so the driver kindly offered to drive us to Kahta for the same price as the bus - 10 Lira. A couple more busses and we are being slowly cooked alive in Sanliurfa.

As we walk around Urfa, sweating profusely, we bump into two young Kurdish guys who join us for drinks on the condition that we speak English with them. So goes our evening.

Day 16 - Nemrut Dagi

This morning we caught a bus from Malatya to Nemrut Dagi, so we left a voicemail on the driver's cell phone telling him that we're staying at the Fatih Pension/Hotel, and we wander the market. Apparently Malatya is the place for apricots, fresh or dried so we got some dried ones and they are delicious.

We end up hiking to a major hotel because the driver can't find the little pension we're at, and he seems a cheerful fellow. He politely asks if it is okay if he picks up two other people, and we politely agree to this, although it is clear this means the vehicle will be quite full. When we get to the house to pick up these people, the drive invites us in for chai, this is a pretty regular Turkish custom and since we have nothing better to do we agree.

We go inside the house and are greeted by a big family of women, one old man and one young man. Tea turns into lunch, a huge mountain of pide (as big as Uncle Buck's pile of pancakes), then tea and some not so tasty yoghurt drink, more tea, cakes and then rice pudding. Unfortunately for us, we're a bit stuck for conversation as we forgot the phrasebook in the car and the driver isn't so chatty (in English) now that there are a bunch of Turkish people around. Leah calls this the 'sitting and staring lunch', and it takes about an hour. Finally the driver takes us on a scenic route up the mountain; Leah promptly falls asleep leaving me to chat with the old man and his grandson for 4 hours.

After a quick bit of relaxation at the Nemrut pension we got back in the car to be dropped off at the top of Nemrut. From the road up we can see it, a huge pile of loose stone made into a massive man-made mountain (mountain top actually, the mountain was already there). Apparently human activity and natural erosion has already reduced the height of the pile significantly, but it is still pretty impressive. We follow some rough stone stairs laid into the side, and we approach the East terrace where there are some huge stone statues and their equally huge stone heads that have long since fallen off.

After playing around here for a while we follow the trail to the Western terrace where we are surprised to find yet more huge stone statues with heads lolling about on the ground. I think the thing to take away from this is that these statues were many thousands of years ago at the top of very rugged, very remote mountain.


We saw a pretty sunset and walked down to our bus. The pension put on a delicious chicken dinner.

Day 15 - Malatya

Today we're on a bus from Erzurum to Malatya, an 8 hour ride. We're becoming accustomed to the pace of the buses now, where they serve coffee/tea/cola every 4 hours, and let you out to use the toilet every 2 hours. At least once in every trip is a rest stop with a restaurant where you can buy hot food if you want to. We have been preparing for these trips, buying cookies and water ahead of time so we can keep our energy levels up - as the food in the rest stops is the same as in Canada, expensive and not very tasty.

Once we were in Malatya we decided to find a hotel with a good price, as the book said there was lots of competition among hotels. After wandering in the heat for a few minutes, we meet a guy on the street who says he is an English teacher. He happens to speak Russian too so he ends up talking to Leah most of the time - but he said that the father of one of his students owns a hotel and that he will bring us there. Little do we know that we end up walking about 20 minutes away from the cheap hotel district to a very fancy $150 a night hotel - does this guy think people with backpacks, going from hotel to hotel for good deals are going to go for a 5 star hotel? Nuts! So we walk back to the centre of town and walk into a cheap little pension, but the English teacher still won't leave us. We're sure he is hanging around to get a cut of whatever the hotel price is, but at this point we're exhausted, it is dark out and really the pension is nice enough.

Syria

As you may have guessed, each of these posts is about a week behind reality - so while according to the blog we're in Northern Turkey, right now we're actually in Syria. Compared to Turkey, the Internet is hard to find, and very slow here so I think the posts will have to wait until we can find some place with more Internet.

Day 14 - Erzurum

Our whirlwind car trip requires us to be in Erzurum by 11.30 am so we leave Dogubayazit at 7am and we manage to make the drive in 3 hours. There are more than a few dangerous sections of potholes, and the Turkish style of driving is quite sloppy so I have to be very careful when we're going fast.


We decided to stay overnight in Erzurum to give our travelling bones a break, and right after checking in to the Otel Dede we met two teachers and one student from the local University there, and Recep and Mesut offered to show us around Erzurum. It is a busy, modern city mixed up with ancient mosques, castles and madaras. Even the people are a mix of modern and conservatism that is most evident in the clothing of women; modern jeans to traditional face-coverng burkas are a common sight.

Our guides take us to a traditional Ottoman Erzurum house, kept by a little old lady who shows us her kitchen and meeting rooms. Afterwards we go to a Turkish tea house and again Leah is the object of attention, with all eyes on her. It isn't creepy, just curious. Recep runs over to an old Turk and borrows his hat to put it on my head, and everyone laughs - silly tourists!


Around 6.30 that evening our new friends meet us again and we all go to a Cag Kebap restaurant with absolutely delectable lamb skewers that they keep bringing until you say you've had enough. Recep's girlfriend met us here and we all enjoy wrapping the lamb in thin soft pita bread.

After dinner we walk to a cool little tea/coffee/hookah house and Mesut's girlfriend Sumeyra arrives to help us have laughs, talk about Turkey and Canada, politics and freedom. At the end of the night we all feel really friendly with each other and we trade email addresses.

You can see more of our photos here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/thewozza
http://picasaweb.google.com/leah.lesyk/Istanbul

Day 13 - Ani and Dogubayazit

40km East of Kars is Ani, an ancient Armenian capital city that has been captured, recaptured many times, and converted from Christian to Muslim at least as many times. Now as we walk through the ruins we can see the fence separating Turkey and Armenia, guard towers dot the horizon as a reminder of the vigilance that keeps borders in this part of the world.

Ani is essentially a huge green field with occasional ruined buildings poking through the grass, but as you walk through it you can see rough stone walls everywhere show that the entire place was once a bustling city, and now only the most well constructed buildings (churches and mosques) remain.

We race back to Kars and on to Dogubayazit, hoping to arrive before the Isak Pasa Palace is closed for the day, but we miss the closing time. Thankfully we're just in time for a beautiful sunset, and we befriend a young Kurdish man named Adem. We drive him the 8km into town and we invited us to visit with him and his friend at a carpet shop. We sat with them for a couple hours, through many rounds of tea talking about what life is like for them, and for us in Canada. They show us some Youtube videos of traditional Kurdish music and dancing, but they get a little sad and almost reluctant when talking about the politics of being a Kurd in Turkey.

At this point I'm quite pleased with how far we have travelled into Turkey, as we're now in the far east of the country where very few tourists go. We're making heavy use of our Turkish phrasebook, something we've never had to rely on in other countries we've visited.

Day 12 - Georgian Valleys

By 9 am we are in Erzurum. We have both managed to sleep on the night-bus from Goreme thanks to seats that lean really far back. Our plan is to rent a car and drive to Kars and Dogubayazit in two or three days. By 11.30 am we are on the highway, heading north through the Georgian Valleys.

Our first stop is Oskvank. After a long but pleasant winding 1 lane road we park in front of a huge crumbling cathedral. The columns inside are massive and even though the building is slowly wearing away you can still see some parts of frescoes painted on the walls.





Ishan was the most difficult place to visit, we drove up a very steep, winding 1 lane mountain road, up switchbacks and along the sides of a huge canyon until we reached a little village, and just past we finally arrived at the Church of the Mother of God. The theme of huge columns and high domes is repeated here, and you can't help feeling something of the history of the place. The drive down that canyon road is almost as much of an adventure as going up!

As we drive through the countryside we're amazed by the variety of landscape that we're crossing, huge canyons with the road snaking between sheer cliffs, and idyllic farmland villages nestled comfortably in between mountain peaks. We pass many herds of cattle and sheep with their shepherds.




We finally arrive in Kars in the rain, and with some effort we find the Otel Temel. We befriend the hotel manager there, and have a conversation of sorts, with lots of nodding, hand motions laughing and reading from our Turkish phrasebook.

You can see more of our photos here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/thewozza
http://picasaweb.google.com/leah.lesyk/Istanbul

Day 11 - Goreme

Again we've rented a scooter for the day, and this time Osman is sending us on a Southern loop. We breezed through Uchisar and missed the castle there (oops), and on the way to Cardak we're caught in another downpour. To avoid the rain we stop periodically wherever we can find shelter; under the shade of a country high-school, beside a telecommunications building in a field, and in a Turkish tea-house. These tea-houses are special places for men only, but because we are tourists we are welcomed inside and have a tea there. There really are only men in there, mostly old and grizzled, almost all smoking and drinking tea, and some playing backgammon and Turkish bridge. Leah and I were certainly the stars of the place as all the men stare us down, but the patron cheerfully gave us Cay tea for free so all seemed okay.

When the rain finally cleared we rode to Kaymakli and visited the underground city there. This place is huge, like a human sized ant-farm! There are tons of rooms connected with narrow passages, some with huge stone wheels to roll in place for protection from attackers. We had fun exploring without a guide, pretending we were the first to visit these rooms and imagining what each place was for. We know of a few things to look for, fire hearths with a rut carved to remove ash, and blackened walls from smoke surely indicate a place for cooking, rungs cut in the walls to rop animals, long tables for eating, huge storage compartments cut into the walls, and of course recessed (and sometimes protruding) shelving systems. All of this is monolithic, so there are no free pieces in the whole place, except the rolling stone doors.

I explored a few unlit sections, but it was a little unsettling so I had to go back. Maybe with a better flash light I could have explored further, but my headlamp is quite dim. It really made me wonder how people could live there, as the only light they could have had would be from burning flame, maybe an oil lamp; I can only assume you would get used to the darkness after a while.

Next we rode the scooter to Sahinefendi where a Roman bath house is in the process of being excavated. It was discovered 3 years ago and it was really cool to see the process of excavation.

We rode on to Keslik Monastery, again carved out of the volcanic rock. There are sections of stonework, in particular the chapel, but most of the place is carved right into the cone shaped structures left over from an earlier time of volcanic instability. Very faint frescoes remain, and it seems that most have been covered in black paint - it is speculated this was done to protect them although I can't imagine from what. Wandering the area we explore more caves, but as usual they're all empty except for what cannot be taken out, like the the hearths and one huge stone wheel used as a door.

In Mustafapasa we ate a huge pide (Turkish pizza) and admired the Greek architecture there. Once we made it back to Goreme we caught a night bus for Erzurum.

Day 10 - Goreme

This morning we rented a scooter from a motorcycle enthusiast named Osman who made some recommendations on where to go. So we went North to Cavusin. Here there are ancient homes carved into the cliff wall that was something like a block of swiss cheese that we could hike through. Erosion has exposed pretty much all of the rooms, leaving us to clamber over rocks and into gaping holes were once there might have been doors. After a while we're hailed from above by a voice that says 'church!' and a finger pointing far above us.

After searching unsuccessfully for a way up we see some Americans above who tell us to find a way through rooms into the hill and out the other side to a patch that leads to the top. The climb is high enough, but easy going in most places, although we had to puzzle our way through caves, along a wooden balcony path and cling to the rock wall for a bit. Our reward is an ornately carved chapel, with most of its frescoes destroyed by the elements, and graffiti.

As we ride the scooter into Pasabaglari we stop for a coffee, and then it really starts to rain. An Australian we had met in Istanbul and his friend show up on mountain bikes and we shared some laughs and stories over tea in the shelter of the coffee shop. There really isn't much to see from the road except mushroom shaped volcanic cinder cones, and although there are people hiking up the hills in the distance we don't want to be caught in the rain up there so we head on to Ozconak, and through some wrong turns we end up taking the long way there through some beautiful country roads.

When we finally get there we are treated to our first underground city - a small but rarely touristed one. These places feel like mines, and we can't help feeling a little like Indian Jones exploring the narrow and short tunnels, and peeking into dark holes carved for storage with our flash light. The rooms are high enough for my 6 feet to stand in with a few centimetres to spare, but the connecting tunnels are so short I have to double over at the waist, and compress my legs to get through - the passages are so narrow that it is very hard to turn around bent over like that; we wonder how tall these people were, and if they ever cracked their heads if they were in a hurry to get somewhere.

Underground it is cold, damn and dark, and we wonder what life could be like here, but there are reminders of their lives; stone hearths, chapels, storage units and rungs for tying animals all carved right into the stone walls.

We make a bee-line for home for Goreme, stopping only to take in the fantastic views but even then it was nearly dark and quite cold when we get back.

You can see more of our photos here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/thewozza
http://picasaweb.google.com/leah.lesyk/Istanbul

Day 9 - Goreme

At 10am we awoke and got breakfast and made our way to the open-air museum. I had no idea what to expect, but I could not have guessed we would find 6th and 7th century churches carved into the rock with magnificent frescoes. Some have brilliant colour and depth, and obvious artistic talent - it is amazing these have survived open to the elements. As we explore we see that some areas are not so well preserved - the raw material is a rough sandy volcanic deposit that is easily fragmented, but solid enough to be carved into multi-level structures. Unfortunately it is easily eroded, and we found several structures where half of the room had been washed away piece by piece from wind and rain and only fragments of frescoes remained.

Many rooms are (or were) tombs, with long holes carved in the floor to act as a sarcophagus. These are all empty except for one room which still holds human remains. Plexiglass covers them, but we could see the bones!






All the time we are out there we're being rained on, which is one downside of visiting an open-air museum. Apparently the summer here is very hot with no rain, but we have it cool with lots of rain.

We've become accustomed to working around tour-groups. Sometimes we have to wait, but the reward is having a site all to ourselves as tour-groups generally mob a site all at once, and leave all at once. We had the beautifully frescoed Buckle church to ourselves for a few precious minutes before a group arrived to fill the space.




We went for a quick hike in the evening, enjoyed dinner and a beer and then called it a night.

Day 8 - Selcuk

This morning we took the scooter to Ephesus (or Efes locally). By the time we arrive it is already full of tour buses, but we expected this as it is said to be the most well preserved Roman citadel of all Europe. As we walked through the site it seemed to not be so bad; sure at some bottleneck spots there are hundreds of shuffling humans, but in the confusion of following a tour guide they are not crowded around the structures that we want to see!

And it is amazing, even the road is marble and it shows the grooves worn by the long years of carts travelling up and down the path. we enjoy the opportunity to imagine the life in Efes, the market stalls and huge temple fountains, and also the public fountains not so unlike a drinking fountain that we might have today. In particular the toilets in the bath-house were well preserved, you can see that they had constant fresh water brought in for hand washing at your feet, and the human refuse was efficiently washed away too!

We left Selcuk that afternoon for Cappadocia, a 12 hour bus ride that left us in Goreme at 4am. We had called ahead to the Kookaburra Pension to make sure we could arrive early in the morning.