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.