Sat Jul 19 day 7
Its funny how hotel room features like a/c and floorspace become important after a sleepless night in the heat, tripping over luggage getting to the bathroom.
Mememem and pancakes on the panoramic rooftop for breakfast. Off with our tour group to see underground cities, but our bus is stuck in an alley behind a slow moving tractor
The green tour
Erbil our tour guide gave us Turkish
Name Layla (means intoxicating beauty) and Mecnun (meshz noon) (means crazy in love), famous lovers from a Turkish love story.
Selime Orthodox monastery
Ihlara Valley walk - first Christians arrived here after 70 AD to avoid Roman persecution. St. ... Church in ruins but you can take pictures of the frescoes.
Derinkuyu underground city. We went down 7 levels, 50 meters while four people panicked and had to be escorted to the surface. Sherisse finally had to retreat as we decended the tiniest passage towards the 8th level graves. Maybe she saw dead people.
Sun Jul 20 - day 8
Day 8, that means the first week is over. Sad
Missing socks and serious back pain cause early morning drama. Sherisse, against her better judgment, attempts chiropractic treatment. Randall finally seeks help from random Boston backpacker for back cracker.
Hiking! Rose valley, the Ucichur castle, and Love valley on the agenda. Well, making one out of three ain't bad.
The name of the village, Goreme, is Turkish for invisible, but I think it should be applied to the hiking trailheads.
This invisibility required some off trail hiking which almost went well until 25 feet from the bottom we ran into a sheer cliff. Well, almost sheer because there was this one spot with a slight rut caused by washout, so of course Randall was game. Sherisse was slightly more hesitant, or very hesitant, or terrified to go down but too nervous to go back up.
Sherisse proved once again that she is Ms. Unstoppable because she followed Randall down the almost sheer rut. This took a good 20 plus minutes, a continuous stream of encouragement, and an elaborate plan to catch her if she slid all the way to the bottom. She made it. Random Turkish men applauded from across the valley. Randall ate more dirt than he has in the past several years.
The entire situation was obviously Randal's fault; however, a still somewhat miffed Sherisse gamefully agreed to climb the red peeked mountain which revealed some of the most breathtaking vistas seen yet.
Efes, Coke and Ruffels at the Rose Valley Tea garden.
Long hike back from Rose Valley. Two hour hike turned into five and a half.
Evening restaurant crawl. Water, lots of water and baklava by the 'river'. Next patio, Efes. Last patio, curry and the second Efes on the tip of the highest terace overlooking the vista of Goreme at Manzara's.
No comments:
Post a Comment