Choose another map, showing:

• Turkey
• Mediterranean
• Europe
• Africa
• Eurasia
• Eurasia, Africa & Pacific
• The World

Other entries in Göreme

The Walk and the Rain Storm, Socialite

For my second and last tourist activity in the whole week that I spent in Goreme I decided to go for a walk in a couple of the surrounding valleys that had some churches and many dozens of dwellings. I walked about 2km out of town past the open air museum until I was sure I had walked too fast so I slid down into the valley quite clumsily on my butt and found myself walking in a narrow valley filled with signs from the Orthodox Christians who lived in the area in the 11-13^th centuries.

At times there were tunnels connecting the trail through the valley.  At some point I had to get out my flash light and make use of it while going through a longer tunnel. There were lots of houses most of them would have required ladders to visit and frankly they weren't that interesting on the inside.

The valley narrowed down and there were a few places where I had to climb down the rock with a three meter drop.  Between a few places on the Lycian Way and this I was fast developing rudimentary climbing skills. Lucky for me there were grooves cut into the rock so that it was easier and someone had put a large fresh pine branch that you could use for the last meter.  There were a few older Germans with gigantic boots who warned me I would have to do some climbing to continue. They pantomimed it and I discounted their warning because, well some people exaggerate.  My only worry was that I would find an obstacle that would force me to turn around and go back through all the previous obstacles climbing up them.

The trail poured out into a larger valley with a series of side valleys.  I found a few churches and had them to myself.  One of them had a bunch of burial spots on the floor like some of the churches in the Open Air museum.   So it was a bit of  grab bag of what you could find.  There were all sorts of underground cities and other fantastic things you could visit along the same lines but I didn't visit Goreme to see everything, I just wanted to see a couple of things on my true path to find some relaxation. 

At the end of a valley called Rose Valley, I turned around and walked back into town, I only covered a distance of about 9 km. Like a walk in the park or chump change for the Scott who was still in pretty good condition from all my Hiking.  And even a short walk like that makes me thirst for the next time I head out on the trail. I wanted a  trail that is bigger and tougher than I am, a trail that would strike fear in the hearts of many men.  Something that destroys me bit by bit and in the end I feel like a whole person rebuilt like stone. I know that sounds silly or even melodramatic but for me, hiking is a guiltless pleasure.

Back in Goreme I sat down to try and write more for my Journal but after writing over 30,000 words I was written out.  At least I had written one entry that morning.  Instead of writing I switched gears and started on my large and long project to get all my photos from months earlier squared away.  Somehow and it was one of those great marriages, my Pension had a broken computer but a good internet connection so the owner let me use the connection and I let him and his guests use my computer.  For him it was good for his guests and he was taking reservations over the internet, so it was good for him too.  It was good for me because I needed about 40 hours of continuous upload time to upload a few thousand photographs at 3 megabytes a piece. So I downloaded an ftp program which I like quite a bit and set it up with a massive queue and let it go for a couple of days, checking it periodically.  At first I was worried that my queue would disappear if the program crashed and I wouldn't be able to easily figure out what it had uploaded and what it hadn't.  It didn't take long before one of the guests closed the program and when I opened it back up the queue was there and I was a smiling man, because that allowed me to just add the remaining 2.7 gigs to the queue and not really worry about it after that besides keeping a passive eye to make sure my laptop didn't go walking out the front door of the guesthouse.  Really that was a little paranoid because I trusted all three staff and I was aquainted with quite a number of the guests.  That was part of the beauty of the Rock Valley Pansion in Goreme.  It was a lively social place, and I was happy with my room rate for the night.

I couldn't afford and didn't want to spend 5 or 6 hours a day trying to get my photos uploaded and it was something I was dying to get finished before I headed into the Middle East where I was expecting lower bandwidth and censorship to raise the prices and at the same time make the internet harder to find.

In the middle of all my computering sitting in the reception office, it started to rain something of biblical proportions in a town that only gets 5 or 6 significant rain falls for the year.  The pour drain couldn't handle it and they had to form a bucket brigade to keep from flooding one side of the building.  At one point all three of the men who worked there were on the roof in driving rain to re-route one of the drainpipes that was causing part of the problem.  I love that kind of rain was glad that I wasn't in the valley earlier trying to climb down the mini rock cliffs because I am sure they had quickly turned into waterfalls.

Like all the evenings and especially that night because I wasn't writing,  I spent much time socializing with the cadre of guests.  I would wish I could find more places that were as pleasant to while away my time. Places that make such a long time spent on the road much more comfortable.

Add to del.icio.us Add to reddit

Photos / videos of "The Walk and the Rain Storm, Socialite":