This blog post is one of many in my drafts folder that is long overdue. The events it describes took place on October 19, 2013.
For our home base during our trip to Cappadocia we chose the small town of Avanos, which is slightly off the beaten track. Most foreign tourists stay in Göreme, where the Open-Air Museum is, and from which you can walk into most of the really cool valleys that people want to hike in. But our accommodation search took us to Avanos, and if I were to return to Cappadocia, I would stay in Avanos again.
We saw very few foreigners, and those we saw were only making short stops in the town, to have lunch or shop for pottery. In the hotel across the playground from our “crumbling Greek villa” (so-called by the Lonely Planet) all the guests were Turks. Well, it was also Kurban Bayram, so pretty much all the tourism activity was domestic, but still, Avanos felt a little bit untouched, but also very comfortable, in that we were able to communicate in English or French with many people there. It was even easier to communicate with Turkish speakers there, which I attribute to the fact that folks in Avanos have much more experience hearing foreigners struggle through basic sentences in Turkish, than the people we encountered in Güzelyalı.
Our hosts in Avanos were a French couple from Brittany who had decided to make this small central Anatolian town their home. I am always a little suspicious of ex-pats I meet who seem to make a lot of efforts to re-create the home they left in this new place, where it usually doesn’t really work, because the new place is completely different from the place they left. Which is probably what attracted them to it in the first place!
I watch these people with interest, wondering whether I’m wrong and that some of them are actually doing something wise. I’m convinced most are trying to escape from their past in some way or shirk their duties in their homeland. I’m judgmental that way.
But this French couple falls into the second category of ex-pats, the ones who actually seem to be integrating into their new place. The woman was gregarious and multi-lingual. She was working hard to learn Turkish and constantly apologizing for her poor English, which we insisted was great (it’s always embarrassing when Europeans apologize that their English isn’t perfect when our renditions of their language are about a hundred times more pathetic). We loved it when, in recommending a valley to hike in, she mentioned that we would find wild graps and apels there. We have used grap for grape and apel for apple ever since.
Her husband was much quieter, and at first I thought he had very little English, but after we spent an evening having drinks with them in the back of a carpet store owned by their friend, I realized that he was one of those quiet guys who seems out of it, but actually knows exactly what’s going on. This was clear a couple of times when his wife was trying to translate for us some of the conversation that was happening (in French). He would help her find the right English word, then retreat back into silence. I was happy to have met them and spent some time with them, and get some advice about what to do with our five days in Cappadocia. At first, when she offered us advice, I thought “No way lady, I know exactly what we’re doing every minute of every day. I have the Lonely Planet. I don’t need you.” But in retrospect, I’m really glad of two things she told us.
The first was that if we were planning to take a bus to Konya the following Monday, which was the last day of Kurban Bayram, that we should buy the tickets well in advance. The second was that we should rent a car for at least one of our days in order to reach some places that are hard to get to otherwise.
So on our second full day, we took her advice and went to the bus station to get our tickets to Konya the following Monday (this was Friday). The bus station turned out to be a small parking lot with a teeny little strip mall attached to it. Each of the storefronts in the strip mall was a different bus company. We picked one and random and went in to book our tickets. The clerk spoke very little English but nevertheless it was easy to book the tickets and everything seemed pretty straightforward. While there, I saw a “Rentacar” sign over one of the little storefronts. Luckily, they use English for this phrase in Turkish, so it’s easy to spot. I noted the location of the rental car place, but didn’t think too much about it, since we were planning to go to a rental car company we had seen before that was closer to the villa.
But on Saturday morning, our third day in Cappadocia, the closer rental place was closed, and I was glad that I knew about the other place, which we headed to. Unfortunately, the Rentacar at the bus station not only appeared to be closed, but looked as if it hadn’t ever been open. The office was spare, messy, and empty. We made inquiries, and after a few minutes, a young man came over from one of the bus companies to help us. His English was rudimentary, but we managed to communicate, and after not long at all, we had the keys to a car. It was, like so many things in Turkey, far cheaper and simpler than we could have imagined it would be.
And as for driving in Turkey, there was nothing too tricky about it! Before that day, I had been pretty intimidated about driving in Turkey. The Lonely Planet said this about it: “In theory, people drive on the right and give way to oncoming traffic. In practise, they drive in the middle and give way to no one.” From watching traffic in İzmir, I did not doubt that driving in Turkey was not for the fainthearted. But actually Cappadocia was an exception. Outside of the towns, traffic was light. Inside the towns, the streets were wide and forgiving. So the only thing to worry about was the navigation, and with the maps we borrowed from the villa, and pretty good signage everywhere, we found our way around okay.
Our first stop was a rock-cut church about 45 minutes from Avanos called the Church of St. John. It had lovely frescos and, unlike the legendary Dark Church at the Göreme Open-Air Museum, no one telling us not to take photos. We were the only people there. It was a big change from our visit to the Open-Air Museum the previous day.
This darkblue/lightblue/rust-red/dark-yellow colour palette is the most common one in the cave churches of Cappadocia. The frescoes range from very well-preserved, like in the Dark Church, to medium, like this one, to ones that most of the the eyes scratched out (because the local Cappdocians fear(ed?) the evil eye), to mostly scratched off. Most of the frescoes have at least the eyes scratched out, so to see intact ones is a treat.
Fresco inside the Church of St. John
Exterior of Church of St. John
Then we set out to find the underground cities. We hoped to visit two of them, Kaymaklı and Derinkuyu, but we couldn’t find Kaymaklı and once we’d seen Derinkuyu, cool as it was, we didn’t need to see another underground city. These cities were used by Byzantine Christians in the 6th and 7th centuries. Up to 10,000 of them could hide out in Derinkuyu for three months to avoid approaching armies. They were fun to explore. We were feeling brave after our adventures on days one and two and took the liberty of walking down unlit corridors and passages whenever we saw them. I have no good photographs of the underground city, because of the low light.
There was a group of young boys hanging around the place where we parked the rental car when we went into Derinkuyu. One of them was selling dolls to the tourists. He knew a few words of English and went to work on Tobias, who gave him no satisfaction, saying “No thank you” over and over because he didn’t know “Hayır, teşekkurler” yet.
The boy’s technique was rudimentary. Perhaps one day he will be as skilled a salesman as the carpet sellers at Kemeraltı or even the geniuses at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, but he has a long way to go. His script was something like this: “You buy doll. Your child. Doll.”
“No thank you.”
“No?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“No, no, nooooooo. Yeeeeeeeeessssssss!”
It was pretty darn cute, and “no, no, no, yeeeeeessssssss” has entered our family lexicon.
At Derinkuyu we tried gözleme for the first time. This is a fresh cooked Turkish pancake with fillings. I got the eggplant. Toby got eggplant, ground beef and cheese. I thought gözleme was pretty heavenly, like a filled crepe, but apparently I was the only one who remembers it fondly.
A tree covered with evil eyes outside Derinkuyu
After Derinkuyu we started to make our way to Soğanlı, a village that is full of cave churches. Visitors pay a small fee to enter the village, and then you just wander around wherever you want, checking out the 10 or so cave churches that they have there. They have names like “Buckle Church”, “Church of the Snakes”, and “The Church of Saint George”. Check out the English translation of the interpretive sign at the Church of Saint George.
The steps up to the Buckle Church are as dangerous as they look. But they’re the safest way up, so that’s how we went!
Here is the reward for climbing up: the entrance to the Buckle Church!
After the Buckle church we traveled a little further down the road until we saw the sign for the Sky Church. We parked the car and walked through a birch wood and an apel grove before finding the Sky Church. The woods were more interesting than the church.
Toby and the kids scrumped some apels.
You’ll notice that Sebastian is carrying his customary load in that last photo: his stuffy Crabby (little did he know that Crabby would be lost forever a mere three days later) and a bunch of sticks, AKA specimens. The sad epilogue to our Soğanlı story is that in a playful tussle with his sister that involved the sticks, Toby got hit several times by a stick and got mad and threw all the sticks away. Sebastian was understandably upset and cried (with vigour) in the car for the next fifteen minutes straight. After that he was still sad and angry.
It was very sad. I write it now as part of my attempt to remember both the good and the bad of this whole journey. The fact is, few days this year have been unmarred by some level of conflict between the family members.
When I originally sketched out the day’s plan in my mind, I had intended to finish it off with a visit to the Sultan Marshes, a world-famous bird sanctuary east of Cappadocia. With Sebastian crying in the backseat, the sun starting its descent, many kilometres already driven that day and the realization that the marshes were way out of our way, I was inclined to skip it. But another part of me was crying out “But it may be the only time in your life that you ever see the Sultan Marrrrrrsheessssss!” (this voice sounded a bit like Gollum). So, partly because of this voice, and partly because I was annoyed at Tobias for initiating the current crisis, I said “We’re going to the Sultan Marshes now.” I wasn’t at all confident that I would be able to find them and did I mention they were waaaay out of our way? In the opposite direction that we needed to go to get back to Avanos? But we drove and drove and eventually we were turning off the highway into a rundown village just as the sun was starting to set.
I had formed a half-baked plan where I would take the car on my own early the next morning, and come out to the Sultan Marshes to do some solo birdwatching at daybreak. I figured I could get in an hour or two before I needed to return the car at 11. Considering that I had never driven a rental car before, and never driven outside of Canada and the US, this plan was pretty intimidating.
Another thing that made me nervous was traveling alone in central Anatolia, where attitudes are more conservative than they are in İzmir. And as we drove slowly through the little village, none of my fears of this type were abated. There were a few men milling about in groups and they all gave us long stares. The only woman I saw was covered (but not her face) and was sweeping. I tried to imagine how it would be to do this drive by myself the next day and the idea wasn’t appealing.
After a few minutes the village ended and there was a big sign that announced that we were at the marshes. There was a parking lot, a large pension, and a visitor centre that looked like it hadn’t been used yet that season. Two men were standing near the pension. We parked and went to read the sign, which was in both Turkish and English and laid out some ground rules for visitors to the marshes. The only one that was interesting was the one that said that you could not enter the marhses without a guide. Well, we didn’t have one. Maybe the two men lingering in front of the pension were them? 
We decided we would beg forgiveness rather than ask permission, and we marched boldly past the sign.
The day was dying, which made the fall colours really stand out as we walked for about fifteen minutes toward a boardwalk through the marsh. Once we got there, we walked for another ten minutes or so before turning around. The sky was darkening and the other family members were anxious to be on our way home.
The birds were loud but difficult to see. I caught a quick glimpse of a kingfisher, probably the most colourful Turkish bird. It wasn’t clear where to go to find flamingos, which was the main attraction for me.
The outdoor time managed to heal the rift between Tobias and the kids, and Sebastian started to feel better.
I decided that despite the spooky village and potential dangers of being a foreign woman driving alone in Turkey, not to mention heading out into the marshes by myself at daybreak, I would wake up early the next morning and come back by myself to do some serious birdwatching. Cuz I am a serious birdwatcher.
Boardwalk to (birdwatcher’s) Heaven? It certainly sounded that way, but the birds were shy and skittish.
The drive back to Avanos took a long time and it was in the dark, through some twisty mountain roads. Aside from the car’s headlights, the only light was from the moon, so lucky for us it was a full one, and gigantic. The last challenge of the day was getting the rickety rental car up the steep one-lane-road-masquerading-as-a-two-lane-road. Once that was complete without incident, I sent up my final prayer of the day: gratitude that we survived a day of driving our own car in Turkey.
Once they’ve arrayed themselves along the barbed wire fence, they always seem fascinated by the greenery that’s just over on the other side of the fence. Their field has no shortage of delicious green grass and all sorts of fieldy plants, but it’s the ones on our side of the fence that are simply irresistible. If they can’t reach it easily, they’ll stick out their long pink tongues and try to pull the plants closer to their mouths.
Rebeca Dunn-Krahn 