Safe in Cappodocia
We’re aware of the recent bombings in Turkey; it’s pretty scary, as Lisa and I were just on the Mediterranean coast right before the bombings. But now Marcus & I are in Cappadocia, in a true ‘backpackers’ town — nothing like the fancy tourist resort towns we were near before. (We actually stayed in smaller towns near the bigger tourist towns, which was nice).
Getting to Cappadocia from Pamukkale was a trip. Seriously. It was an 11 hour bus ride, not including the 15 minutes to wait for the un-airconditioned “shuttle” nor the 25-minute shuttle ride to the bus station. At the bus station it was a mass of confusion when we went up to a ticket window and the guy took our ticket, saying, “Change ticket, change ticket.” I began to panic as people started chattering away in Turkish behind the window. “I just want to know where the bus leaves from!” The people in Pamukkale assured me that it would be easy to find our bus in Denizli. HA! I’m also learning that, in Turkey, bending the truth is common. A 9:00 bus might leave at 8:40 or 9:20… A 20-minute rest stop might be 40 minutes. “You’ll have a reservation” might not really mean that we’ll have ar eservation. It’s all quite confusing for a New Yorker!
Anyway, after the mass confusion at the bus counter, they gave us a new ticket, with new seats and now saying that we paid 50 YTL instead of 70 YTL. I still have no clue what happened, but we glommed on to 2 Japanese backpackers and we all followed the curt Turkish bus conductor from the indoor area of the station with the ticket windows, past the line of busses, out the gate of the bus station, and down along the side of the road to an area with a few “No Parking” signs. I was completely clueless and rather baffled, but somehow we got on the right bus.
The bus conductor, who was more like a proctor, was gruff and unsmiling. In the first few minutes we began chatting with the Irish couple in the seats in front of us, and Mr. Conductor Man actually “Shush!”ed me. Later in the trip he scolded the woman in front of us for pulling out her cellphone, and rapped on Marcus’s foot when it stuck a little bit too far into the aisle.
We were given lipton tea and some space-age chocolate-and-strawberry packaged cake product. They blasted some American adventure movie dubbed into Turkish, and I thought I was going to lose my mind until Marcus, Mr. Technology himself, pulled out his Playstation Portable that he had loaded with movies, and his super-modern noise-cancelling headphones. We watched “Walk the Line,” which was enjoyable enough, and definitely passed the time well.
The rest stops were a bit nerve wracking. Mr. I-Hate-You-All Conductor told us we had 20 minutes for the stop. It seemed clear to me that he’d be happy to strand us in the middle of nowhere at some Turkish truck stop at midnight, and so I was a bit anxious to make sure we got back on the bus on time. Marcus, at the last moment, had an emergency WC moment, and I was PANICKED that I would wind up in Cappodocia without him and he’d have to find his way here himself after the bus left without me, pulling out despite my cries of “Yuk, yuk!” (No, no!). Luckily, a Turkish minute is twice as long as an American minute, and 40 minutes later we left, with both Marcus and me in our seats.
We finally arrived here at 7 am, only to find that the transport to the new hotel we thought had been arranged by the old hotel never arrived. Luckily, the pension was a short walk. However, upon arriving there, they had no reservation for us, and no rooms available till 9:30 or 10. I was exhausted and cranky, but luckily Marcus’s cell phone works here. We called a few other places listed in the guidebook, and one had a room open for us. It’s twice as expensive as the first place we picked, but twice as nice and much less crowded. Although sometimes I like hanging with other travelers, sometimes I don’t, and the first place was crowded and rowdy. To tell you the truth, I felt old. The place we’ve found has a nice-sized pool, a great view, and the room is fabuolous — cut into the cave, with rock walls, a big bet and carpets and kilims on the wall.
We had a tasty lunch and explored the rock-cut cave churches and “fairy chimneys” of the Goreme Open-Air Museum. Hoping for an easy night tonight, and possibly a tour tomorrow. We’re thinking of springing for a guide just for the 2 of us so we can skip the craziness of larger tours, some of which, we’ve heard, are short on sight-seeing and push shopping trips. Hopefully we’ll be able to avoid that!
Not sure where to head after Cappodocia. Any suggestions from the Peanut gallery???