Epic European Cycle : 2015-10-17 : Cappadocia

Tip
Type Name Description Service Provider Cost Notes Actions
General Info The Birth of Christianity in Cappadocia Amazing historical sites of early Christianity around Cappadocia. One thing I find quite interesting is that Jesus appears to have been depicted as caucasian starting an awfully long time ago. $0.00
Accommodation
Type Name Service Provider Confirmation Location Cost Notes Actions
Hostel Country House Air BnB Göreme $190.00 5 Nights, incl breakfast
KAYMAKLI SOKAK NO 5 BILAL EROGLU CADDESI


Trip Log

Notes Actions
Our last day in Cappadocia. I can't believe we finally made it here, and I can't believe it's already time to leave. We got up early to go hiking in Rose and Red Valleys while the balloons are out, so we got to see the balloons, do a hike, explore town a little, and have a couple of meetings with Brent regarding his plans to develop a good service center for hikers - one of my pet topics. After our lunch meeting Brent was on his way to his place and took us along so we could use his place as a Launchpad for our town walkabout, and gave us a tour of the place he's living in, which includes original cave and fairy chimney. How cool!
While Brent and I were out hiking today, we had an interesting experience with a woman named Virginia.

We were near the end of our hike in Rose and Red Valleys when we came upon a pomegranate juice stand, which, to my dismay, was unattended. Suddenly, from the hill above us, we saw a couple on a small scooter, racing down the hill. The guy stopped the scooter (barely) and the woman got off. He then continued racing down the hill and she began running down the hill.

When he reached us, we realized that he is the juice vendor, and he was racing down the hill to sell us juice. I enthusiastically accepted.

Shortly, the woman arrived. She said her name was Virginia and she was a doctor from South America. She had become separated from her hiking group and the juice vendor had taken her out into the hills on his scooter to help her try to find them. Not surprisingly, they hadn't had any luck (it would be pretty darned easy to miss people in those crazy hills and fairy chimneys).

Virginia wanted to move on and keep looking for her group, while the juice vendor insisted that she stay at his stand. Her hike was supposed to end at a juice stand, and Virginia was convinced his was not the right one, while he insisted it was. When Brent and I were ready to move on, Virginia decided to join us to walk as far as the next juice stand down the way, which is more of a trailhead-ey kind of place.

As we walked with Virginia, we discovered that she had deliberately left her hiking group behind because they hike too slow for her. She asked her guide, Gigi, what direction she should go and Gigi told her to "just go straight" (sorry, there's no such thing as "straight" in those valleys). So, off she bolted, leaving her group behind, and clearly taking some wrong turns. After the hike, her group was supposed to be enroute to the airport to catch a flight out. All of Virginia's important stuff... you know, like her identification, money and credit cards, were in the tour bus. She had nothing. She didn't even remember what town she'd been staying in. She only remembered the name of her hotel, "Cave Hotel" (oh, in Cappadocia THAT'S helpful... every hotel is in a cave). We also learned that she'd recently had several teeth pulled in Europe (which probably wouldn't make it onto her official dental records... you know... in case she ended up a desiccated corpse in the Cappadocia valleys), and that she wasn't actually a "doctor"... she was a faith healer.

When we got to the next juice stand, we encountered some nice young men who spoke some, but not a lot, of English. English is Virginia's third language, and she was pretty skilled, but not fluent. She grilled the guys about whether that juice stand was the correct place for her hiking group to meet. She didn't have any information, though, and they asked her a bunch of questions but couldn't get anything relevant out of her. She got pretty rude and frustrated, exclaiming "you're NOT HELPING ME!" to them, when she hadn't provided any information to help them help her.

Finally she decided to head off down the road toward the town of Çavuşin for some mystery reason. I had tried to help her determine which town she had originated in by describing Göreme and Uçhisar (towns that I thought were candidates for where she's been staying), but she was too impatient and not interested in listening to my descriptions - she only wanted to march on in some direction. Brent and I gave her our little map that we'd gotten from the Flintstones tour company and off she went.

We will wonder often about Virginia. With no resources or ID, no idea of where she was supposed to be, and most likely heading in the wrong direction (after consulting Google, I thought "Cave Hotel" was probably in Urgup), we're pretty certain the remainder of her day did not go as planned. I feel really bad for Gigi, too. I know how awful it can be when someone takes off from your hiking group and goes the wrong way. I bet they both had an interesting day.


Photos