Goreme (and Ankara), Anatolia, Turkey

Goreme - Turkey

We have been 'on the road' for over two years now! Although it feels like it's gone quickly we still certainly wouldn't call ourselves professional travellers. Bring in Kara's bargain early morning airfare find ~ $20 from Istanbul to the Turkish capital Ankara. Surely that's a great deal? And then only a 4.5 hour bus from Ankara to Goreme! Sold. 

The difficulty with trip planning is that sometimes things don't work the way you want them to or the way you foresee them working. You find that the bargain early morning flight from Istanbul leaves from the 'far away airport' meaning you're up at 2.30am to walk 2 kilometers to the shuttle stand to take the one ridiculously timed shuttle to that 'far away' airport. To arrive 3 hours early for your flight and then to get to your destination and find that actually it's a public holiday and all the buses are full. 

Fast forward (we will rewind a little later) our bus eventually arrives in the pitch darkness into Goreme. Worried that 1. we won't be able to get tickets back to Ankara we quickly spend further time booking new tickets, then 2. that our hostel has probably given up our beds or shut for the evening and we're not really sure where it is. So we scatter around the deserted and silently quiet goreme at 11pm, find the hostel and thankfully we do still have beds waiting. What a relief and a long day. The beds are incomparably soft and warm. The alarm was set for 5am and it was quickly goodnight! 

The most stunning sunrise ever!

John enjoying the balloons at sunrise!

Our stop in Goreme was relatively short so we spent the full day dashing in between mountains and clambering over rocks.

By 7am we had already hiked 6kms chasing the hot air balloons across the semi-arid low plains of Anatolia and returned to our hostel for a local wood fire cooked feta cheese pancake, hot lentil soup and sweet tea.

After climbing up a steep cave and wiggling her way
 through a small entrance

Watching the balloons going up!

Aside from the gorgeous hot air balloon rides the attractions in Cappidocia are the unique geological features (historic caves) which erupted from volcanoes between 9-3 million years go, then formed unusual pillar-like columns.


During the Roman period people began to carve homes and rock churches into the soft pinnacles. Entire underground cities were built by early Christians as hiding places fully equiped with booby traps and stone rolling doors. Today ancient frescos can still be found in some of the remote and quite unaccessible church caves. 

A beautiful setting for a cave house! 

The rest of the gorgeous sunny day we spent hours hiking up and down the landscape and getting absurdly hot and lost.


However one of the advantageous of the area is that if you just get high enough you can see where you going! We managed to just catch the sunset over the 'rose red' mountainous valley before heading home.


For dinner we munched on roasted eggplant stuffed with spiced tomato and mince on the rooftop of our hostel as the Islamic prayers began for the evening and the moon shone brightly across the town.

Sunset over Goreme 

Hunting for the caves! 

Found one! 

It is worthy of a mention that Goreme (situated almost in the middle of Turkey) was particularly cold when we arrived, typical of the desert climates. It reached a low of 3 degrees in the early morning and it sure made us move a bit faster when we were out exploring.

Caves across the Goreme landscape 

The area certainty wouldn't have been easy to live in several centuries ago! 

Pottery tree

Rewind now back to our first paragraph (there we are in Ankara bus terminal). Although traveling can be boggling and a tad stressful if you're flexible and (patient) it all generally works out. As the story continues from Instanbul to Ankara we found ourselves in the most packed and crazy bus terminal we've ever been in.

We negotiated for what seemed like half an hour (but was probably closer to 5 or 6 minutes) and were extremely lucky to wiggle our way onto a 
4.30pm bus from Ankara to Goreme. So what do you do in a city with seven hours to kill, with no guide book or map? 

View from Ankara Kalesi (castle)

Well, climb that big mountain with the cool looking castle on top! So after a stop at the local 'merkezi' we stocked up on 1/2 kilo of baklava, 4 fresh figs, a tub of feta and 400grams of black and green olives. We climbed the mountain gorged on the mezes until we felt ill and walked back down onto our bus to Goreme! A day very well spent and we were fortunate enough to explore a city that we never expected we would!

Tot siens,

John and Kara 

A salt lake between Ankara and Goreme
(taken on the bus)