It’s hard to believe it has been a week since we arrived in Turkey and that our trip is drawing to a close; if we have been a bit tardy on the posts it has because we have been busy. Day two in Cappadocia involved a visit to one of the underground cities built by early Christians (circa 200-300 A.D.) as places to hide from Roman soldiers. It was in many ways one of the more fascinating parts of the trip. Pictured above is not a wheel to Fred Flinstone’s car but but a stone door that was used to block passages to stymie the soldiers.
The site we visited was eight levels deep, of which we were able to visit four as the lower ones aren’t considered safe to go into. Let me say that if you have any balky joints, a bad back, are tall, trending to oversized, or are claustrophobic, this is a tour you should skip. It involved navigating two tunnels 10 to 20 yards in length at a height of maybe four feet. You basically crab-walked through them. But it was worth it. They have identified areas that were used for cooking, chapels and other uses. While ingenious, having to spend several days hiding in these caves without modern lighting must have felt like being trapped in a mine. Hopefully the pictures below give you some sense of the place.
After that we enjoyed a more leisurely walk through the lush Ihlara Valley, which is a canyon with sheer walls as deep as 470 feet that are dotted with cave churches carved into the walls. We saw only one of those but instead strolled for about 45 minutes along the river. The payoff was lunch in a traditional Turkish fashion on a platform in the middle of the stream.
It's What We Do 