If one must get up early, at least it's consistent - as yesterday, this morning saw our departure at 5.45am - and same tomorrow morning, although it will be for a flight to Antalya via Istanbul.
Dawn today was spent not flying but photographing the flying of others. My, but there are a lot of balloons up there...
This time we set up on the plateau with a great view across the Goreme Valley with its extraordinary penile structures (sorry, but this a blatantly obvious comparison) to where dozens of balloons prepared and then rose into the air, all at varying speeds, and floating up in the extremely still air. For over an hour we watched the firing, the patterns, the sillouettes and then the colours as they became visible in the encroaching rising sun, and then the descents in diverse places, some alarmingly close by. The pilots manage in many cases to land the baskets onto trailers, as they did ours, with great skill. There's a lot of muscle involved in setting up and packing down a balloon of such a size, and a big investment in equipment, but clearly from the proliferation of companies and the number of people employed in the ballooning business, it's a lucrative one. After that we made a viewing stop and on the spur of the moment were invited to taste a particularly good local Turkish coffee. This is the advantage of a good, experienced guide who knows such things. It was really good, not at all like my local Costa brew: strong but not bitter. They also pressed upon us roasted pumpkin seeds which are being gathered now and are in season.
By 8am we were back in our hotel enjoying the typical Turkish breakfast of assorted cheeses, varied jams and honeys and grape syrup, breads, tomatoes and olives....and my beloved peanut butter! All washed down with hot water.
A quick dash out to photograph a couple who are pumpkin farmers who obligingly drove their horse and cart around the place so that we could get appropriately photogenic shots. In the heat. Poor horse.
Next stop was a rest by the delightful pool whose attractive appearance belied its subzero temperature...still managed a swim...brave, brave girl! Time to dry off to the sounds of my ipod (mozart, keith jarrett, nick drake...etc).
And on to a family run pottery which initially inspired me to thoughts of sitting that one out in a nearby cafe BUT it was set (as many things hereabouts are) into a hillside underground and was made painstakingly over many years and generations of one family - now housing a very interesting museum of pottery artefacts dating from thousands of years BC to more modern pieces. There was a case labelled mercury jars - little innocuous looking clay pots with lids - and Amy who is a geo (as in geology) physicist, posited that they might have used mercury to smelt gold. But no. The Seljuks used to enjoy dipping their arrow-heads into it to poison their enemies. Nice.
Another interesting and probably useless fact: the Hittites of biblical and other fame worshipped the sun, amongst other things. They also had a gazelle as a symbol. They made a rather beautiful wine container shaped like an 'O' shape with a long spout at the top, as the air circulating around it kept the wine cool and was shaped like a sun in the middle. I didn't purchase one as only a large one would have impact and we don't have a suitable place to put such a thing. I did however buy a mug with an ottoman design to represent Istanbul. Very pretty and will do for my morning tea.
I did sit out the underground hiding places for times of invasion, layers of practical areas including animal housing and pipes for fresh air deep into the underground. There are also odd looking pipes which protrude on the tops of some hills, looking like mini stonehenges, which are to ventilate storehouses for lemons. I was not the only one and we settled for a bit of a drink and read in the cafe outside, where the owner gave us green grapes from his own yard to go with our apple tea.
Anatolia means (from Greek) far off shining land (or something like that).
Nahida is full of quirky facts. She also seems to know the best places to eat proper Turkish food made by locals and frequented by locals. An example is the co-operative set up by unemployed women in a local town where we had delicious soup and what they call pancake, made with filo pastry freshly made and stretched and rolled before our eyes, filled with salty local cheese and baked on a massive slightly convex hot plate, like an Aga hotplate on steroids with a bulge...served warm and so good.
We press on after that to our next appointment which is to find somewhere to view sunset. That turns out to be our local 'castle', another defensive spot which strikes me as very much like the famous painting of the tower of Babel by Peter Bruegel the elder. The shape is similar and the town below cleaves to the hill, full of vendors and cafes and a slightly chaotic feel. The stone is pocked with caves and hiding places and has a fabulous view of the countryside all around the area. Sunset was not particularly spectacular but the views were worth it. There was a shepherd with his flock on the hillside just below and a tourist camel outside a cave underneath the mosque across the gully.
Our last dinner at the Karlik Evi hotel was good, plenty of fresh veggies and soup for me.
Another excellent day, plenty of photos and the group is working very well. It's not competitive and everyone is very friendly, bright and mutually helpful. How refreshing!
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