My "Saharagelber" 300TD

It was raining this morning. The village looked a bit sad in the rain. The underground city was 200m from our hotel and we walked a little bit through the Kaymakli village first. A bit disappointed, to see the countless stray dogs, which are fighting to stay alive. Lots of them badly hurt or infected, and today, we saw a badly injured dog again, Melis couldn’t get it from her mind. This is one of the bad things of travelling abroad, in most countries the animals have a bad life.
Anyway, we couldn’t help this individual, he was able to walk and we can’t give him a better life. We went to the underground city and decided to take a guide, we were very curious about the story behind these cities.
Some information extracted from a website:

Archaeological evidence shows that Cappadocia was inhabited as early as the Paleolithic period (c. 2.5 million BCE to 10,000 BCE), and continued to serve as home to the peoples of many different civilizations, including the Hittites, Greeks, and the Romans. Dwellings were dug into the rocks and provided shelter from the environment, defense against foreign invasions, and refuge from religious persecution. These dwellings interconnect, forming some two hundred to three hundred underground cities, equipped with elaborate air ventilation systems, water storage units, and in some cases, even stables and wineries. One of the most famous and well excavated is Kaymakli, where Christians hid from the pagan Roman invaders during the seventh century.

source: http://www.bookrags.com/history/worldhistory/cappadocia-ema-01/

This was really fascinating, from the Kaymakli ancient city 3 etages were open to the public, and there were five in total. Our small guide ran through the small passages and told us that these people used to to that too to move very fast and able to block passages with big rolling stones. He showed us wineries, kitchens, bathrooms, living rooms (for the regular and the richer families), meeting rooms, etc. Really impressive.

Inside the underground city of Kaymakli	Corridor

A family house
Kaymakli

After we investigated the city we walked back to the Saharagelber. It was still raining and we decided to drive to Goreme, from this base we would explore Cappadocia. Since it was raining we would then find a cosy place were we could do some reading or something.
We drove through this beautiful area and it all was a very nice atmosphere after all, a bit of rain, driving through this weird quiet area and listening to good music. Near Goreme we began to see the fairy chimneys, the weather had cleared up a bit and the rain had stopped.
We were stunned by the view of these chimney-like caves. This area really looks awesome! It is so weird, so beautiful, like another planet. We found a nice room in the Anatolya Cave Pension, it was a room in the cave we took, and we both said to ourselves, that this room was one of the cooles we ever had on our travels. You can see ‘our’ cave on this picture here (on the left): anatoliacave.com/resimler/029.jpg.

If you tend to stay in Goreme some time, really visit this pension, it’s such a nice place!
Very friendly people, and a beautiful pension, a place to be and a place to remember!
The room we had was as you can see in such a cave and is really, really cosy. We actually had two rooms, and a very luxe and clean bathroom, and it was definitely cheap too. The url is Anatoliacave.com After we installed ourselves in our new home, we sat down with the pension owner and his family and drank some turkish tea. He told us about what to see and where to go in Goreme. Mellissa and I both agreed that this must be paradise.

The Antalya Cave pension

Cave cooking

The rest of the day we hung around there and relaxed a bit and played with the dogs. There was a small dog, called Pascha which reminded us of one of our own dogs. At the end of the day I watched the sunset from a hill nearby, where some other backpackers were to be found too, I was surprised to meet my new friend Pascha there again The sunset with all these strange morphed caves and the sight of the colored mountain gives an extra dimension to the sunset, and on top of that, it all colors very beautiful. After that I walked back and saw a very cosy cafe-like place called The Flinstones. This was a very cosy place, also in a cave, I decided to ask Melissa to go there tonight, and we did. But first we Melis made our dinner in our tiny comfortable cave.
This was *the* place where fellow travellers were chatting with each other and sit and relax. A hearth in the middle kept the place warm. One of the visitors started playing music, vocals and guitar, this girl had a pretty voice and it was a pleasure to listen to. Oh what a night! Sometimes, when exploring the world, you come across a place which impress very much and has a very relaxed atmosphere, In my opinion, Goreme, Cappadocia ist just like that.
After a boatload of wine (for me though) it was time to go to bed. Still happy to be in Turkey, still amazed about the hospitality and the kindness of the turkish, and the beauty of Turkey itself.

Sunset in Goreme

Close to our pension, Goreme. The sun was setting and a lot of people were watching it., myself incluis

The travellers place to be: The Flintstones in Goreme

After a cold shower (yah, indeed). Yesterday it was indeed warm, as our turkish friend told us, but they have a watertank on the roof, and the sun warms it up during the day.
But in the morning the water has of course become stone-cold. But it’s okay, it’s all part of these kind of journeys. Just like this, just before we left Melis also broke a lath of the bed by just sitting on it. Yesterday evening I’d found out that one of the fuel tanks was leaking, when I was inspecting it today, I was inspecting the damage, it turned out that the complete roof was full of this vegetable oil, as was the cargo door. Furthermore, the rest of the car was full of tiny spots of oil. So, I planned to stop at a fountain along the route through the coast mountains. I had fixed the tank leak yesterday night with some glue and one screw, the glue had become hard, so that’s good. After we were offered a cup of coffee again, which was very kind, we departed to continue the coastal route for some time and then go up north to Cappadocia. After I found a fountain I stopped to clean the oil, while I was cleaning the car with shampoo the turkish family in their nice red W115 drove by and honked.

Our pension last night	The nice W115 of our hotel owner

After some time we stopped at a very nice spot with a beach in front of it and had a cup of coffee on a cosy beach terrace of the restaurant. There were hardly any people around here, and after we sat there for a while we decided to sit on the beach for a while. I also took a dive in the sea, which was a good refresh for it was very warm. We relaxed some more and then left again, in the direction of Cappadocia. We won’t see the sea for some time now.

We were quite late again, so we would arrive during the night.
Late in the evening we entered a small village (I guess it was Derinkuyu). We found one pension which appeared to be full, we didn’t get any offer to sleep somewhere else, so we continued our trip, the man of the pension told me ‘Kaymakli’ a couple of times, so there we were maybe able to find something (it was already nearly midnight). We managed to find something in Kaymakli indeed so we were lucky to find the door still open. This pension looked okay, if there’s a bed and water it’s okay already. We made it, it was already 00:30am, but managed to find a place to sleep.
After we walked the stairs we found two men in a room and we arranged a room. The turkish man spoke a bit english and we had a short chat about the ancient underground city we had to check out here in Kaymakli, he borrowed me a small book of Cappadocia and I read some of it in our room. First get a good deal of sleep and tomorrow we will check out the underground city. Melis cooked a nice meal again and we enjoyed it with some wine.
It’s getting exciting, tomorrow we will see what Cappadocia is like…

Always disappointing to see how all the garbage is thrown of the hill by the local people.

Garbage	More garbage