Oh Where, Oh Where Can We Be?
Trip Start
Jul 06, 2008
1
9
26
Trip End
Aug 18, 2008
Goreme,
Turkey
Sunday, July 13, 2008
You know how people say, 'This is so beautiful, that you can't take a bad picture'?. Well this place is so beautiful that we feel we couldn't take a good picture becasue when we looked at it, we were never satisfied with the real thing. It was like a disgrace to the actual surroundings to try to fit it into a photo.
As we began leaving the pension, our tour guide, 'Spotty the Wonder Dog' decided to join us. (This is the owners dog and apparently he knows the valleys better than anyone else, and we were in good hands - no paws. Our trusty companion lasted the first 5 minutes until we came across two other dogs approaching us. Perhaps this is where the book 'See Spot Run' came from. Our guide deserted us, without so much as a lick goodbye. No problem, we were used to navigating on our own. (We meaning Trevor). Our first break was Cavušin which was 4km from our pension. This had what was called an old village. There needs to be a better word than old - ancient I suppose works. It was one large cliff or mountainscape that had many, many hollowed out rooms and homes in it. We climbed and maneuvered our way up and around this area. Standby for pictures.
Onwards and forwards to the Rose Valley. We got to see areas of the Rose Valley that no one else did. This was not our intent. Our intent was, in fact, to follow the paths on the hand drawn map that was given to us before we left. Nowhere on this 'map' did any of the paths simply 'disappear' as they did for us repeatedly. Our endurance, strength and patience were tested as we crept up peaks, ducked through tunnels and scaled large boulders and rock faces making our way to the top overlookling all three valleys in the region. Once our path had disappeared, we only continued on thinking that the higher we get, the more likely we would see another pathway nearby. This was not to be. Instead two locals and their horse saw US. We scampered our way towards them carefully watching our footing as we descended the peak that we were on. They spoke no English and being as we speak no Turkish, smiles and gestures were all we had going for us. We know they felt sorry for us when they gave us a handful of apricots before pointing us in a direction and saying 'Goreme'.
We thanked them profusely and began another hard traverse through tight passageways and steep rock faces trying to create our own foot and hand holds when needed. (Why do we do this???) What seemed like hours later, we finally saw something man-made. There were arrows pointing in general directions. We are back on 'a' path - whether it's the right one or not, we don't know - but we were happy just to be on one. We took many pictures along the way and eventually made our way to a spot that we could see people in the distance. As we got closer, we discovered that these were tourist groups that had been brought to this spot by mini-bus and fully airconditioned luxury buses. The vehicles sat in the distance taunting us. We were the true trekkers who made it there on their own steam - even if it was from the backside of the mountain where there was no option for vehicles.
By this time, we had been walking and traversing for about 4 hours in the heat. Our water was running low and we just wanted to jump into the pool at our pension. We chose the most likely to be direct route back down the valley (do you think we chose right after reading this story?). An hour later, we were back. Let's have a communal sigh...ahhhhhh.
A day like this deserves happy hour don't you think? We sat down for happy hour and were joined by an American, Jesse, and a Kiwi - Murray. We enjoyed a night of conversation and laughter and, of course, beer. Murray (who was 80 years old), told us many stories about his years of travelling - he was amazing. Trevor so enjoyed his beer that he woud like to share a poem he wrote. It is eloquently titled, 'Beer'.
Beer
Beer, beer, beer
I like beer.
Beer is good.
I like beer.
01. Starting the Walk
I want more beer.
Beer is good.
I like beer.
Beer, beer, beer
Fin.
Isn't he talented? Brings a tear to your eye doesn't it?
