Day 3 Cappadocia
We drove through the country to Derinkuyu, one of the larger of several underground cities. That’s right. Not only did the Cappadocians carve out caves; they carved out entire underground cities -with tools made of bone. Our guide explained that in Hittite times animals were taken into underground caves for shelter. Later on people began to carve deeper, hollowing out areas where they could escape from attacking armies.
We saw 10% of the entire complex, going down 8 of 10 total stories. Many of the tunnels were cramped and short, making me bend over so that my chest almost touched my knees.
I did a lot of this.
This was according to design. Attackers would have to bend over and scrape through slowly in single file. Other defensive measures included large discs of more solid stone (brought in from who knows how far away) that could be rolled across the openings. Our guide pointed out a deep well (Derinkuyu means “deep well”), whose opening started underground so that it couldn’t be poisoned from above. Derinkuyu includes numerous ventilation shafts to provide fresh air below.
The underground city had kitchens, stables, sleeping areas, and an area that included a baptismal, winery, a tomb, and what the guide referred to as a missionary school. I wondered how much of the activity in this city was carried on by monks. Basil of Caesarea, the theologian and bishop, was influential in promoting monasticism in the area in the 4th century, but I would guess that most of what we were seeing was developed later.
There used to be a tunnel connecting Derinkuyu to Kaymakli 10 km (over 6 miles) away! I asked my kids if they would like to travel through that tunnel it if it wasn’t collapsed. No takers. If it was as cramped as the other tunnels we had traveled through it would be a brutal journey. I assume it was only used in dire emergency.
On the way back to Goreme we planned to stop by a lake to swim, but before arriving there we drove by a sign for Soganli. Although we didn’t know even know what Soganli was, we decided to stop to check it out. Soganli is a valley filled with more cave dwellings, but even more with cave churches. We visited the hidden church, church of serpents, and the church of St. George. Did you know St. George – the one who slew the dragon – was from Cappadocia. Apparently, crusaders took the legend back home and St George became not only the patron saint of merry England, but the saint of Sweden and other lands as well. People recognized a good story and made it their own.
We had a wonderful time exploring the cave churches of Soganli.
This church with the sand castle look was my favorite. I imagine the rock already vaguely resembled a castle turret, so some monks helped it out a little. There were so many of these churches so close together that we wondered how many people occupied these valleys. The total population just given the caves that we had seen around Goreme and here, not to mention the underground cities, was easily in the thousands. Living in a remote cave for the sake of seeking God seems fanatical to many. But people live near the north pole for the sake of science. So go ahead, be fanatical for God.
Our second son, who is always eager to get off trail, again was dying to explore something more – the caves at the very top, where the slope met the vertical wall of rock that reached up to the plateau above. He and I trekked up and found a way through the jumble of boulders to one of the caves. The view was great.
In the cave at the top we found bones. Someone please tell us they are human bones, because that would be so much more exciting.
On the way back down we found a tortoise, which I carried down to show the rest.
Back at the bottom of the valley we chatted with the owner of a shady piece of property on the creek. It turns out he is the mayor of Soganli. He said that in previous seasons they would serve lunch to 300 people there. We were the only visitors this day, and we only bought ice cream. He also informed us that Soganli means “Onion Valley.”
The lake on our way back was closed, although the sign said it shouldn’t be. We took to the hotel pool instead, which almost an infinity pool design. We could see Mt Erciyes in the distance from the pool (though not in this picture). From Soganli it was visibly directly to the north.
We joked about eating at a restaurant in Goreme called Fat Boys. One of our kids just couldn’t understand why anyone would give their restaurant that name. We suggested other names to form a chain of restaurants: Obesity, Larball, Collops, Cankles. Instead of Fat Boys, Rebecca had chosen a restaurant in a cave, complete with Turkish style seating on cushions on the floor.
We got to choose from chicken, lamb, beef, or vegetarian main dishes, all of which were good, but especially the lamb. After a long day our youngest was about to fall apart while waiting for the food. So I quietly started telling a story about Little Bear, a character I invented for the benefit of our kids years ago. Being a sucker for a story like all our kids have been, he quickly climbed over his siblings and mother to get next to me, where he sat quietly and listened to Little Bear’s adventures exploring caves with his friend.
The family enjoyed lounging during and after dinner. Rebecca is trying to convince me to replace our dining room table and chairs with cushions. How would you feel about that if you were our guests for dinner?
Day 4 Cappadocia
We again drove through the countryside, past the underground city of Derinkuyu to the Ihlara Valley. About 400 steps lead down from the parking lot to the river, which was rather muddy.
Another of the Cappadocia Fathers, Gregory, lived near here in Nazianzus (modern Aksaray). Basil wrote to Gregory a letter exaggerating the charms of the monastic retreat he had founded in his corner of Cappadocia. The waters! The mountains! The view! “The incredible abundance of fish which feed in the eddies. And shall we mention the fragrance arising from the earth, or the breeze from the river? Let another wonder at the multitude of flowers and singing birds; I am not at leisure to apply my mind to it.” And at the end of the letter he refers to Gregory’s home, “Think a while the risk I would incur if by stupidity I would exchange such a land for the Tibernene, refuse pit of the universe!”
The hearty friendship of the two is shown in Gregory’s barbed response. He ridicules Basil’s exaggerated boasting, “As for me I am going to admire your Pontus, your Pontic lair, and your solitude, a worthy place of exile: these mountain ridges above your heads, those wild beasts which put your faith to the test, that plain extending below, and even your rat hole with its pompous labels: thinking-shop, monastery, school! …Your stream is richer in pebbles than fish.” Gregory ends his letter, “If you can take the joke, good; but if not, we will add a few more.”
Basil could take the joke. And then their letters turn more serious. What Basil really wanted was for Gregory to come visit him and the community he had founded at his paradisiacal location, which Gregory eventually did. I wish I would have known exactly where this was. To see Basil’s place of retreat, contemplation, and community would have been fascinating.
Judge for yourselves whether the various parts of Cappadocia are more or less beautiful than one another. There is this: the Ihlara Valley gets more tourists than Kayseri, despite the muddy river. But I will say it’s no wonder that Basil could write about the glory of God revealed in creation. What I appreciate about this exchange between the two theologians is how modern their teasing sounds, like two guys trashing the other’s favorite sports team. In addition to being great theologians, these were real and regular men with real and regular friendships. I get the feeling they would still be throwing jabs about each other’s hometowns today. And they would still be writing and preaching on the relationships within the Trinity, the glory of God’s creation, and warning the rich against greed.
We trekked down into the Ihlara Valley, but our pursuits were much less spiritual than those of the Cappadocian Fathers. We hiked, waded, ate lunch, and caught frogs. We chatted with an American couple who are spending a year traveling. They were some of the few Americans we had met so far. They said that in Lebanon there were zero travelers.
I had suggested that after the Ihlara Valley we drive to Mt Hasan, one of Cappadocia’s other volcanoes. Rebecca was up for that. The kids…well the kids were coming along whether they wanted to or not. We did some things for them and some for us. Catching frogs for two hours was their thing. Hiking Mt Hasan was ours.
We passed through the picturesque town of Helvadere on the way to Mt Hasan. This was a town where a donkey is a serious choice as a mode of transportation. On the way through we saw a young woman riding one through town. On the way back an old man and woman rode a donkey together along the lakeshore. Romantic?
Google maps amazingly led us up the slopes of Mt Hasan to the point where the paved road ended. We started out on a dirt road that quickly dwindled to a trail. At one point we stood deciding whether to go right or left and an old man camping out down below shouted up at us and gesticulated. I understood him to be saying, “Go left, and then turn right and keep going, keep going, keep going!” It was good advice.
There was some murmuring from the kids. Until we discovered a field of gold. Actually obsidian, the shiny black rock that Native Americans (and probably others) used to make arrowheads. It may as well have been gold, seeing how excited our kids were. There were piles of obsidian set aside “to take home,” some rocks being larger than a softball. By the time we came back by the obsidian deposit, I think only one kid thought it worthwhile to pack a few little pieces down. I had read that people used to collect obsidian from Mt Hasan to trade.
We continued for a ways, passing a section or two with rather slippery footing. Rebecca went ahead to check out the trail and the view. Our second son, the off trail explorer, went with me afterwards to check it out. We saw shepherds across the ravine to our right. As we left, they led their sheep down a dirt road to a watering hole. If we had more hours and more willingness from our children, I would have loved to attempt the summit. But we did pretty well for a family with four kids.
Guess where we ate dinner? Fat Boys. And it was pretty good. It’s run by a Turkish man and his Australian wife, making the menu eclectic. We talked for a while with a single woman who is traveling the world for a year and her mother who was visiting her in Cappadocia. They were on the cushions around the table next to us. One thing struck me – that woman is searching. I hope that she finds that the crucified and risen Jesus is the answer her heart is looking for. All the sightseeing for me was very fun, but not nearly as fulfilling as worship and prayer. I was, in fact, starting to feel a little dry from the lack of it. The time for contemplation in Albania was going to be welcome. We would keep on enjoying every moment possible until then.