Born to ATV

Day # 13 - Gureme (Cappadocia) continued part 2 - open air museum and atv-ing

After coming back from ballooning at around seven thirty in the morning, we headed to our hike around the valleys of Cappadocia. The rock houses that the turkish people have formed are spectacular...







There were simply valleys and valleys full of them...



When you look at the rock formation....what do they remind you of?




Happy! (no thats not what the formations remind me of)











Im really unsure of what my fascination is with odd looking trees...






Something about how ackward looking they are just draws me to them



Our group at the top of the hill of our hike...aww im going to miss them! (top left to right: cherie, rick, sarah, david, me; bottom left to right: candice and jill)








So back to my original question...what do the rock formations remind you of? Hint: this valley is nick named "little love valley"





Any thoughts yet?






How bout now? Lol



It was amazing to hike through all of these crazy rock formations that simply dont exist anywhere else. Note to self tho, buy proper hiking shoes. Almost slipped and fell a dozen times.






Oh look, another tree.



Next up is the open air museum in cappadocia, which basically showcases the homes which were dug into the sandstones centuries ago.




Each home takes aparently two or so months to dig out and are basically holes in the sandstone. These holes included kitchens...wineries...churches...



And the temperature remains a constant twenty some odd degrees...so it was warm in the winter and cooler in the summer








There were these very crude drawings all over the insides of the rocks, mostly religious in nature. Alot of these rock faces were used as homes for early Christians who were hiding for persecution.








I cant really imagine myself living here, but i have to admit that it was pretty genius to carve homes of these rocks, very resourceful indeed.






















After a great walk around the open air museum, we head back to town for some lunch. I seem to be addicted to gozleme, the turkish pancake. Ive hd this two days in a row now...




Yummmmy
In between i headed back to the hotel for a quick change and some wifi relief. While on the roof top terrace, a little kitten comes by to nap rit beside me. Im usually a dog person, but this kitten was too adorable.




At five, we meet up to go ATVing. It was my very first time trying it out.









I was a bit nervous at first since im not good at driving in general, but it was easy enough to get the hang of...







After riding for about half hour, i read the following sign on the quad bike...







We were not given a manual...we only got a twenty second set of instructions in how to use the bike. Lol. Safety first!

We lost a couple of our group members, so while our leader went looking for them, candice and i decided to do a little jumping action.








Gorgeous no?
Aside from all the dust, my ATVing experience was absolutely amazing. I LOVED it. The rush you get when you hit the acceleration and go flying through the bumpy roads...two and a half hours of touring the cappadocia back roads, seeing the sunset and having wine, bread and cheese at the end? All for 60 lira? Life is good.







We rode around for a couple hours, and ended up at a scenic spot to see the sunset.



Watchung both the sunrise and the sunset in cappadocia. Its been tremendously long day but amazing...



Our bikes...some better other (i was quite good with mine though, :))



And finally, our last dinner together as a tour group. We had teracotta pottery kebap, which was amazing and soooo flavourful. It was a bittersweet dinner to have...defintely going to miss my new turkish fam :(



Before i forget, i need to give a thanks to sarah for giving me photo tips throughout this trip, as well as always cleaning my camera for me :) without her, my camera would be covered in dust, dirt and finger prints :) thanks!

Location:Cappadocia, turkey