The journey

My photo
Wrexham, Wales, United Kingdom
For the past 5 years, me and my best friend Nathan have talked about the possibility of travelling around the world by land and sea, and so finally we have a route, savings and time to set off around the world. What we are doing is living out a dream, a dream we share with many people worldwide, a dream of travelling this vast, diverse, beautiful and interesting planet, but unlike the many others who keep it as a dream, we have the tenacity to make this dream a reality.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Days 13 & 14 - Turkey

Day 13
497miles/800km

We wanted another early start to avoid the morning rush hour this time, and knowing it was a long way to our next destination of Cappodacia, we decided to get up when the prayer calls were sounded at around 06:00am.

The long drive took us out of Istanbul, which we had just realised was the largest city we had ever been to with a population of over 11million. The traffic out of the city was bad even though it was early, but by midday we had passed the capital Ankara and were heading onwards and upwards into the mountains of central Turkey.

The scenery became more rocky as we approached the region of Cappodocia, a huge area created from volcanic activity which resulted in an unbelievable national park similar to something we had both seen in pictures of Arizona.

As we approached the small town of Goreme in the heart of the region, the sun was descending in the sky and we were greeted by a spectacular view of the town as we turned a corner on the windy road down the hill. This has to be the most amazing natural landscape I have ever seen.



Day 14
47miles/76km

The previous night we had decided to camp using the rooftent for the first time on the trip. The weather had been good, but that night it got very cold and rained heavily. We decided to put the tent away and find a hostel carved into the rock for our second night in Goreme.

We utilised the Landrover by driving around Cappodocia seeing a whole range of areas with really amazing rock formations. I enjoyed the childhood innocence of wandering around the uninhabited caves, climbing on the rocks and exploring.

The rain started again that afternoon which was frustrating as most of the things we wanted to see were all outdoors. We thought we would use our time trying to get our laundry done, but as it was out of tourist season, the laundrette was closed which left us with three bin bags of dirty clothes. We will find somewhere soon. Hopefully.

No comments:

Post a Comment