Hi there,
Cappadocia was, together with Pamukkale, the must-see of the trip to Turkey because they are the two things that get the most publicity.
Cappadocia is a semi-arid region of Turkey known for its geological formations that are unique in the world. It has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage since 1985. Its name in Turkish is Kapadokya and there they pronounce its name like this, with the “k”.
For thousands of years there have been human settlements in the region who built their homes by digging into the rock. That is why the landscapes are full of natural and artificial caverns, many of which are still inhabited. The geographical situation of the region made it a crossroads of commercial routes for centuries and the object of many invasions. Which led its inhabitants to build underground shelters.
After Diego had already partially recovered from his hair transplant (I’ll tell you about this story in another post), we organized ourselves to visit that famous region. What people generally do is go one day, do the balloon ride and that’s it.
We decided to spend 3 nights to be covered in case we couldn’t do the hot air balloon ride the first day. Also, at first, we saw that there was nothing to do, but then we found a wonderful blog from a guy who did a lot of hiking trails in the area and since we love walking lost in nature, we decided to spend more time.
In Cappadocia there are several towns where you can stay and we opted for Göreme since it is the largest, where there are more hotels and most of the tourists stay.
So, we left on a Thursday at noon to return on a Sunday. Thursday and Friday we had to work and as around 5:00 p.m. it was already night, what we did was take advantage of the mornings and then go to the hotel to work, because there was nothing to do there at night.
At that time booking.com in Turkey was closed and we booked the hotel through airbnb. I loved one in Uçhisar that was a boutique hotel, but we didn’t want to spend too much money and booked one of the typical “cave hotels” in Göreme.
We hired a transfer from the airport because there were no public transport options.
We arrived in Göreme, checked in and went out to buy water and nuts at the supermarket. We had dinner in a restaurant near the hotel and I was crazy about the politeness and courtesy of the waiter.
On Friday we had breakfast and went on a hiking route through Love Valley, White Valley and Pigeon Valley. I have to say that the landscape is super special and rare. For us it was the first time that we did a trekking like this. Another cool thing is that we were alone.
We arrived at Uçhisar, which is a less touristy town. There we found a wonderful restaurant with a super happy man who served us food singing and put the stove for us to eat warm.
I liked this town much more and would have preferred to stay there. It was quieter and being on the mountain, it had better views. Also, being low season and post-covid, it was almost empty.
We visit the Uçhisar Castle, which is a rock spur where an ancient citadel was built. That is, a rock with the typical caves. The entrance cost us around 5 euros per person and we found it expensive for what it really was: climbing the stairs to see a few holes in the stone and the views from the top. Yes, it is something special and with an impressive history, but the whole region of Cappadocia is full of these caves and without having to pay.
Then we started to go back to Göreme, and a couple of dogs kept us company for a while. Unlike the Fethiye area, the hiking trails here are poorly signposted and we got lost several times that afternoon; In addition, we were afraid that it would get dark in the middle of nowhere and with cliffs on all sides.
Also, there are lots of caves. Some flooded, some with no way out, others that when you left you had already lost your way, etc.
Since we arrived in Cappadocia, they put a lockdown and from 8 pm everything closed. That day we had a late lunch, but I still told Diego that we had to go to the restaurant before 8:00 p.m. He did not believe that in such a touristy place they were going to close everything, so we went to the hotel since he had several work meetings.
We left at 9:00 p.m. to have dinner and that was a ghost town. We ended up eating almonds and walnuts at the hotel.
The next morning, they picked us up again at 6:20 a.m. and this time we were able to do the balloon flight. Then they took us to the hotel, we had breakfast, and we went to do a route through the Red, Rose and Sword Valley. That day we also had some beautiful views. It was a more commercial part and we saw some people, also some groups with horses. It was painful to see the poor horses going down those mountains with the people on them.
That day we had many more caves than the previous one. So, it was pure going in and out of caves. Also, almost all of them had stairs so you had to go up and down. It terrified me because the stairs were of dubious safety and were rusty.
Finally, this day we visited the Göreme viewpoint. If you go up through the town, they charge you 3TL, but we went up through the back and we didn’t pay anything. Here there were some restaurants and people trying to sell the photos they took of you.
We arrived at Göreme, and I was dead tired. This day the restaurants only worked for “take away” and since they closed at 8:00 p.m., we bought and had dinner at the hotel early.
On Sunday we had the flight to return to Istanbul at night. But with the lockdown that was going on, how cold it was and having to check out the room at 3:00 p.m., we were going to have to spend two or three hours there until the transfer came to pick us up. So, we decided to change the flight and leave earlier.
That morning we woke up at 6am to see the balloons from the terrace of our hotel. Since it was not visible from there, we went in our pajamas to the Cappadocia Inn that was behind. We went up to a terrace and from there we took the photos. That day it was clearer, and the photos would have come out better, but it was 6 degrees below zero, so the cold above had to be much worse.
Then we had breakfast and went to do a short trekking to be at the hotel at 12 and wait for them to pick us up.
The one-way transfer to the airport was disappointing because we waited for about an hour and then it was full of people.
What have I learned? (Important information for people planning to go to Cappadocia)
- I thought the sky was full of balloons all day. Like when you see the stars at night, but by day with balloons. It is not like that, the balloons leave super early, at 7am if it is winter and at 4am if it is summer and they are only in the air for an hour. If you want to see them, you must get up very early and know the exact time the balloons come out because it changes every day.
- The balloons pass by, and you almost touch them from the terrace of your hotel. All those photos you see are photoshopped. The balloons come out of a field far from the towns in the middle of nowhere and fly over the valleys, not over the towns.
- It is worth visit Cappadocia for more than one day. What most people do is spend a maximum of two nights, take a ride in a hot air balloon, pay for a tour, and leave. It depends on what type of tourist you are. There are people who don’t even walk when they travel and go from the hotel to the van and from the van to the hotel. But if you like to walk and explore, in the Cappadocia region you have plenty of routes, caves and nature.
- Don’t trust the Wi-Fi. The first day we used Google Maps and immediately we ran out of coverage. Luckily Diego can guide himself well with the map, even though the GPS had no signal. For the other two days, what we did was download the map with the routes, since we knew there would be no internet. This is important to consider in case you have an accident since you will not be able to call anyone, nor will people pass by who can help you.
- It is overrated. This place is overrated and the typical tourist trap. As in Vietnam and Costa Rica, advertising sells you something completely different from reality. Cappadocia did not meet my expectations since it is all very touristy, the people who do the tours are excessively rude and everything is very commercialized. The circuit that they sell you for tours looks like an amusement park: the carpet shop, the tea house, the viewpoint with figures of hearts, the souvenir shop, etc.
- Do not pay to visit caves, the region is full. Just walk a bit to find all the caves you want. In the ones where you must pay an entrance fee, you may find some painted caves, but from what I read, the most important ones had been closed for years for renovation.
- Most hotels and especially the typical “cave hotels” are not properly conditioned neither for the cold nor for the heat. In this region in summer, they reach 35 degrees Celsius and in November we reached 6 degrees below zero. It was cold in the room, and we saw in the reviews that people complained about the heat in hotels because almost none of them have air conditioning.
- Garbage is not lacking even in the most remote places of Cappadocia. The towns in this region are very dirty, but the incredible thing is that you also find garbage when you walk for miles and miles in the middle of nowhere.
Cappadocia in general disappointed me. Diego would recommend it, but despite its impressive geography and the fact that it is one of the most special hikes we have done, I would not recommend it. Unfortunately for me it was more the bad than the good in evaluating the total experience.
We did not have time to visit the underground cities and perhaps it was worth seeing one of the two most important ones.
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