I can sense us preparing, mentally, to move on to another place, although we each like it here a lot. Vincent seems restless and Coen distracted. I am quiet today, unsure of what I want to do. Coen and Vincent want to ride their bikes to Ortahisar, a town eight or ten kilometres from here. It has the highest point in Cappadocia, a castle rock that juts up in the middle of the town. The guide book says it honeycombed with caves built around the castle rock like Uchisar, but the rock in its centre is higher.
There is another attraction I want to see: a valley about 3 km from Goreme to the east that has larger, phallic looking fairy chimneys. The German guest at our inn says they look like a forest of giant erections. Our hosts of the inn concur. “Ken would be very interested,” Vincent quips. It seems Betty, the Australian girl who arrived two days ago, is also interested and she asks if she can come along with me. She likes to hike, like I do.
Goreme is so small that it is easy to find the way anywhere. I already know where the road is from my hiking on the first day. The valley we are looking for is over the hill from where I had been walking on my first day here.
There is a cluster of fairy chimneys on either side of the road as it exits the town. They grow taller as we move closer to the valley. They are marked with common striations that show that they all came from the same layers of earth. Betty is fascinated with their markings, and with a building built into the base of one of them.
We continue down the road and around the corner into the next valley. There is a breath-taking stand of monumental erections right as we arrive in the valley. They spread out before us like a natural temple, a backroom for horny gay earth gods. Betty and I are both delighted by them. For some reason, these have not been mutilated with cave dwellings. They are still virgins, Betty tells me. We both muse about what it would be like to have a multi-leveled dwelling inside one of them, like a troglodyte apartment building.
The two of us climb down into the valley and around their great bases. They are very impressive, even more so than Meteora in Greece, though not as high. Out of all my travels, I am sure this will be one natural sight I will never forget.
Betty and I make our way back to the road and slowly back to Goreme. She tells me about her plans to go to nursing school when she returns home and about her family and boyfriend. She seems quite naïve, but sweet. She asks me is Coen and Vincent are gay, as if she cannot tell the difference. To me it is obvious that they are not. No, I say, and she nods as though I have validated what she suspected.
We each lunch together at a café in town. This afternoon she is off to see the Open Air Museum and I have decided to walk up the hill to Uchisar. It is a rough haul of a hike up the 300 m to the town, which cascades down the hill towards me. I am on the wrong side of the hill for photographs at this time of day, with everything in shadow. I had bold plans of climbing right up to the column of rock in the centre of town to explore its caves, but the entry fee is as steep as the hill and I am growing quite tired from all my climbing and hiking today. I make my way back down the mountain to Goreme.
This evening, after our last dinner in town, Vincent, Coen and I clean and prepare our bikes for the ride to Kayseri tomorrow. From there we will take a train to eastern Turkey. We will soon be far, far from tourist land.
PHOTO 1: striations across the fairy chimneys
PHOTO 2: building built into the base of the chimney
PHOTO 3: row of "penis" fairy chimneys
PHOTO 4: more erections
PHOTO 5: can't get enough of these!
PHOTO 6: panorama of penises
PHOTO 7: hillside in Uchisar
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