Cappadocia

Hotel Room built into a cave

We have arrived in a delightful region of Turkey called Cappadocia. Translated it means the place of beautiful horses. It has natural rock formations called fairy chimneys.  They are made by volcanic ash compacted over thousands of years and then eroding from water, leaving these interesting formations.  It is strong rock but very light, like pumice stone. The most interesting thing is that ancient civilisations carved them out and lived in them, dating back to 7000BC.  There are still people living in these homes, with running water, electricity and plumbing installed. Our hotel is one such place.  It is absolutely fascinating and also very luxurious.

Turkey just continues to delight us.  It is so interesting and varied.  We drove through some pretty primitive villages today – not quite 3^rd world.  Tauck, our travel guides, have a foundation and help a school in one such village.  The bus stopped there today and the kids in the school – all 36 of them – were very excited.  More advanced than an African village but the similarities are there.  The big difference is that the Turkish government is doing their very best to modernised the entire economy.  Western Turkey is very western/European.  We are in the central region. The east where the Kurds live and they are a real problem  for the rest of the country.  In the past 10 years there has been a political drift to the right wing conversative Islamist parties and this is a great source of concern to the secular educated Turks.