We are in Pamukkale, and it is hot. Really, really hot. We can’t figure out why August is the height of tourist season in Turkey, as the heat is oppressive. But despite the heat, we dragged ourselves out of bed to take in the travertine pools that make this place famous. Thousands of years of calcium deposits have left an entire cliffside looking like a blanket of downy snow. It’s a pretty amazing thing to see in the middle of a dry, barren landscape in the dead of the summer heat. If only it were snow!
Our stop here is short. We are taking another overnight bus to Goreme, in the heart of Cappadocia, tonight. We have booked a “special bus” to Goreme. We ran around yesterday comparing fares, and it’s next to impossible to get a straight answer. One office says there are no buses available. The next one says there are plenty of seats. But no one will tell you how many seats remain. We stopped in at a travel agency that came recommended, and the owner said that today he has an “agency bus” that’s being driven back from Pamukkale to Goreme at the end of a tour. They are trying to make a little extra money by filling as many seats as they can, rather than driving it back empty. The price was a little cheaper than the other companies, but rather than transferring through two cities, we will literally go door to door from our hotel in Pamukkale to Goreme.
It’s a huge risk that will either be a major coup or a huge disaster. Like most things in Turkey, there’s no way of knowing how it will turn out until it happens.
loving the pictures! keep up the good work!
BEWARE OF TROGLODYTES! From what I’ve been able to read, Cappadocia has thousands of them!
The first time I ever heard the term “troglodyte” was years ago when I read “The Time Machine” by H. G. Wells. If “Cliff’s Notes” is correct, be particularly careful in the evening, especially around the dinner hour:
“In the world of the Eloi and Morlocks, society was divided into two new races, both degenerate and sub-human. The Eloi, the descendants of the leisured classes, have become child-like androgynous creatures, weak and unable to fend for themselves. Their lives of leisure are enjoyed only at the cost of premature death, at the hands of the cannibalistic Morlocks. The Morlocks, the descendants of the working classes long-ago driven into subterranean factories, have degenerated into troglodytes, still with some intellectual capacity, but emerging at night to prey on the hapless Eloi.”