Thursday 24th

We are in Cappadocia after a long night's bus ride. We continue to be impressed by the bus service--it's extensiveness and how much it is used. Our large bus was mostly full. At the start, newspapers are distributed to those who may want them. (How long it has been since that has happened on a plane in the states?) We stopped about every two hours at huge busy bus terminals to use the bathroom and for the driver and most of the passengers to smoke. There are lots of smokers here but they have gruesome pictures of sick people and diseased organs on packs of cigarettes in the store. Also frequent beverage and snake service (free). Still, bus travel is not conducive to good sleep. One other complaint--we had to pay to for each bathroom visit with Asian style toilets. We were told that even though our bus ticket was for Nevsehir (where we arrived at 5:30am) the driver would leave us off at Goreme (our true destination) which was on the way to their next stop. Well, this did not happen and we were stuck in the Nevsehir bus terminal for two hours awaiting a local bus. This left us as prey for the assorted characters in the terminal with advice and wishes for something from us; when we were mostly tired and only wanted to get to our hotel. The most difficult seeker for me was a 17 year old Syrian boy who is a refugee and has been in Turkey for 7 months. He lost all his family, has multiple untreated wounds and he lacks a passport or the means to get the services he needs. His English is fair and while he starts out trying to be helpful to us, his desperation soon dominates and it is clear he sees us as Americans having wealth and some connections to getting an American visa or Obama's attention. We ultimately learned that the bus he felt we needed to take with him was not what we needed.

We met up with our guide for this region finally as he was trying to figure out why we missed our connection. The landscape here is a fascinating change--marked by "fairy chimneys" which have been used for thousands of years to house pigeons, animals, people, churches, monasteries, etc. They are now caves used for pigeons to collect guano for fertilizer, some homes, but many hotels and restaurants. We are in a "low end" cave hotel that feels quite nice. It's called the Flintstones Cave Hotel and we had feared some tackiness but don't see it. Our guide is great and we walked around seeing different concentrations of the caves which are made from volcanic ash from an eruption millions of years ago. The day is hot and by 3:30 we called it a day to take a swim in the hotel pool and a nap. More tomorrow.