Highlights of Cappadocia

Cappadocia is a geographical region unlike any other place in the world! It is a limestone plateau of volcanic ash and lava from millions of years ago. When mixed with water it produced a mud-like substance that slowly hardened into soft rock called tufa. Centuries of erosion by wind, rain, flooding shaped the tufa into a  surreal moonscape of cone-shaped pinnacles (and they are particularily impressive with tonight's full moon). In the 4th century private dwellings and churches were carved into the rock as dwellings. The homes were occupied till the 20th century! Modern construction with bricks made from this tufa are slowly replacing these residents with cute tourist towns. Prior to the building of these homes there existed 110 underground cities, man-made caves dug down as deep as 14 stories in some cases, built for people to escape persecution from invading tribes. We were able to explore just one of them, only going down three stories into the labarynth. Not for the claustrophobic.
Along the way we made an unscheduled "learning and discovery" stop at a secondary school where the 8th graders were holding a science fair outdoors on their grounds. It was great fun strolling through their exhibits and encouraging them through our limited English/Turkish exchange. Salih says it was a wonderful opportunity for them to actually see Americans, changing stereotypical impressions of us as seen through TV ("John Wayne" movies, etc.).
We spent the afternoon at  the Goreme  Open-Air Museum, an amazing UNESCO World Heritage site, home to Medieval Christian monks who carved 12 churches out of the volcanic tufa. Beautifully painted New Testiment frescoes have still survived after 700 years.
Lots of steep climbing today in 86*, sun- drenched weather. Our optional activity came this evening on the way home. We attended a performance of the Whirling Dervishes (the sect of Sufi Muslims) at a beautiful caravanserai.
Pix: Tufa pinnacle homes; our rock cave lunch stop; monastery rock "church", Whirling Dervishes