Goreme, Turkey

We’re writing this from inside a cave in Turkey.  Yup, caves have the internet.

After a couple of bumpy flights from London to Istanbul and then to Nevsehir, we arrived at the tiny airport in Nevsehir.  They get one flight a day, and ours was it.  When you land on the runway, they just turn the plane around on the runway and taxi back down the same runway to get to the shed that they call the terminal.  It was definitey a bit different than where our journey started today at London Heathrow.

We’re staying in the town of Goreme which is about 60 kms from the airport where we landed.  Thankfully they have a couple of different options to get to the town that we’re staying in…a free shuttle, or the taxi for 50 Lira (about $35 CAD).  Obviously we would take the free shuttle after collecting our bags.  After watching every single passenger on our plane collect their bags and make their way to the shuttle, we heard the guy yell out ‘No more bags!’.  What?!?  No more bags???

After a moment of panic we ran outside of the shed…err…terminal and saw that our bags were on a tractor being driven somewhere else.  More panic, and then we were told that we need to clear customs because Nevsehir was our first point of entry in Turkey.  Fine.  So we walked into the other room in the shed (which was dark and full of turkish customs agents) and we found our bags and had to open them up in front of agent.  No problem, he went throught he bags and cleared us to go.  So we turned around and made our way out of the shed just in time to watch our free shuttle drive away.  Sweet.  So now we are two white people with Canadian flags on our backpacks at the airport where one flight a day comes in and 3 cabbies are just waiting to take our money.  Okay, 50 Lira isn’t so bad for the drive into town.  Sure, that would be fine if the price for the cab was still 50 Lira.  Remember economics classes?  We were now in great demand (the next bus was tomorrow), limited supply (now 2 cabs), and zero competition for the cabbies.  So our cabs were now 110 Lira.  Eek.  To put it in perspective, our room is about 40 a night.  So after some intense negotiation and a lot of hand signals, we settled on 60 Lira for the ride into town.  We’re glad we made it, it’s better than sleeping in the shed until tomorrow afternoon!

Once we got here we loved it.  A truely unique place that is vibrant and has a wide mix of travelers.  We’re looking forward to getting out and exploring the town more over the next few days, but here are a couple quick pictures from today:

One of the caves in Goreme

This is actually our room.

Checking into our room.  This door is actual size.

Us at dinner.  Not a great picture, but enjoying our first Turkish meal.

Cave Blogging