In the Cappadoccia region of Turkey, Byzantine cave churches, underground cities, and verdant valleys are sprinkled throughout the sun-drenched landscape. Seemingly every village has a tourist attraction or 5. We picked Guzelyurt because the guide books said it was under-visited. Getting to Guzelyurt is part of the reason it’s under-visited.
Travelling by public transportation involves luck and endurance. We exercised our endurance when our luck ran out in Aksaray, the closest city to Guzelyurt, and we missed the 6 times per day minibus to the village by five minutes. At the muddy bus stop corner, an industrious tea booth owner hung a tarp to keep his stools, rabbles, and customers dry. When the wind picked up, he gestured us inside between the hot water stove and the tea counter. We wiled away two hours drinking tea and playing charades for conversation with the owner and his regulars. When the packed minibus finally arrived, we were ushered onto it and a nice gentleman from Guzelyurt gave up his seat for the “turista” Cara. This pleasant wait was a harbinger of the next few days.
You might think that we would have hotel reservations in a village we took so much effort to get to with few lodging options. As we carried our bags up and down the steep streets in drizzling rain finding full pensions, we certainly regretted our lack of foresight. Lucky number four was empty with a light-filled room overlooking the bucolic hillside. We won’t be making reservations anytime soon.
We could write an entire post about the Guzelyurt tourist office, but we will restrain ourselves to a paragraph. Upon entering the office, we were plied with brochures, a CD, and a a magazine by the Nicest Ever Tourist Office Worker (NETOW). To plan transportation for a day trip, Netow brought Adam to the university across the street to translate. But Netow did not need to speak English to drink tea with us or lend us his umbrella. To top it all off, the next morning when we arrived back at the office to take a taxi, Netow served us olives, cheese, bread, and tea – the traditional Turkish breakfast.
While Netow was the most memorable, there are plenty of other characters we will remember: Netow’s friend who joined us for breakfast sharing his very own sheep’s cheese; the taxi driver / market owner who showed up early, refused a tip, and shared tea with us in the town square; the restaurant owner who dished some of his family’s off-the-menu dinner for us to try. The underground city and frescoes in the cave churches steps from town were nice, too.
Technical details: We stayed at the Asrav pension, highly recommended. The dolmus to Guzelyurt from Aksaray leaves every two hours starting at 7:30 and ending at 5:30pm from the old otogar. Ask around.
Leave a Reply