TURKEY: Cave Hopping in Cappadocia
By Monique Burns
It’s hard to tear yourself away from Istanbul. Its splendid seaside location, sumptuous Mediterranean cuisine and exotic bazaars are irresistible. But beyond those storied city limits lie equally impressive sights. To the north are Turkey’s famous Black Sea resorts; to the south, luxurious Mediterranean beach towns. Southwest, along the Aegean Coast, are the ruins of ancient Troy and legendary Ephesus. East, beyond the capital of Ankara, lies Cappadocia.
Cappadocia—pronounced cap-ah-doke-e-ah—is just a 90-minute flight from Istanbul, but it’s a world apart. Here, lofty sandstone and tufa rock formations—including tall, mushroom-shaped towers called fairy chimneys—rise above a 50-mile-long plateau punctuated by deep canyons and narrow gorges. Most liken Cappadocia to a moonscape. You could also say it resembles Bryce Canyon and other parts of the American Southwest—on steroids.
Several millennia ago, volcanic eruptions covered Cappadocia. Centuries of winds and floods eroded the sandstone and volcanic tufa into whimsical shapes. The native people carved cave homes into the towers and cliffs. Many of these troglodyte dwellings—some of which are still inhabited— have been turned into cave hotels and restaurants. Several cave complexes house rock churches with stunning Byzantine paintings.
Living Like the Flintstones, Only Better
To escape summer’s heat and winter’s cold, visit Cappadocia from April through mid-June or from September through early October. In three days, you can take in the highlights: a hot-air balloon flight, an outdoor museum, a centuries-old underground city, a winery tour, a rug-making factory and a historic pottery works. On a more leisurely five to seven-day trip, kick back and soak in the scenery, or bike, hike, horseback-ride, or golf among the rock formations, courtesy of Cross Golf (www.crossgolf.com.tr, e-mail info@crossgolf.com.tr).
There are plenty of conventional hotels and inns in Cappadocia, including the five-star Hilton Kayseri (www.hilton.com, e-mail sales.kayseri@hilton.com), 10 minutes from Kayseri’s Erkilet International Airport. But to really experience the region, choose a cave hotel, of which there are at least two dozen in all price ranges.
With fabulous views of rock formations in the Red and Pigeon valleys, Uçhisar, the highest town in Cappadocia at 4,265 feet, is a top spot for cave hotels. Among the very best is the Museum Hotel (www.museum-hotel.com, email info@museum-hotel.com), featured in the 2009 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Omer Tosun—chairman of Indigo Tourism, which also runs Cross Golf—created the Museum Hotel from the ruins of cave dwellings and local houses, and filled the 30 rooms with museum-certified antiquities, including vases, paintings, textiles and furniture. One-of-a-kind cave rooms, on various levels, wind around the property whose outdoor pool is graced with Roman arches. Book the three-floor Lalezar Suite, or the lordly Sultan’s Cave Suite, with its own wine cellar. Also in the hotel, top-rated Lil’a (www.lil-a.com.tr), the area’s only American Express Selects restaurant, serves Cappadocian food in an elegant candlelit setting. Guests enjoy a complimentary stint on the Cross Golf driving range, or golf camp. Room rates are 145-2,250 euros (about $175-$2,700 at press time).
The larger, showier Cappadocia Cave Resort & Spa (www.cappadociacaveresortandspa.com), also in Uçhisar, has 79 deluxe rooms and suites with LCD cable TVs, a full-service spa with Turkish hammam, indoor and outdoor pools, and the Padishah restaurant for Turkish, Japanese and European cuisine. Rates range from 249 to 1,200 euros (about $300-$1,460).
Another top choice in Uçhisar is Les Maisons de Cappadoce (www.cappadoce.com, info@cappadoce.com) with 16 painstakingly renovated rock-hewn villas. There’s no restaurant, but all units have fully equipped kitchens. The Maison des Roses has its own swimming pool, too. Villas sleep 2-9 persons and cost 140-980 euros ($170-$1,200), including a daily breakfast basket.
East of Uçhisar, in Urgüp, the Unak Evleri Cave Hotel (www.yunak.com, e-mail yunak@yunak.com) has 30 deluxe rooms in six cave houses dating from the 5th and 6th centuries. A 19th-century Greek mansion houses a music room, meeting room, and computer room. Dinner, a set menu, costs $25. Room rates are $130-$230, including breakfast and tax. Guests who pay cash, in dollars, euros or Turkish lira, receive a discount of about $15 (single) or $20 (double) off room rates.
Cultured Charms of Cappadocia
Some of Cappadocia’s most interesting views are from a hot-air balloon, and your hotelier can book your trip with any of a dozen local companies. You and about five fellow adventurers will float above this otherworldly landscape of spires and canyons for an hour or an hour and a half before touching down in a field for a celebratory glass of Champagne. Balloon trips cost about 150-250 euros (about $180-$300) per person.
The Goreme Open Air Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage Site dating from the 7th through 11th centuries, is an extensive, multilevel monastic complex with dwellings, churches and even a nunnery carved into the cliff faces, towers and fairy chimneys of Goreme, about three miles northeast of Uçhisar. The site has more than 10 rock churches, whose walls and domed ceilings are adorned with striking Byzantine murals of Christ and his disciples, as well as saints native to the region, such as St. George, the Cappadocian knight who famously slew the dragon on nearby Mt. Erciyes. Vividly colored and only minimally defaced, these paintings rival those in Istanbul’s great sixth-century church, Hagia Sofia.
Equally fascinating are Cappadocia’s Underground Cities, first used to escape marauders and, later, anti-Christian persecutors. There are believed to be about 200 such cities, but only seven are open to the public. Beneath the dimly lit tunnels and crude arched doorways of Kaymakli Underground City, south of Uçhisar, you’ll see stables where horses, cattle and other livestock ate from deep niches chiseled into the rock, kitchens with rock stoves and large stones for grinding bulgar wheat, storage areas for lentils, chickpeas and barley, and even wineries where grapes were stamped before being poured into amphorae.
Wine has been made in Cappadocia for at least 4,000 years. Early volcanic eruptions not only transfigured the landscape, but also fertilized the soil. In Urgüp, the Grape Harvest Festival is held the first week in October followed by the International Wine Festival at the end of the month. Turasan Winery (www.turasan.com.tr, e-mail info@turasan.com.tr), founded in 1943, is Cappadocia’s oldest privately owned winery. Tour the modern facilities, and see large stainless-steel fermentation vats as well as cool concrete cellars, or caves, where wine is aged in oak barrels. In the tasting room, visitors can sip and buy the winery’s award-winning whites, reds, rosés and sparkling wines made with native Anatolian grapes as well as French varietals.
Avanos, five miles north of Göreme, has been a handicrafts center for centuries. Today, you can watch weavers create rugs and kilims, using age-old techniques and natural vegetable dyes, at workshops like Avanoshali (www.avanoshali.com, e-mail avanos@sentez.com.tr), which also sells and ships its wares. At Güray Seramik (gurayseramik.com.tr), one of the town’s many family-owned pottery factories, you’ll see the clay that workers draw from the town’s Red River, just as their Hittite ancestors once did; watch women painstakingly etch designs into vases, plates and tiles, and see a potter throw a pot on a traditional kick-wheel. The gift shop is filled with plates, vases and other items adorned with colorful motifs like sailing ships, carnations, and tulips. Prices range from about $5 for a tile into the thousands of dollars for large plates and vases. Items can be carefully wrapped for hand transport or shipped to the United States.
If you’re in Avanos around 8 p.m., a traditional Cappadocian dinner and folklore show unfolds at the Uranos Sarikaya Cave Restaurant (www.uranossarikaya.com). The three-hour music-and-dance extravaganza features a belly dancer, whirling dervishes, and folk dancers whose performance includes a Caucasian knife-throwing dance. An array of appetizers, or meze, a traditional entree of lamb and rice, and dessert, along with unlimited local wine or soft drinks, are served throughout (25 euros, about $30, for dinner and show). If you can’t make dinner, come for lunch. For 20 Turkish lira (about $12.50), you’ll feast on a bulgar-tomato soup, a lentil-and-pastrami stew, and the house specialty, çomlek kebab, tender beef chunks, with eggplant, potatoes and other vegetables, cooked in an earthenware pot that looks a little, well, cave-like.
For More Information
Turkish Airlines (www.thy.com) has four flights daily from Istanbul’s centrally located Atatürk International Airport (IST) to Kayseri’s Erkilet International Airport (ASR). Turkish Airlines also has one daily flight from Istanbul to Kapadokya Airport (NAV) in Nevşehir. Pegasus Air (www.flypgs.com) has flights, two or three times daily, from Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokçen International Airport (SAW), 22 miles southeast of central Istanbul, to Kayseri. For visits to Cappadocia’s historic sites, consider hiring a tour guide. One of the most knowledgeable is Mustafa Uysun (phone 90-532-435-96-94; e-mail muysun@gmail.com); daily rates are 200 Turkish lira (about $125).
For additional information on Cappadocia, log on to www.cappadocia.online.com or contact the Turkish ministry of Tourism at 212-687-2194 or visit www.goturkey.com; www.tourismturkey.org