The Underground City and the Last Supper

The main plan today was to check out the underground city of Derinkuyu with a tour that we signed up for through our hostel.  It’s called the Green Tour and takes you to the underground city, a short hike through the Ihlara Valley, the Selime Monastery and a few photo ops along the way.  It started at the crack of 9:30 so we didn’t have to set any alarms and got picked up right at our doorstep.  We headed to the tour place and jumped on a half bus with 25 other people.

The Evil Eye tree to scare away evil spirits.

Our first stop was a viewpoint above Gerome which we had seen before but we got our first taste of our tour guide.  He was a pretty funny Turkish guy that spoke pretty good English but very quickly with a heavy Turkish accent.  You had to focus pretty hard but he was full of interesting facts and had a great sense of humour.  His big line was (after finishing a blurb on what we were looking at) “okay, then, let’s go...” and he’d herd us onto the next attraction.  Given there was almost 30 people and everyone had cameras (including over half the people being Asian) it was a pretty arduous task keeping us on schedule.

The next stop was the underground city of Derinkuyu.  I had heard about this city from a number of people back home and was interested to learn more about it.  It was used during the Roman Empire where the Christians were hiding from the Romans and could retreat into these underground cities for up to 3 months.  They had an underground well for water,

The stone door behind Shannon.

brought their livestock underground

The dead body storage in the underground city.

with them, had an incredible ventilation system and could survive for long periods of time locked underground.  They also had a number of traps and low tunnels so warriors in armour would have difficulties entering.  There were a pile of round stone doors that they could roll shut and no one could get past from the top.  Pretty incredible the system they had.  We checked out all seven underground levels they had open to the public but the system was way bigger than the little piece we saw.   A number of tunnels have collapsed and you could lose people down there in the intricate tunnel network.  My back sure wasn’t feeling too good after a half crouch, duck walk through all the low tunnels but it was well worth it.

The next stop was lunch which was incredibly efficient as they took our orders early and phoned them in, pretty sure they’ve done this a few times before!  Then it was off to the Ihlara valley where we walked along the river for 3 km and the bus picked us up on the other side.  Here, more Christian digging houses and churches into the rock hiding out from marauding invaders.  One of the interesting facts our guide was telling us was in the

Stunning valley with steep cliffs and a beautiful stream.

Hiking the Ihlara Valley.

1930’s, when Turkey became an independent country there was a religious swap where Turkey exported one million Christian to Greece in exchange for half a million Muslims from Greece to Turkey.  Now there are over 77 million people in Turkey and 95% of them are Muslim with 5% being Jewish and Christian.  There is freedom of religion but very few non-Muslims.  These 77 million people also live in an area that is three quarters the size of British Columbia with our whopping 4.6 million people!  Interesting to get that perspective and talk with the kids about it. 

Our final stop was advertised as the place where Star Wars, The Phantom Menace was filmed at Jabba the Hut’s hideout.  I fully recognized the photo and was excited, explaining the movie to the girls and (I’m embarrassed to say) realized that the girls had never seen it.  That’s the first thing we’re doing when we get home, Star Wars trilogy, here we come.  So it turns out that George Lucas was trying to get permission to film here but there was some type of conflict and he was never given the go ahead to shoot there....false advertising or what!  It was still pretty cool to explore the four floors out of the eleven, but I didn’t get the shot I was hoping for!!! Heading back home the bus we were all pretty sleepy and crashed for the ride back to Gerome.

Selime Monastary, we couldn't get up top but pretty cool non the less.

The monastary with carved columns excavated.

That night it was a pretty easy decision on where to go for dinner.  We had to go visit Orhan and say goodbye.  Another great meal and then it was time to hit the Turkish gelato place and head home.  Gerome was a pretty incredible place and well worth checking out over a number of days.