Turkey📍Cappadocia and hot air balloons, Goreme, Antalya, Oludeniz, canyon, salt lake, Pamukkale / travel blog

Cappadocia has been on my bucket list for many years. To get here I had to take two flights – 11 hours including delays, stayed in Antalya, rented a car and @alive_n_travelin drove for another 11 hours. I felt tired by sitting for so long, but at least I caught up with my favourite podcasts 🤓 Cappadocia (in Turkish and English, KAPADOKYA) is the land of rocks (some are called “fairy chimneys”!) and hot air balloons 🎈 To see the whole experience starting with blowing hot air to take off, you need get up at 4am.

Antalya is a beautifully situated city on the coast, with cliffs, a long beach, mountains in the background and old buildings. However, it’s a bit too crowded for me, I didn’t even take many photos and I preferred to go to Termessos, which you can see below in the video. If you love nature and ancient buildings, this place is perfect, you can walk between trees and ruins:

Salt lake Tuz

On the way from Antalya to Goreme in Cappadocia, you can take ca. 2 hours detour to visit the salt lake Tuz, which is pink in some places and at certain times of the year. You can see from the road that some places of this lake look amazing, they are intensely pink, but the road is far from these places and I don’t know how to get to them, because there are no exits from the main road, and they are surrounded by fields. So you have to get to the north of the lake, to the designated place. In June/July there is no water here and the salt crystals sparkle in the sunlight:

Cappadocia / Kapadokya

It turned out that it is terribly cold in Cappadocia! I had to wear all the clothes I had, and I bought a traditional poncho anyway 🥶 I walked in the morning and in the evening wrapped in a blanket. I didn’t expect it, when being in 36 °C in Antalya…

In Cappadocia there are unusual rocks, often inhabited and made into hotels, you can sleep in a room – a cave. In Persian, this place is called “the land of beautiful horses” and there are indeed many of them. In the morning, when the weather is favorable, balloons float. I must have taken hundreds of photos…

The view from the city Goreme:

Love Valley

In Cappadocia, there is a famous valley of love, where you can go hiking, and its name comes from you know what 🙂

There are many carpet shops in Goreme, including the Ikman Gallery:

Red and Pink Valley:

While hiking we met a turtoise on a small path… I was very surprised and moved it to the side because it was too close to the edge of the mountain. I was worried about him first because what would a turtle be doing all alone on top of a mountain! 🙂 Later we met another turtle and realized that this must be their home:

On the same trail in Red Valley, a stray dog came to us and walked all the way for 3 hours! He led us through the mountains. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any food, but because we chose the other way (by chance), we got to the garden of the old man who lives there near the rocks and when we bought fresh juice and nuts from his garden, he also gave us some food for the dog 🙂 This dog moved my heart me because on the same day before leaving, I was thinking that I am grateful for all friends and kind, authentic people in my life and I wish I had more of them and avoid those who only take, take and demand more, giving only dramas in return. I believe that this friendly dog was a gift from the universe 🙂

Oludeniz and Fethiye

These are famous beach towns on the coast, where you can paraglide, explore the mountains and valleys in the area and take a boat trip to the islands with turquoise water.

Butterfly Valley:

Saklikent Canyon

This is a beautiful canyon where in the warm season you can walk between the rocks in the water. The first part open to everyone is easy and the water level is very shallow, but you will get your shoes wet. You can buy or rent rubber aqua shoes. Once you get to a certain point, you’ll see that you can only go further with a guide to the next part and beyond, it costs around 30 euros per person. We spontaneously decided to go and indeed it turned out that a guide is essential, because you have to climb high rocks on a rope and slide over other rocks – if you don’t know the way, you’ll think it’s crazy to go there. It is also good to know where to step, what rocks are mobile and to avoid, when you can slide down the rocks, how to climb the waterfall, how deep the water level is and where you can jump, etc. There was no one else in this part except us, the guide said that no one is that “crazy” 😉

An amazing adventure, but I had countless black, purple, green and yellow bruises all over my body… You have to be very careful here at every step. At one point I slipped out of my rubber aqua shoes and fell onto a rock – a painful fall. Without the help of a guide, I certainly would not have made it. We also saw a dead goat on the way that fell from a height, which is rather rare…

But at the end there is a reward awaiting, you can swim under the waterfall:

Everything looks good in the photos, but that’s the reality:

Pamukkale

If you are wondering whether to come to this famous place, it is better to know that it is different from what you see in postcards or Google. The most famous pools are dried and closed. Only the part you see in the pictures is open. Some people complain a lot about it. Despite that, I really like Pamukkale because it is a small, interesting and unique place on Earth.

In the same area, you can also see the old Roman ruins, the amphitheater and Cleopatra’s pool, where there are old fallen columns after the earthquake. This pool was a gift to the famous Egyptian pharaoh Cleopatra from Mark Antony, according to legends. This is probably the most interesting pool I’ve ever seen (because of these columns in the water), but it’s busy and very touristy, so you probably won’t feel this atmosphere.

Salda lake

An increasingly popular place, a lake with the beautiful turquoise-blue color of the water and the picturesque beach:

Chimera Mount

In Turkey, there is Mount Chimera, which is called the mountain of eternal fire because flames have been emitting from its cracks for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years.

The Chimera is a mythical monster from Lycia that has the head of a lion, the body of a goat, the tail of a serpent, and breathes fire. It was defeated by Bellerophon on the wings of a pegasus, he shot him with a javelin with a lead point, which melted in the blazing fires.

Goynuk Canyon

Close to Antalya, there is a canyon where you can swim in turquoise pools, go for a walk, have lunch sitting at tables set in the water and go river rafting, etc. It’s a commercial but beautiful place.

Turkish tea and cuisine

They’re delicious! If you eat vegan or vegetarian, you have quite a lot of options here. Gozleme is something like pancakes and can be ordered almost anywhere. There is a culture of drinking tea in small, cute glasses in Turkey. There are also patisseries with “Turkish delights” where you can buy baklava (it’s with honey) and “lokum” with different flavors, it’s something like gummies but with corn starch, not gelatin. They are not healthy, they are probably with a huge amount of sugar, but I couldn’t resist the ones with a rose flavor. In many restaurants you can sit or lie on large, colorful cushions.