The Bus Ride to Goreme and First Impressions
Posted: January 22nd, 2014 | Author: ctbideas | Filed under: ATW Updates | No Comments »Our next stop was to Cappadocia (or Kapadokya as the locals say it). I’d wanted to visit this fantasyland of fairy chimneys since my good friend visited it a few years ago. Our 11-hour overnight bus ride started off fine. We took the light rail to the bus station, confirmed our tickets at the bus office, dropped off our luggage, and had a light inexpensive dinner nearby while we waited. We arrived back at the bus office about half an hour before our bus was to leave and was directed upstairs to wait again where we watched a partial episode of "Oses Turkiye" (Turkey’s version of "The Voice"). About 10 minutes before, I started becoming antsy. No one had announced anything or even come get us, so I dragged Rick back down only to discover that almost everyone was already seated on the bus ready to go. Yikes, if we hadn’t come down, would they have left without us? No matter, we’d made it on the bus.
This bus was MUCH more comfortable than the bus from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. For one, we could watch multiple channels on the entertainment screen in front of us. That they were all dubbed in Turkish didn’t matter. It kept me occupied for a while watching Ben 10 fight off aliens (or so I assume?). The bus inside was warm and though there weren’t any bathrooms on it, the bus made many bathroom/eating stops. Each time, we’d jump off to let circulation return back to our legs, maybe pay the 1TL for the bathroom, then scurry back onboard as the temperature kept dropping and snow started to fall. We did drowse off but our legs were a bit cramped and the stops every 4 hours didn’t ensure a very restful ride. However, we decided it was a much better bus ride overall.
When we arrived in Nevsehir, everyone exited the bus. We were confused since our ticket said Goreme, but we were assured another smaller bus would take us from Nevsehir to Goreme because "the bigger bus wouldn’t fit in the streets of Goreme". While we accepted that excuse, it later proved to be false when we later saw busses bigger than ours zooming around the major sites of Goreme. Anyways, we went to gather our luggage. Only to discover our luggage wasn’t there. WHAT?
Turns out we were supposed to go to pick up our luggage from the bus office and put the luggage on the bus ourselves. I’d assumed that since we checked our bus ticket with the company and then were directed to drop off our luggage directly afterwards, that the luggage would be placed on the right bus. After all, we had tags placed on our bags by a cheerful man who’d spoken no English, and then given little matching plastic tags to claim our bags with it. This, as far as we’d experienced taking Flyaway buses in Los Angeles and the bus in Chiang Mai, was the proper procedure and we would return the baggage tags after we’d picked them up at the end of the journey. I’d even thought to myself as we boarded the bus, "I wonder how they’ll ensure that our luggage makes it on the right bus." But I didn’t ask.
MISTAKE #1: Not asking questions over and over again because either you’re operating under an assumption and/or because you don’t want to annoy anyone (or become annoyed myself because of communication difficulties).
MISTAKE #2: Putting my laptop and external hard drive and all requisite charging cords in our luggage. We only had our tablet because it had our bus ticket on it, but no way to charge it. So, not only was I fretting about lost luggage, I was doubly fretting about all my data being potentially lost.
One man, the owner of a local tour company who was helping people unload luggage, happened upon my omg-I’m-frantic-but-must-remain-as-calm-as-possible face and took me under his wing. He took us back to his office and after discovering our situation, told us calmly, "That’s how Turkish people do it. We don’t touch other people’s luggage." I responded, "Yes, well, I’m not Turkish and no one told us to come get the luggage." He shrugged, and repeated, "That’s what we do in Turkey." After a few back-and-forths where he insisted upon Turkish customs and I insisted upon the fact that we weren’t Turkish and we didn’t know, we finally decided this line of debate wasn’t bringing us any closer to bringing our luggage, still sitting in the bus office in Istanbul, to our location in Goreme.
At first he decided he would call the Istanbul office to bring our luggage to Nevsehir. By now, I’d learned my lesson from mistake #1. I asked him, "Our final destination is Goreme. How are we supposed to get from Goreme to Nevsehir the next day?" He said "Bus." I asked, "Is it free?" and he answered, "Of course not." Great. So, the next day, we’d have to take a bus from Goreme to Nevsehir, grab our luggage (maybe…), and then lug the luggage all the way back from Nevsehir to Goreme? That sounded difficult. I insisted they bring the luggage to Goreme instead, since there was probably a bus going from Nevsehir to Goreme anyways, like the one we were supposed to take (and most likely missed while we dealt with the situation). The man kindly called our bus office in Istanbul, confirmed that all 3 of our luggage was there, and that they would deliver it all the way to Goreme. Then he turned to us and said, "Ok, this is not my responsibility, but I have to pick up a client anyways, so we can drop you off in Goreme, if you want?" I said, "Is it free?" and he shrugged, "Of course." We agreed.
Their driver dropped us off in front of the bus office in Goreme. Having learned my lesson well, I stormed straight into the office and politely confirmed with the older man in the office who spoke excellent English (a nice surprise because the people who worked in Istanbul had very halting English at best) that we were expecting luggage to arrive here tomorrow. He called the office in Istanbul, then called our hotel to pick us up. I hadn’t even known the hotel did free pickups. I’m glad they did, though, because we would’ve never found them on our own.
Aydinli Cave Hotel was seriously the best hotel we’ve ever stayed at. I HIGHLY recommend staying with them (and TripAdvisor reviews will agree with me). We were greeted by the wonderful man who owned the hotel. Later we found that it used to be his family home until he turned it into a hotel. He’d actually been born there. We could see the love he had for the place. The owner has very elegant bearing and a soft-spoken kindness. He’s very easy to talk to and genuinely curious about each guest. All of his other employees were equally kind and enthusiastic. Our room was carved out of the stone, with niches cut into the rocks for lamps. So, yes, we did stay in a cave, but it was way better than anything the Flinstones could’ve conjured up. Quite luxurious. It’d snowed over a foot on our first night there, so when we climbed up the multiple flights of stairs to the breakfast area, snow blanketed the entire landscape and the air smelled sharp and clean.
We went back to the Goreme bus office around the time quoted to us, but the bus hadn’t arrived yet. We sat in the office for a while, but I think we made the man in charge nervous because he shooed us out, telling us to come back in fifteen minutes. It’s easy to walk from one end of the tiny town center of Goreme to the other in about fifteen to twenty minutes, and that’s trudging through snow with our "snow" gear as conceived of by a couple kids from Southern California who don’t participate in any sort of winter sports. A number of stray dogs ran around, so we amused ourselves with petting them and then purchasing a few snacks from the local grocery store. It was peaceful, the snow crunching underneath our shoes and the wind whipping across our cheeks.
When we returned half an hour later, the bus still hadn’t arrived. We sat in the office for another fifteen minutes until it did arrive. The man in charge hustled us out, helped us unload our luggage, and said, "This takes care of it, right?" When we nodded, he huffed, shook his head, and took off. That night, I hugged my precious laptop to me and vowed never to be separated again.
We made a couple big mistakes which we’ve now learned from, and everything turned out ok in the end. We were ready to explore our beautiful surroundings!
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