Angry Cats and the Wonders of Love Valley: Cappadocia Pt. 3 (Slightly late)

Last night, while my stomach was taking on the Herculean task of digesting all that food, we went stargazing on top of some of the giant rocks. You could see the Milky Way. It was the clearest night sky I've seen since stargazing in the middle of the Amazon, but just what a completely different experience. Sitting on a mountain of hardened volcanic ash, where people have been finding refuge for 4000 years, and seeing the stars just totally made me forget that I was lying in white chalk dust and that there was a stray dog following me around trying to eat my pants.

I got up this morning at 5:45 to watch the hot air balloons (the ones I was too wimpy to pay for) rise AS THE SUN ROSE. From our terrace. Our cave terrace.

Balloons from our terrace

 I've never seen a place that makes an entire industry out of hot air balloons. But Kapadokya, you got me. After watching the balloons in total awe for a half hour I went back to sleep in my cave (IN MY CAVE) and then woke up at 7:30 to have breakfast.  Sigara borek (just salty little cylinder pastries) and watermelon and cheese and super-strong tea and dried Cappadocian apricots (probably from like a foot away because there are trees everywhere). Also brownies, for some reason. Those I did not eat. But sitting and eating breakfast while looking out over the weird white rocks was pretty crazy. Except for the cat. I think he was the hostel cat, and he definitely wasn't stray, but he was quite aggressive about getting my food and clawing at my feet. And Azra, in turn, was equally aggressive about yelling at the cat. So it was a loud breakfast.

After breakfast, Azra, Maia, Oya and I (everyone else was sleeping in their caves...) went on a hike through a couple of the valleys. We had one of the hotel guys drive us to the starting point, and then we ran into some French people  that we met on the bus, but they weren't terribly friendly and so we awkwardly passed them a couple times on the trail. As we were walking, we saw an old woman harvesting her apricots and she shouted at us to come over and try them. So we ended up walking along a volcanic rock valley munching apricots and these little fruits called cala (no idea how to actually write that).

We walked through Honey Valley, then White Valley.

Honey Valley

 By walking I mean sliding down incredibly steep chalky slopes through super-prickly bushes. It was less of a path and more of a lot of small cliffs and ledges. Then, we got to Love Valley. It was...interesting.

Love Valley from the distance

After we stumbled down the valleys and finally got out on the other side--after an hour, even though the hotel guy said it would take two--we took a shuttle back to Goreme and had menemen. I could eat menemen all the time. I know it's just scrambled eggs with tomato and pepper, but there's something mysterious about it. Menemen for breakfast, lunch, and dinner would be fine with me.
After lunch we all packed up and left for the airport. The Kapadokya airport is, incidentally, tiny. And full of sneaky old women who will cut in line and then bring their entire extended families along to cut in line with them. Not cool, especially when we are already so linguistically challenged and haven't showered in two days (and are thus stressed about personal hygiene). But we got on, despite the best efforts of the sneaky old women, and now I am home, and I just took a pretty epic shower and am doing LAUNDRY. My life is crazy.