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The balloon goes up ...................

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First of all we have to leave Mersin. We hit the road at 7.00am to get ahead of the heat and we head to Tarsus just down the toad where St Paul came from. Now that is why he is called St Paul of Tarsus ! We visit where his house was and the well in the garden which he reportedly used. Pilgrims come here to drink water from the well apparently. 

 

He are the remains of his house below the glass shield 


From here he walked to Ephesus to hand deliver a letter to the Ephesians. I bet he would have given his eye teeth for email especially when you see the geography of the region he walked through.  

We then head north to Cappadocia and the cave dwellers. We travel on a superb three lane motorway that crosses a high mountain range. The temperature delightfully drops   There is virtually no traffic. 

 

 At the start of the motorway you pass through an unmanned electronic toll gate. As you come off the motorway you pass through another. You are supposed to have a prepaid chip on or in your vehicle and if you don't sirens sound and lights flash. We know that - they did! . Ah well - We only read about  how the system works when we got to the hotel. We now have the full weight both the Turkish law and the Italian law after us!  Perhaps they will join forces to find us 

Then we get to Cappadocia and the town of Goreme 

 

 

And we stay in a cavee hotel ( as you do in Cappadocia) 

 

 

It is a fascinating place. We do the " tourist thing" as you do in Cappadocia and go for a balloon ride in the early morning 

 

More hot air is produced here than is produced a typical  Auckland Council meeting. And by supporting us it probably also does a more useful function! 

 

And we are up, up and away 

 

 

 

This is called the " valley of love" which I can only assume must have because it was named after an early English explorer called Mr Cecil Love ! ( or something like that ). The landscape was what you might call heavily " circumscribed"! 

 

One hour later we touch down
 

We do a day tour around Undergoround city and  Selime Catheral (which is carved out of the rock) 

 

We have an organic breakfast at a local farm.  Our very nice driver/host driver tells me he recognises me from somewhere. Sprung! He worked in New Zealand for about 12 years! He recognised  me from the "telly".   Diana inspects the rows of crops  like inspecting a guard of honour ( not that she has done that!) 

 

 Then just a light breakfast for two ! 

 

We are staying for three nights on Cappadocia ( two and a half rest days ) before heading East tomorrow to Malatya. With some reluctance to leave here I might add.  

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31 August 2016 at 14:30
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