After our captive taxi tour, we asked the hotel about car rentals in Göreme (which is a pretty small town) - turns out there was one available so we rented it for the day ($30+gas).
The hotel called to have the rental company give us a ride from the hotel. After a little analog paperwork (one half-sheet of paper), they gave us the key and we followed them into town to get 200TL cash from the ATM...weird but easy.
Here is our cute little Hyundai!
We used this to drive to many of the nearby towns and attractions to look around on our own. There were several things we had seen and learned right away about driving in Turkey:
The driving is pretty easy on the highway but confusing in town
Turkish drivers like to stradle the line between lanes
Motorcycles go anywhere - streets, sidewalks, with or against the direction of traffic
Turn signals are avoided, horns are encouraged
Speed limits are a suggestion
Locals don’t use A/C in the car (but we certainly did)
In towns, if a car can fit there it counts as a street
Driving to our first town, we noticed just how many buildings were the front to caves behind them. We pulled off the highway to take a pic of this old village
We drove to Derinkuyu to check out the underground city, but stopped for lunch in the town first - we were a complete spectacle to the locals :-). While we were eating, they were all watching us, one took our picture and the waiter picked up Don’s fork and showed how to eating the dishes we ordered by feeding Don!
We had to hunt for a bit to find the underground city entrance but eventually did. It felt a bit intimidating to go far, far underground in very tight tunnels with only one way out, so we opted to skip this and go to the underground city in Kaymakli which wasn’t as deep and is said to be bigger. We paid the entrance fee and ventured in - we admittedly both had some anxiety from how tight the spaces were.
Would be easy to get lost in here if it wasn’t marked
Stone door
Passages everywhere
This tunnel went down, down, down *gulp*
Once we felt like we’d pushed ourselves enough, we made our way back to the surface and headed on our journey.
One stop was at a remote church a few kilometers down a dirt road. Out in the middle of nowhere, an old man sat in a little cave hole to collect 10TL/ea for access to this church. These are a few of the views from there:
We drove through a couple other small
towns (Ürgüp, Mustafapaşa) to get snacks/coffee and through the larger city of Nevşehir before deciding we’d seen enough. Here are some local snacks:
Back in our town of Göreme, we looked for a gas station but couldn’t find one so wove our way to the hotel (some of those super narrow alleyways) to ask where gas was...which was back in Avanos.
We then drove to Avanos and decided to eat dinner there (had hamburgers of all things), then walked the pretty river walk in town to enjoy the cooler evening.
At the McDonalds in Avanos
There were tons of ducks and geese on the river
They also call Avanos “The Venice of Turkey” because of the gondola rides on the river!
We found gas and filled the tank - they pump the gas for you like in Oregon (but then you go in to pay and bring the receipt back to the attendant outside *shrug*).
It was a quick drive back to the hotel and we just left the car in the hotel’s “parking lot” for the rental company to get later - super easy.
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