Friday 8 Oct. ‘04. Last night we arrived in the “Cappadocia” area. Cappadocia is an area and not a city, town, or village. It sits about 3 hours South of Ankara. It was even a vast province mentioned in the Bible. This is without a doubt, one of Turkey’s most visited tourist areas and I would say we got here just right. I guess a description that would fit would be, “a vast moonscape area”. In particular, the areas around Urgup and Goreme. It was all established by mineral laden volcanic soil, so it is a prime agricultural region. Fruit and wine grapes, wheat and raisins are most of the crops. What we were doing here was to visit the churches and chapels of Goreme, Zelve and the Open Air Museums in Soganli. Another high light of this journey, was to ride high on the Kapadokya Balloons. We hadn’t even found a room before we found Kapadokya Balloons and set up our ride (by the way, if you want to see just what we did, go to their web site at www.kapadokyaballons.com. This is just what we did about last November. We were hooked right then. Second in line, was to find a place to stay for 2 nights. Kallie, who with her husband, are the owners and the pilots of Kapadokya Balloons, suggested that we look into staying at a fairly new “Cave Hotel”…Elif Star Caves Pension (www.elifstar.com) . Of course, we quickly made our way over and met Jacky Mert and arranged for our accommodations. Later we had a chance to meet her daughter Elif (5 years old), and her husband Mustafa. This pension was really dugout of the volcanic rock formations that is found all over this area. The pension, was 4 stories high and had a large patio on the roof. Our room, was a nice sized bedroom, with built-ins dug out of the stone, and a good sized bathroom with shower. As you laid there in bed and looking at the ceiling, all of the pick marks and the un-even surface made a great picture. Oh yes, Jacky is a gourmet chef, and we ate well. After all this, we were looking for things to do, and Jacky gave us a thousand things that we could do tomorrow, so we retired early to make ourselves available for our first day’s adventure in “Kapadokya”.