Day 16 – Goreme

Monday 1st October 2007

A new week and a new month beckons and as we do not leave Goreme till Tuesday there was no need to pack up the tents and after a leisurely 8am breakfast we had time to chill out before heading to Derinkuyu, an underground city carved out of the rock. After a tour round the city and a quick look around the shops some expert Aussie haggling got us some discounted jewellery and the stall owner tried to buy my sunglasses. (If I had know then that these were destined to break on Tuesday I would have accepted! Isn’t 20:20 hindsight great!)

Heading back in to town we hit a local bar/café to grab some lunch and a smoothie (see I don’t always have beer). Unfortunately the small establishment with 2 staff was a bit overwhelmed by 20 travellers descending on them and the food was a long time coming but come it did and once we had fed it was off on our continuing search for appropriate clothing for Iran.

4 shops, a poor attempt at haggling and 30 Lira later I had two tops for myself and one for my girlfriend and was again shocked by the fact that even though she paid, handed the money to the man and held her wallet out ready to put the change in, he still hands the changes to me! After this we headed for an internet café, the first one we found was already infested by OzBusers so we headed to another one further down the road. Unfortunately as I sat down at the computer and hit enter the power for the whole town went down, not my fault whatever you say! Nothing left to do apart from a quick beer and then back to camp for Spag Bol, a couple of games of cards and an early night. With a 5:30am departure planned for ballooning in the morning and tents needing to packed beforehand it was not a night for festivities and frivolities but it was a night for Doxy dreams!

As we near Malaria infected areas we have started our anti malaria meds, mine. Doxy, have the side effect of particularly real and vivid dreams. In my case this led to me being determined that while I was asleep someone had been into my tent and stolen my blue rucksack. Upon waking and not realising this was a dream I proceeded to at 3:30am unpack everything I own and find myself in the middle of chaos in my little tent as the penny drops that it was a dream and this in fact do not have a blue rucksack, some sheepish repacking later and it was back to sleep for a couple of hours before ballooning.