Sunrise in Goreme

I am getting used to getting to places right as the sun comes up. As much as night buses suck, the time of arrival couldn't be more impressive. This morning's arrival in Goreme, Turkey was no different.

The sunrise started with me wiping drool off of my shirt as I woke up. But then I noticed a line in the sky. It looked like someone had set a pen on fire, and started to scribble a bright orange line in the sky, the color of the embers at the bottom of a campfire. It may have been the Turkish words for "Here comes the Sun". Hey, I said it might have been.

As the sun did make its way up, so bright that I had to wear sunglasses at 7am, it lit up a landscape so expansive that your eyes ran out of strength for it. It was mostly flat, the tan color of dry grass, and all seemed to take in the sun equally. This would have been cool enough, but we hadn't even made it to Goreme yet.

Goreme looks like a cross between something out of the Flintstones and something out of the first Star Wars (I was actually told that part of Star Wars was filmed in this area). It's like another planet; an arid and nomadic one. There are huge erractically-shaped towers of beige sandstone (entirely natural) just jutting out of the ground everywhere. They look like huge termite mounds. And there are rooms, homes and churches carved out of the stone. The pension I am staying at is such a tower - and I'm actually staying in a cave. My dorm room carved out of a tower of sandstone. I've never stayed in a tower of sandstone before.