Elizabeth enjoying her last swim before Thailand

Sorry for the dearth of updates, but posts repeating the fact that yet another day has been spent lounging around, drinking Efes Pilsener and going for the occasional dip in the Med was not likely to go down well. Especially for our London based readers. Though take heart in the fact, as the above image’s caption states, that we will be largely landlocked until we arrive in Thailand in July.

Kaş, and Olympos were our last two seaside stops. In Kaş, a nice little seaside town populated with the type of shops not out of place in Noosa, we took in a spot of sea kayaking over sunken ruins and amongst ancient Christian monasteries.

Sea kayaking near Kaş

In Olympos, less Noosa more Nimbin, we stayed in a treehouse and spent two days lazing around and lying on the beach. Not much else to do there really, though Elizabeth managed to locate some ruins. Me convinced that the Olympos version of the  Lycian tomb was going to look no different than the other 13 or so she had dragged me to decided to remain prone. The tomb picture is below – worth the hike up the hill? “Another Efes please, the little lady is going for a walk, but I am staying right here.”

Yet another Lycian tomb…

From the coast we travelled north to Cappadocia, the land of fairy tale chimneys and cave houses.

Love Valley – couldn’t work out why the valley got its name…

In Cappadocia we saw church after church carved into the rock and also visited Derinkuyu, an enormous city carved underground around the 7th century AD for the purpose of defending the town’s people from attack by invaders.

Elizabeth in the narrow passages of Derinkuyu, some 65 metres underground

As I write this post I am sitting on a bus travelling to Turkey’s capital Ankara where we will change buses to return to Istanbul. In Istanbul we will change our money to US dollars, stash our money in various pockets of our bags (ATMs are apparently very thin on the ground across Uzbekistan, so we need to carry all the cash we will need there with us) and prepare to deal with rather strict customs officials at the Uzbek border in Tashkent.

Until then enjoy some more photos from the last week or so:

Cave houses in Cappadocia

Rock church fresco that proves, if anybody doubted it, that red heads are indeed the ones closest to God

Love the iconic VW bug, but need somewhere to house all your hippy belongings? Then the bugombi is just the thing!

Video of kids dancing in the streets in Goreme

All our Turkey images can be found here.