Destination: Sydney: Turkey - Cappadocia region

We couldn't quite work out whether we had been transported to the moon or an episode of the 80s hit "Fraggle Rock" - it turned out we were in the Cappadocia region of Turkey. It's difficult to do it justice through photos, but Cappadocia is an extremely visually striking place, especially the "moonscape" area around the towns of Ürgüp and Göreme where erosion has formed caves, clefts, "fairy chimneys" and bizarre folds in the soft volcanic rock.

We started off visiting the Göreme Valley which contains hundreds of small churches carved out of the rocks with biblical scenes sketched into the cave walls (I am guessing bibles were in short supply!). The early Christians (from 2nd century) preferred to use these churches as it helped to hide from enemies, although they were still in use up to a thousand years later.

Next we joined a tour of the region, kicking off with a short hike through the 'ice-cream' formations and then onto - our personal highlight - a visit to the underground city of Kaymakli. The phenomenon of building underground cities in the volcanic rocks was started as early as c.3000 BC, but it was the early Christians who took this to a new level and used them to escape from the persecution of the Roman Empire. These cities were HUGE - 18 storeys deep, at one time housing up to 20,000 people and they had everything they needed - ventilation chimneys, wine production places, churches, water wells, toilets ... We were blown away by the scale, ingenuity and difficulty of these living conditions (as you can see from the pictures, space was at a premium) and it was a great testament to their faith and perseverance.