White Summer

Today was a bit of a relaxing day relative to the rest. We got up slightly early to catch a train to Pamukkale, which I had never heard of. It turns out there is only really one main attraction, and that is the Hierapolis and Travertines National Park. This is the sort of site that made me very glad to be doing a tour. I would never have found a place like this, and even if I had, I would never have been able to get to the small town. When we drove into town, we saw what looked to be a glacier up in the distance utop the hill. In fact, I was sure it was a glacier until you realised it's still 30 degrees in Turkey, and it would be impossible for that to be ice. After lunch and grabbing some drinks, we headed to the entrance to try and figure out what it was we were looking at. It turns out the rocks in the area are incredibly high in calcium, and as the water erodes the rock and transports it downhill, slowly depositing it. I say slowly, the white mountain grows about 3 cm every year as more calcium is deposited. Pamukkale means cotton castle, but it just looks like one incredibly large glacier. It is so strange to see, but it has been one of the greatest environmental anomalies I've seen on my trip. There were also the Cleopatra pools further up the hills, which is supposed to have healing properties - along with every other hot spring. Cleopatra and Mark Antony would have regularly used these pools, which is cool. But I decided against going in just cause it sounded like a bit of effort to get wet and stay wet for the rest of the day. That being said, the only other thing we did was head to another amphitheatre and drink wine we had snuck in. Although we were hunting for a sunset, we ended up with something better. We had the sunset yesterday, and today we got a light show. We could sit on the seat of an ancient amphitheatre, look out, and watch lightning strike regularly over the hills and the town while we drank cheap wine. It was really cool. We did this for a good hour before eventually the site began to close. As such, we headed back to the hotel for dinner. This was the most expensive dinner I had paid for in Turkey, but they treated you pretty well. There was a table FULL of entrees, and eventually brought out the main meal, which was chicken. Although it was good, the whole meal probably wasn't worth 400 Lira, which would get you 2 meals in other places. But it was convenient and easy.Read more