Mountain Monastery

In the morning, we said goodbye to Hamdi after a huge Turkish breakfast. Our plan for today was to see Sümela Monastery, an impressive site built high up right at a cliff some 1600 years ago.
In order to get there, we had to climb up to an elevation of 1800m again (from 900m) and enter a tunnel. The tunnel was like the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderful - we came out in the Alps, at least that's what is felt like. Everything was greener, we could see grass - similar to the valleys in the Alps. After the tunnel, we had a long and kind of scary downhill through tunnels and passing a lot of construction work.
Then we arrived in Maçka, at an elevation of about 400m. Here, we found a campsite at a restaurant, so we could leave our bags there. Then, we climbed again up to 1300m to get to the monastery. The last bit was steep and gravel which made it extra tough.
The monastery itself is quite impressive. No idea how they could actually built this so long ago. Unfortunately, at least half of it was under reconstruction, so we couldn't visit all of it.
Going back to the camp was quick. We cooked dinner and Herbert tried the Sütlaç for desert which is famous for this region.En savoir plus