We did get to Cappadocia to see the solar eclipse. We left Sunday afternoon, the 26th, and got back on the afternoon of the 30th just in time to meet Shadi's partner Jason - here from Rhode Island for a week or so - and do the laundry before taking off for a Sunday-to-Thursday in Austria.
Cappadocia is quite another part of Turkey. Izmir has always been a point of contact with the West. It isn't really very Turkish; Smyrna was a city in the Greek region of Ionia for ever and ever. When the Ottoman Empire assumed control Izmir was opened to Europeans from Britain, Germany, France and Italy. There's been a significant Turkish presence here only since 1922.
Cappadocia is quite another country. It is mainland Anatolia. Its history dates from the Hittites. And its history has been shaped by its geology. Up until about 10,000 years ago the area was being covered with ash from its three volcanoes. Over time the ash has been carved into fantastic shapes - many of them sort of like Alberta's hoodooes. Quite early in human history people found that these structures were soft and easy to dig into, so they hollowed out shelters that evolved into whole cities of homes and even churches. There are also cities dug down into the rock, some as many as 9 stories deep.
We took hundreds of pictures, a few of which are on my Flickr site, and picked up a couple of nice souvenirs that will end up decorating our friends' and families' places if we can bear to part with them.
In Cappadocia many of the people selling things at tourist sites are women who have made what they sell. The first day of touring I walked into a little shelter belonging to a woman who proudly showed me a scarf with a tatted edging. We talked a bit - or she did, and I nodded - about how much harder tatting was than crocheting, which edged most of her other scarves. So what could I do but buy one of the two she'd tatted? And then she showed me how to wear it. The women of that area have quite a distinctive way of wearing their scarves, and when I emerged wearing my scarf properly arranged I got a lot of good-natured kidding from the guides and drivers. But one of the other women in our little tour group got the other tatted one and we felt quite comfortable together.
The next day I found a woman selling the simplest imaginable scarf: pieces of thread arranged into a mesh pattern and joined with dabs of a glue gun. It cost all of 1 YTL - maybe 75 cents. Now I wish I'd picked up a dozen, because a couple of stops later, while I was wearing it carelessly tied around my neck, a French woman came up to me and said "Madame! Comme c'est belle! Ou avez-vous trouvez cette belle echarpe?" Well... I've never been complimented by a French woman on my clothing before! Talk about a moment to treasure.
Anyway, the whole point of the trip was to see the solar eclipse, and we did. And I really don't know what to say about it. It was all I'd hoped and more. A couple of the people in our group had seen one off Madagascar and had come back for more - I can see why. Their help in pointing out what to watch for added a lot to the experience. I didn't know about ground waves - ripples running over surfaces near you as the sun shrinks to a point source and the wave nature of light becomes more obvious. They also showed us how to make a pinhole camera with our hands - as the sun gets really tiny even the circle of your thumb and forefinger is small enough to show its true image on the ground. But they remarked on how different this experience was from their last one, where the darkness seemed to come rushing up at them like a storm. This time the air was hazy enough that it was more like a gradual sunset and long twilight. A long, eerie twilight with no shadows and with sunset colours all around.
A cold twilight, too. None of us expected how cold we'd be. My goodness it was cold! And it took so long to warm up!
That's why, some of my Turkish friends would say, I caught a cold that day. It couldn't have had anything to do with the unfamiliar North American flu germs shared with us by the other members of our tour group. It must have been the cold. So I got back to Izmir on Thursday afternoon with a blocked ear, plugged sinuses, a sore throat, a wheezing chest, and feeling like death warmed over only slightly. But it was worth it.
Earth Observatory has an image of the area taken from the International Space Station at about the time we were at totality. Kinda neat seeing it from above.
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