Pamukkale

On Friday we took a day trip to Pamukkale. In Turkish pamuk means cotton, and Pamukkale literally means cotton castle. It started with driving there on a midi-bus (22 passengers). It’s about 250km away and took 3 hours to get there. Once there we only had 3.5 hours as we were coming back that night, so hurriedly made the best of it. After a quick donair for lunch we started our way up.

 

Kim got whistled at just after this picture, as you have to go barefoot up the slopes. The water contains calcium-hydro-carbonate, which when it meets the air, releases carbon dioxide gas, and deposits calcium carbonate. It settles out into a silty mud on the bottom of the pools, thus forming the travertines (terraces of carbonite material left by the flowing water). When it was wet, there was a large amount of grip on the slopes, the only thing was stepping on pebble and gravel sized rocks which were hard on the feet.

Going up, we took our time, stopping in pools and taking a bunch of pictures.

 

At the top is the ancient city of Heriopolis (where St. James was martyred). By this point we were pretty ruined out, so just took a quick look at things, but it gave a great view of the whole structure.

 

We wandered around for a bit, seeing that off to the side you can see far more natural/unused travertines. This water flows down then becomes some of the waterfalls along the side of the main path up.

We headed back down at a bit brisker pace, but still managed to have some fun.

The water was incredibly hard for the little bit that you did manage to taste. So there are still regular rocks underneath the white, it is just a coating. In spots it looks like icicles.

We got back to the bus just on time, and again sat for our 3 hour drive back to Selçuk. We went for dinner with an amazing donair, wandered around for a bit of shopping, and then chatted with vodka on the rooftop before bed.