Day 4 - Ankara - Nevsehir, Cappadocia Area - 9 October

Weather - Sunny and mild

Accommodation - Kapadokya Lodge

We had a good mixture of sight seeing. The morning was spent in Ankara at Mustufa Ataturk's mausoleum and museum which is a large and impressive dedicated area overlooking Ankara. Ataturk is credited with being the founder of the Republic of Turkey and modernising the country. The surname Ataturk meaning "Father of the Turks" was given to Mustufa by Parliament and no other person in Turkey can bear the name. Ataturk led wide-ranging reforms and introduced a latin alphabet and also the use of a surname.

Here is John, Brian, me, Carol and Funda (our guide) in front of Ataturk's Mausoleum. 

They have military guarding the mausoleum. Here is Henk with one of the guards.

From Ankara we headed south east on an excellent freeway to Aksaray arriving at three o'clock. The country side is now treeless fields dotted with farm houses and large mountains loom in the distance. The most common crop is wheat, other grain crops, potatoes and pumpkins. Pumpkins are grown for their seeds. 

Our journey to Aksaray was broken with a delicious traditional Turkish lunch and we later stopped at the large salt lake, Tuz Lake. This is Turkey's second largest lake. The entire lake surface was salt granules and most of the granules were the size of a pea. We had a lot of fun taking photos of each other with our reflections in the shallows of the lake - not that we could see them but our photographers could!

There was a range of salt products for sale and we were accosted by sellers as we walked past their stalls to the lake. We were given a teaspoon of an oily, granulated salt product in our hands which made them very smooth. A number from our bus bought the product including Brian and Funda. 

It took us an hour's drive going from Aksaray following the ancient silk road to our accommodation which is just outside the provincial town of Nevsehir in the Cappadocia area. We will be using this as a base for the next three days as we explore the surrounding area. It will be good to be settled in one place for a few days so we don't have to pack our bags each morning. 

Dinner was a huge buffet at the hotel and shared with many other tables of tourists. The range of food available was mind-boggling. It was an early night for us because tomorrow morning we are being picked up at five o'clock to go on a ballon flight over the Cappadocia area. We're all super excited.