Pamukkale'ye hos geldiniz! Welcome to Pamukkale! Bring your GPS, some hiking boots, a bottle of drinking water, your bathing suit and towel, and lots of sunscreen; geocaching and sight-seeing all-in-one! Make a day of this geocache by visiting an ancient city (Hierapolis), including the largest ancient graveyard in Asia Minor, swimming in an ancient thermal pool amongst fluted columns (be sure to bring an empty bottle with you so you can fill it up with water from the thermal spring!), and walking along beautiful white travertine (barefoot, of course) to the naturally formed pools. And then find a geocache nearby as well!
As this cache is accessible 24 hours, sunrise and sunset are beautiful times to be there, but after dark be sure to bring a flashlight with you. And as this is a major tourist attraction with busloads of foreign tourists coming for the day, sunset may be a bit crowded, but sunrise is glorious and relatively quiet....unless you are accosted by a gypsy speaking a multitude of Turkish, German, French, and English all at once and trying to entice you to buy postcards or fake ancient coins, as I was after I placed this cache (yes, I placed this cache at sunrise). It's when he called me "monsieur" that he lost my sale (in case you hadn't deduced, I'm a woman).
This geocache is located a little above the northern necropolis which offers good examples of four different ancient tomb types: tumulus, borós, house-shaped tombs, and regular sarcophagi ranging from the 2nd century BC to the 1st century AD.
Getting to the cache location requires a bit of steep walking towards the last 20 feet/6 meters and in the summertime the site is surrounded by dried out vegetation which can be a bit scratchy on the ankles and calves if you're wearing shorts. However, at the cache site, there are great photo opportunities, so take advantage of the location! The cache was placed with a Garmin eTrex and had an accuracy of 17ft/5m at the time of placement. The cache box is a small, rectangular plastic storage container with a dark blue lid.
The original cache contents include:
- Geocache note in English and Turkish
- Harry Potter logbook with attached nazar boncuk (blue eye)
- pencil & pencil sharpener
- a Darsantre card
- various coins - TL 10.000, TL 25.000, 25 cent Virginia state quarter, and Team BigHank wooden nickel cache coin
- a Sanrio owl keychain
- a plastic Beyblade top #125 - Kai
- a flower pin
After retrieving the cache, signing the logbook and depositing/removing an item, please make sure that you carefully replace the cache under the pile of rocks so that no part of the cache is exposed in any way. There are lots of rocks around to cover it with.
The town of Pamukkale is small (but much nicer than Denizli, IMHO), and if you wish to stay there for a night or two, there's the comfortable Weisse Burg Beyaz Kale Pansiyon run by Ömer & Hacer. They are warm, hospitable Turkish people who will welcome you kindly and ask you to sign their guestbook. Hacer (she told me her name means stone in Turkish, but I told her she was a gem!) is an excellent cook and uses fresh vegetables from her garden to prepare your dinner in the restaurant. If it's a blistering hot day, jump in their swimming pool to cool off! The water that fills the pool comes from the thermal springs (though by the time it gets to the town, it's quite cool indeed). With the recent expansion of their pension, the new rooms are quite nice; just ask and they will put you in one!
Enjoy this cache and all its surrounding environs!
Small note on cache maintenance: As I live in Turkey, I will make every effort to maintain this cache though I cannot get to the site at a moment's notice if something is amiss. I’ve conversed via email with Nazbeg quite a bit and I know as he is keen to help geocaching catch on in Turkey, he would be more than willing to help maintain it if I am not available.