This place is other worldly. I set off this morning somewhat frustrated over my inability to get a map of the hiking trails. The guy at my hotel drew me a rough map of where to find at least one trail so I had at least a clue.
The thing this region seems to be most famous for is the cave dwellings. They're not so much caves as they are rooms carved out of the soft rock. Apparently back in the day there was a major volcanic eruption that deposited hundreds of feet of ash and then dozens more feet of lava on top packed it down. Over time wind and water eroded the ash into weird formations that people (troglodytes!) carved out to live in.
So I took off down my first trail this morning and it felt weird without a backpack or walking stick. I got about a km down the trail where there was a narrow drop that intimidated me so I went back to where I started. There I met three people, a Lebanese brother & sister (Mo & Druse (?)) and Juan from Argentina who asked me what it was like on that trail. I told them it was very interesting and very narrow and steep in places. So with their company I went back and tried it again. It really wasn't very hard once I saw the technique. Juan is like a freaking mountain goat so we all just did what he did only more slowly. We had to go down three sets of fixed ladders but saw some very cool stuff. We only came across three or four other groups but it's a really unique place with these mini cafés every few km.
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