This week’s travel dream: A ground-level view of Turkey’s moon-like terrain

Sometimes riding an ATV is the best way to get to know an ancient land, said Whitney Pipkin in The Washington Post. Before visiting Turkey’s Cappadocia region, a virtual dreamscape of dramatically sculpted volcanic rock, I never would have guessed as much. We’d come to help refugees from Iran and absorb a setting where human culture dates back 2,600 years. “Did we really want to use our one sightseeing day to putter around on rented all-terrain vehicles?” For my husband and three others in our group, the answer was “a resounding yes.” The rest of us thought it nobler to head elsewhere, in search for Turkish trinkets that would “tell a story from our coffee tables.” What can I say? We were wrong.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy Goreme, a multi-level cave city where early Christians once hid to escape persecution. But no sooner did our full group reconvene over dinner than it became clear the others had had the time of their lives. “The way they talked about discovering hidden temples, wheeling through narrow ravines,” and barely escaping serious injury, “you’d think they’d been on the set of an Indiana Jones movie.” Enough said: Other tourists could explore the area’s wild terrain while floating above it in pricey hot air balloons. We still had one morning left to enjoy our four ATVs we’d rented for about $50 a person.

I never mastered my four-wheeler, but while the others clearly relished the riding, “I preferred the destination part.” After barreling across a dusty flat and climbing an outcropping, we’d take in a breathtaking view, then clamber on foot into a cave or one of many ancient dwellings carved into gumdrop-like rock formations. On one excursion, “we must have woven our way through a half-dozen rock formations, all knit together by tunnels” or by sun-splashed natural alleys where young olive trees sprouted in the impossible soil. By mid-morning, hot air balloons were playing peek-a-boo behind distant slopes and caves. But “instead of spying down from above, we were exploring the place in 3-D.”

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At Goreme’s SOS Cave Hotel (soscavehotel.com), doubles start at $47.