Meet the Flintstones

Our first big hike in Goreme took us through Pigeon Valley where we came across a 4 story building carved into the hill that we couldn't resist. We wandered the first two floors which are completely covered in pockets such that the place looks like a library. We later learned that people here raised pigeons to eat, make fresco paint from the eggs, as message carriers, and used their guano for fertilizer.
A bit later we came across this building which is a giant tufa cone of swiss cheese chambers and passageways. It is some kind of apartment or group dwelling that we called the Penthouse. The real beauty of this whole area is that there are no park rangers or signs that say "don't go here". Everything is open to be explored if you can get to it. That said, we wandered through hundreds of rooms going all the way to the top eight stories up, but still saw maybe only a third of it.