Only about 12 hours until we're on a plane back to New York. This should be an erudite summary of our travels in Greece and Turkey, but we've been travelling for the last two days and aren't particularly inspired at the moment. Perhaps soon (although the next couple weeks back in the US is going to be crazy).
We arrived in Athens this morning. We had a very pleasant ferry ride from Rhodes; we found an economy-class seating area on an upper level that was completely unoccupied. We were able to stretch out on our thermarests and sleeping bags and actually got a much better night's rest than we did our last night in Turkey.
We wandered about Athens a bit this afternoon. It's definitely not a good time to be here. With the Olympics a year away, everything is under construction. The typically bad traffic is even worse, and everywhere you turn there are jackhammers and bulldozers. Hopefully, though, they'll be the better for it after next year.
One interesting anecdote from the last couple days: In Marmaris, the departure point for the ferry to Rhodes, we sat down for lunch at what looked like a fairly Turkish establishment (as opposed to tourist-oriented--i.e. with things like schnitzel, spaghetti, and hamburgers on the menu). They handed us a menu that had English and German translations of their mostly turkish dishes, at somewhat high, but not absurd prices. I paged through to the back, however, which was all in Turkish, and noticed that they had most of the same items, plus some others, at much lower prices (less than half). We were actually looking for something called a lamachun, which is a kind of snack-sized thin-crusted minced meat pizza, eaten rolled with lettuce and tomatoes inside. They're very good and almost always very cheap; this place had them for about 50 cents each--but only on the Turkish menu, of course. The waiter was surprised when he saw that we were looking at that part of the menu, and tried to redirect us to the English, but we insisted on the lamachuns. We ordered three (he was trying to tell us that three wasn't enough, although it was more than enough), plus a couple of ayrans (a traditional yogurt-based drink, also usually very cheap). He seemed a bit upset and asked us how long we'd been in Turkey; I guess they're used to people who just came off the boat. The lunch was good, and when we asked for the bill, we noticed our waiter talk to the manager and look in our direction. We guessed that they were going to try to overcharge us somehow, and sure enough they did. We asked the waiter to explain it, as it wasn't really itemized, and he kept saying it's ok, it's ok. We ended up just handing him the amount it should have been and walked away. He looked upset at having lost the battle, but accepted it.
Fortunately, this was not a common experience in Turkey. You just have to be careful in the bigger, more touristed towns; I think particularly port towns where they get a lot of people either just arriving or just there for the day. Outside of places like this, almost everyone has been very helpful and honest.
Anyway...our flight gets into Newark around 5pm tomorrow (Tuesday). As soon as we get settled, we'll start going through and pairing down the 500-odd pictures we've taken. We'll get them online as soon as we get to a decent internet connection (your office, Erik?). I think on our future trips we'll try to post them as we go, so we don't have such a massive backlog.
See many of you soon,
-b & j
How wrong we were about Olympos. We thought we'd last at most two nights, bored out of our minds and disgusted by the partying backpacker scene. In the end we had to force ourselves to leave after four days. It was wonderful.
Although it would have been easy to spend our days lounging on comfy cushions, we actually managed to keep ourselves fairly active. One afternoon was spent rock climbing on a wall behind one of the pensions. Another was spent swimming for two hours along the rocky shoreline. On our most active day, we climbed (with rope and gear) a 900 ft. rock behind our pension. But despite these spurts of activity, we did do a lot of relaxing. During the hottest times of the day, it was easier to just read in the shade.
Our pension, Saban, was great. We wisely avoided the larger, more party-prone pensions and opted for this smaller, family-run place. For about $14/night, we had our own treehouse, plus got breakfast and dinner. The dinners were excellent. It was served buffet-style, and because you were allowed to go up for seconds (or thirds), we often stuffed ourselves.
Evenings were spent sitting in one of the pillow-lined open-air huts, drinking beer and chatting with other travellers. Meral, the friendly woman who seemed to be in charge most of the time, would often come around and hang out with us (even kicking my (Brad's) butt in backgammon one evening).
We could have spent longer there but the end of the trip was looming, and we still had a fair amount we wanted to see.
We headed to the village of Kas next, not quite sure what we were going to do there. I wanted to do some scuba diving, and I knew they did dives from there. Kas was a cute town, although definitely geared towards tourists. It has a small cobblestone walking district, situated around the harbor, with a lot of boutique jewelry and small art shops, and quite a few restaurants. We had a great dinner at a little family restaurant where they invited us to come to the kitchen and showed us their dishes, and we ordered by just pointing at what we wanted.
We left the next morning, though, as we decided (after a bit of research on the Internet) that the diving would be better out of Fethiye, about 2 1/2 hours further west along the coast. Everything we wanted to see was more accessible from there anyway.
We picked a great pension in Fethiye: Tan Pension. It's run by a very sweet elderly couple and is the cheapest place we've stayed on this trip--only about $7/night. It's also got a great top-floor terrace overlooking the bay.
We walked around a bit and paid a visit to European Diving Centre, the dive shop for which I had found recommendeations. Since it had been a year and a half since I had been diving, they required a refresher dive before going on one of their real dives. This was Monday, and they suggested the dives they were doing on Friday were some of their better dives, so we worked out a plan where I would take my refresher dive they next day, on Tuesday, in Butterfly Valley, a place we were planning on visiting anyway, and they would just drop us off there.
The dive went well, although there wasn't much to see. They dropped us and our packs off on the beach as promised. We were planning on spending the night there, but after finding out that it would cost almost $30/night, even to just pitch our own tent, we decided to just spend the afternoon there and head out on the last boat.
Butterfly Valley is a small, very steep mountain valley leading down to a beach. The name comes from the rare Jersey Tiger butterfly (which we think we saw...we're not entirely sure what it looks like, though :-), which can be found there from July-September. There are pretty much only two things to do in the valley--either hang out, either at the beach or at the overpriced restaurant/bar on the beach, or hike up to the waterfall at the head of the valley. We did a little of the first, then headed up to the waterfall. The first waterfall you get to is nice, but small, and you can actually climb up past it and up the somewhat steep river to get to the top, and a much bigger, very beautiful waterfall. Not everyone ventures up that far because it is slightly dangerous, and certainly wet, but being the experienced adventurers we are, it was a piece of cake. Well worth the trip to dance in the verdant fall, the mist throwing rainbows in the air.
When we got back down to the beach we rewarded ourselves with an absurdly overpriced beer, and chatted with a British traveller who convinced us (well, me--J. was already convinced) that we had to visit India on our trip.
The next day was a bum-around-Fethiye day. We saw some more ruins, and some 4th century BC tombs that are cut into the cliffs above the city. We also ate some more ice cream (actually, it's a rare day when we don't eat ice cream).
The next day, Thursday, we went to Saklikent Gorge, about 50km away. It's a narrow gorge about 18km long, although we only slogged up the river about 1km before we got to a section that looked pretty hairy (even for us), and we headed back. Still, it was a lot of fun.
Today we actually spent most of the day apart--probably the first time we've done that in months. I had my diving--which was good--and Jacqueline took a hike to a ghost town, abandoned when Greece and Turkey had an organized population exchange after WWI and the Turkish War of Independence.
Actually, the day was almost a disaster, as we both woke up in the morning with a bit of the runs. We had had no problems up until now, and we were thinking it was particularly evil timing. Fortunately, it was short-lived. We don't know what caused it, as we both share almost everything we eat.
Tomorrow we start our journey back to Athens, via the Turkish port town of Marmaris, then to the Greek island of rhodes, then a ferry to Athens. We'll probably have a full day to kill in Athens, so we'll try to post again from there.
Cheers,
- b & j
We've just arrived in Olympos, a backpacker haven about 80 km south of Antalya. Olympos seems to be a strange place--a collection of pensions offering "tree houses" (usually a wooden hut raised off the ground, possibly next to a tree). It's in a beautiful setting--a forrested valley, surrounded by mountains, with a beach and some ruins nearby. It would probably be a great place to hike if it weren't 97 degrees in the shade. As it is, the many backpackers here seem content to either go to the beach or lounge around on pillows in shaded huts (as we are doing at the moment). It's nice after a few days of climbing, but I'm not sure we're slothful enough to last very long.
As I mentioned, we did managed to get to the climbing area outside Antalya (Geyik Bayiri), and we spent the last four days there. We would have had a difficult time finding the climbing area if it weren't for some extremely helpful Turks.
We had dinner at a small restaurant around the corner from our pension in Antalya. We were checking out the next morning, but still weren't sure exactly where to catch the bus. All we had was the name of a place, "Eski Hal." At the end of our dinner, we asked our waiter, Ihan, if he knew where it was. That sparked 15 minutes of discussion, in Turkish, between the people at the restaurant, about either where it was, or the best way for us to get there. Rough maps were drawn and redrawn, but it seemed they couldn't come to an agreement. Finally, Ihan said that if we came to the restaurant in the morning, the owner would drive us there. We had also asked where the nearest supermarket was, as we had to stock up on food and water, and after a brief attempt at explaining where it was in his limited English, he said he'd walk us there. You've got to love Turkish hospitality.
The next morning we arrived at the restaurant, our normally heavy packs considerably heavier with three days of food and water. We had no idea what to expect from the climbing area--if there would be supplies available, or even where we would be sleeping (the website we found only said "camping is possible"). As promised, the owner of the restaurant drove us to Eski Hal and showed us where to wait for the bus. Even if we had managed to find our way to this part of town, there's no way we would have found the bus stop without his help.
We got on the bus assuming that we would just go to the village of Geyik Bayiri and find our way to the climbing area from there; but the driver stopped on the road a few kilometers short of the village and indicated that we should get off. We were a bit confused as to where we were supposed to go, but we then realized that we were right in front of a sign that said "Climbers Camping and Cafe." Across the road from the camping was a massive limestone wall. We were in the right place.
We went into the campground, noting a bathroom and shower, as well as several cabins. We were psyched about such luxurious accomodations. No one was there. It was hot and we didn't have the energy to go climb or even explore the area, so we ended up waiting the entire afternoon, hoping someone would show up. At six, we decided to venture out and walk up the road towards the village. About 200 meters up, we were pleasantly surprised to see a restaurant, with shady outdoor tables. A bit further up the road was a natural spring surrounded by people picnicing and selling fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, and gozleme, a kind of Turkish crepe. We were overjoyed as this meant that not only could we stay longer than the two full days for which we had planned, but that we wouldn't be eating every meal out of a can.
It turned out that the restaurant was one of the best we'd been to on this trip. Their specialty--and only dish on some nights--was fresh trout. When you ordered, the cook would grab a net and scoop the fish right out of one of the artificial ponds--fed by water from the spring--stocked with fish. We liked it so much we ate there three out of four nights (although truth be told, there wasn't anything else around).
The climbing was good, although most routes were beyond our ability. Still, there was plenty for us to do. We got up at 5:30 each morning to avoid climbing in the sun. After we'd lost our shade, we'd escape to a large cave, where we'd eat lunch and nap for a couple hours. It made for an enjoyable few days.
The owners of the campground came back on our second night. They were hardcore climbers--they had established most of the routes in the area, as well as in other parts of Turkey. In fact, they had just come back from ten days of climbing and route-making in the Ala Daglar mountains, where we had just been. Too bad we didn't run into them there; we'd have had more luck finding climbing.
We left after four days, partly because we needed a changed of scenery, but also because Jacqueline wore a hole in one climbing shoe.
That's all for now. We'll write again in a few days, probably after we leave Olympos.
Cheers,
-b & j
We've done a fair amount of travelling through Central Turkey. We left Istanbul some days ago (we've kind of lost track) for Cappadocia on a nightmarish night bus. Behind us, crowded in the four seats of the back row, were three women and four young children, several of whom had hacking coughs, and two of whom started vomiting about halfway through the trip. Brad didn't get much sleep, although I had a fairly restful night.
We arrived in the village of Göreme in the early morning and easily found a room in a very cute pension. We later realized we were the only people there. (Tourism is doing badly in Turkey this year, mostly because of the war.) Cappadocia is a really interesting area. It is covered in soft volcanic tuff that wind and water erosion has formed into strange shapes--"fairy" chimneys, mushrooms, cones, waves. Because it is so easy to carve, homes and churches have traditionally been carved directly into these formations. It's funny to see a satellite dish sticking out of a mound of rock.
We saw some churches dating back to the 11th century, with amazingly well-preserved frescos. We also visited an underground city originally built by the Hittites in 2,000 B.C., later expanded by the Christians. Apparently the area, being at the crossroads of major trade routes, was subject to frequent invasions, so these cities were built as protection during times of war. The one we visited held up to 5,000 people on 8 levels--about 250 feet deep. We also spent a day exploring the area by bike--not a pleasant experience, considering the bike seats were hard, the roads bumpy, and it started to rain on our way back.
We then went on to Ala Daglar National Park, where we hoped to do some climbing or hiking. All we had was the name of a pension in the village of Cukurbag. Sadly, when we arrived, we were told the rate, which was significantly beyond our travel budget. We stayed the night anyway and the next morning got up at 4:15 for a hike. Hasan, the helpful owner, gave us a bumpy ride in his tractor up the hillside to the base of the mountains. From there, we hiked up 4,500 feet in three hours, to a snow-covered pass at just over 11,000 feet. We then started up a nearby peak, but about halfway up, at 11,500 feet, we saw some potentially ominous clouds in the distance, and decided it would be prudent to turn back. Not to mention that at that altitude, we couldn't take more than a few steps without stopping to catch our breath. We hiked 5 hours and 6,500 vertical feet back down to the pension, where we rewarded ourselves with showers and beer.
That night we took a bus to Antalya, arriving yesterday morning. Antalya is hot. 108-degrees-in-the-sun-hot. Our best strategy so far for acclimating to the heat is a daily ice cream (Turkish ice cream is fabulous. It's made from sheep's milk and has a sticky-gooey texture. They layer up to five flavors, so you don't have to pick just one.) and beer (although not together). We spent the day slogging around in the heat, fruitlessly looking for a climbing shop that might provide us with some more information (other than a few pages printed off of a website) about the climbing nearby. We're leaving this morning anyway, with enough food for a few days of camping. This should be an adventure.
We'll try to post again soon.
-j & b
We've spent the past 3 days in Istanbul. It's an amazing city. So much history, so many people...it's overwhelming. But first, let's pick up where we left off.
We arrived in Bodrum, Turkey, via ferry from Kos. We spent the day walking around the busy port city, visiting the castle and its underwater archeology museum and getting our first tastes of the amazing Turkish cuisine. We also saw one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Mausoleum of Helicarnassus. It was strange that we were the only tourists there--but then again, there's not all that much there to see. That evening we decided to go see The Matrix 2. Either they had a really crappy projector, or had a copy of a copy, because the sound and film quality wasn't all that great, but it was still entertaining. We laughed when halfway through the movie they paused for a 10 minute intermission so everyone can have their smoke break.
From Bodrum, we headed up to Selcuk to visit Ephesus, probably the most impressive and well-preserved ancient Roman city. On our walk over to Ephesus from Selcuk, we got to see another of the Seven Wonders, the Temple of Artemis. There's actually even less to see here--just a single column in a large rectangular pool of water. Apparently there's more of it in the British Museum.
The highlight of our few days in Selcuk, though, was our home there, Homeros Pension. When we arrived, after fending off the hordes of men at the bus station trying to convince us to go to their hostels, we were greeted by Oya, a very friendly and talkative woman who insisted we sit down and join her for lunch. Before we knew it we were being fed a yummy home-cooked meal. The rest of the stay was similarly enjoyable. Highlights include the jovial and energetic owner Dervish (Oya's brother), the free nighly "Sunset Wine" on the rooftop terrace, featuring suprisingly good homemade wine, made by Oya's husband, followed by huge dinners made by Oya and her mother. (One night's dinner included zucchinis that we bought for Oya that day at a local market.)
If there were more to do in the Selcuk area, we would have loved to have stayed longer. Alas, there isn't, so after a couple days we took a night bus to Istanbul.
We've hit many of the main tourist attractions--the Blue Mosque, Aya Sophia, the Palace, the underground water reserve, the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar. Much of our time has been spent just wandering the streets, though. It can be like a video game; people everywhere, cars going down the smallest, most pedestrian-packed streets...crazy.
The best part has been the food, however. Yesterday we were treated to a day of decadence by Ceyda, one of Jacqueline's father's students, home in Istanbul for vacation. Lunch was in a famous 200-year-old restaurant in the entrance to the Spice Bazaar. She didn't even bother with the menu; she just talked to the waiter and asked what was fresh. We ate foods that we would have never discovered on our own. It was after 3pm when we left, so Ceyda moved our dinner reservations back an hour. Later, she took us for dessert and coffee at another Istanbul institution, where we had a tableful of sweets, including a wonderful sticky concoction called "Chicken Breast" (but in Turkish), and actually made with chicken (have you ever had a meat dessert before?). We rolled out of there stuffed to the gills and immediately moved our dinner reservations back another hour. Before dinner, we went to a tea house where Ceyda introduced us to the water pipe. Although the tabacco is heavily filtered through water, both of us, not used to tabacco, got quite light-headed. Ceyda's boyfriend joined us there, and we all went to dinner together. Despite still being full, we still managed to consume large amounts of food, including pistachio kebab, walnut meatballs baked in a bulgar shell, and many other delicacies. It was a fabulous day; there's nothing like getting a tour--culinary or otherwise--by a local.
We woke up this morning with a food hangover. We're going to try to walk it off today, maybe do some shopping (are you serious about a rug, mom?). Tonight we're taking a night bus to Cappadoccia, an area in Central Turkey filled with strange volcanic rock formations, some of which have been turned into dwellings. There's also a mountainous region nearby where we hope to do some hiking. We've spent too much time in cities in the last week--we need our nature fix.
We might not be near computers much over the next few days, so it might be a while before the next post.
Cheers,
-b & j
We're in Istanbul now. This isn't going to be a real post because we're in a really smoky internet cafe, on a horribly slow connection. Actually, it seems like there are no fast internet connections to be found in Turkey. They're blaming it on the Algerian earthquake, but I have my doubts.
Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know that we're still out here. We promise to catch up on our postings in the next few days, provided we can find a decent internet cafe.
Cheers,
-b & j