Side: a Turkish Playa del Carmen

Before heading to the coast let me wrap up a few Cappadocia matters. Firstly, the Whirling Dervishes, well, they whirled, and whirled, and whirled, and whirled. Nearly 45 minutes of non-stop turning. I don’t know whether I can say that it was a fascinating experience, but it was definitely a dizzying one. My head was spinning from just watching them and I don’t know how they were able to maintain their balance.

Other than the Dervishes we did a lot more walking, some more hitchhiking, and a bit more relaxing. However, the highlight was an early morning wake-up to see the balloons. We had imagined that there might be 5 or 10 of these balloons and when we got up shortly after sunrise to find 49 of them in the sky, our jaws dropped open in amazement. There was simply nothing that could have prepared us for the scale of it.

We hiked up a little mountain right behind our hostel and beheld all the valleys which we had been climbing through over the last few days filled with hot air balloons.
Now, as I’ve noted on some of the photos, if you ever were considering a change of professions, hot air ballooning in Cappadocia might be the thing for you. The season lasts from April to December but there are also balloon trips in the winter. Every balloon holds between 10 to 30 people, although we have heard of balloons being stuffed with upwards of 36 people so that there is barely enough room for you to raise your elbows so as to take a picture. Now, the cheapest that we heard being charged for one of these balloon trips was 110 Euro. However, that was not a usual price and considering some of the stories we heard about people driving down to Russia and completing their balloon liscencing in less than a week, I’m not too sure I would trust a 110 Euro flight. Additionally, such a flight would generally consist of the balloon going up, maybe traveling a bit to the sides, but coming down in the exact same spot where it started and would most definitely be filled with at least 30 people. If you wanted something a bit more fancier and more “worth your money”, you could invest 240 Euro in a balloon trip that would be twice as long as everyone else, there would only be 15 – 20 of you in the balloon, and you would be treated to champagne at the end of the trip. Plus your balloon would travel through these valleys and would get picked up by a specially designed truck at a location different from the one you started at.

So now let’s see this business proposition: 50 balloons in the air per day; 20 people per balloon (let’s be conservative); 160 Euros per person. 50 x 20 x 160 = 160,000 Euros per day flying up above you. These figures might differ a bit since there might not always be business for all 50 balloons (although most companies are booked solid throughout the high season), there may also be more or less people in the balloon and the prices do vary. However, let’s even call it 150,000 Euros per day for even 6 months of the year (as opposed to the usual 10), you still get a grand total of approximately 27 million Euros per year (conservatively speaking) – and that’s just for these flights which start around 5am and wrap up around 8am. So the rest of the day is yours to do with as you please. Not bad, eh? The only thing that we didn’t get a chance to find out is what the insurance costs are on such operations, if there are any at all.

But moving on; we left Goreme by night bus to Side and managed to show up here at an ungodly hour when everything was still completely closed. To make the matter more interesting, we had reservations in a pension in town that no one knew. We had an address, but none of the streets had names and even when someone finally pointed me towards the correct street, none of the buildings had numbers. To make it even more mysterious, the pension was no longer called by the name used in the guide book nor by the name used on the internet site which I had made my reservations through. In fact, the pension no longer did business with that internet site, had no information of my reservations, nor of the deposit I had paid or of the prices that were advertised. Thankfully they were nice enough to honor the reservation (probably not a hard thing to do given that they only had 2 other guests in their entire hotel). But it definitely made for an interesting morning.

With the hostel tracked down it was high time to relax so we headed to the beach for some well deserved tanning and swimming followed by some roaming, relaxing, eating and resting. Overall, it was a very exhausting day.

That being said, Side is an adorable little town with virtually no vehicle traffic (access is controlled). It’s located on a jutting protrusion of land into the Mediterranean Sea and as such is surrounded by water on three sides. Interspersed throughout the city are Roman ruins including an ampitheater, Roman baths and walls, and the gorgeous remains of the Temple of Appolo overlooking the sea.

The downside to Side is that it is filled to the brim with tourists, with 90% of them being Germans. More than half of these tourists are your usual package holidayers who are staying at nearby all-inclusive hotels. The telltale colored bracelets on their wrists make them easy to spot. As a result of this mass of tourists, the town is filled with souvenir stores, “brand-name” stores, jewelry stores etc. You can buy the identical polo shirt with your choice of logos, whether it would by Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Loren, D&G or Armani. Apparently they all design absolutely identical clothing. Side is essentially the equivalent of Playa del Carmen. It is a quaint little town filled with hotels, restaurants, bars and stores; some tourists decide to stay there, but most tend to come from nearby town (such as Cancun, Mayan Riviera etc) for a day trip to stroll the beach, see the ruins, and do some overpriced shopping of tacky souvenirs or rip off name brand goods.

Despite its touristiness, Side has been quite nice to relax in and a perfect place to see one’s traveling partner off, and to kill some time before welcoming the new entourage.