Montenegro: Kotor and the Adriatic Coast

From Mostar we headed via Dubrovnik straight on to Kotor, a little town on the shores of a fjord-like inlet. There truly could not be a more picturesque setting. The steep mountains start virtually on the shoreline leaving the town to hug the small sliver of land at their base. Surrounded by fortification walls that then continue up the steep slopes to a dizzying height, the Old Town is a maze of tiny cobblestone alleys, numerous churches and endless cafes and restaurants.

We managed to find a gorgeous little apartment right at the south gate to the Old Town and made this our base for three days of exploration. The first of these was spent recovering from the previous day’s miserable tour around Mostar and roaming the Old Town.

The second day started with a 5am wakeup and an ascent up the 1350 steps to the peak of the fortification walls to watch the sunrise. Unfortunately although we found ourselves at the top by 6:30am, the sun remained hidden by a cover of gray clouds.

Given the early hour we figured there was no point to commence our descent immediately. Instead, we found a little whole in the fortification walls with markings of further trails and proceeded to visit an adorable little church built on the mountain. From there we found signs for Lovcen peak, one of the highest peaks in Montenegro. Unfortunately none of the markings included distance or time calculations. We continued climbing for another 3 hours but having reached the summits of the local hills and having views of the entire fjord-like peninsula and beyond, we decided it was time to turn around. Lovcen’s peak was, according to our best guess, at least another 3 hours hike and we did not have enough food or water for such an endeavor.
We returned back into the Old Town just as all the tourists were starting to emerge from the recently docked cruise ship. After a delicious breakfast and some well deserved relaxation we caught a local bus to the little town of Persat. This proved to be even smaller and quainter than Kotor with two little churches on tiny islands a hundred or so meters off shore.

Our third day was an excursion to the nearby town of Budva which was to have a similar reputation to Kotor. However, we found that it lacked Kotor’s charm. It had greatly outgrown its tiny Old Town and the development of large scale hotels, apartment blocks and shopping centers greatly detracted from any charm that it may have once possessed. But it did have some pretty nice beaches that for now were not yet crowded. After a bit of beach bumming and a short swim we headed off to Sveti Stefan. This tiny island resort, although quite picturesque in its own, did not make much of an impression on us. Maybe the fact that we were not able to enter it played a role, but once again, the charm possessed by Kotor simply seemed to be missing.

We managed to return back to Kotor just in time. It had started to drizzle and by the time we were done eating our home-cooked spaghetti on the patio, it had began to pour.

Hopefully the weather will be nicer in Croatia as the plan is to head to Dubrovnik tomorrow morning.

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Sarajevo & Mostar: More food, relaxation and frustrating tours

Our second morning in Sarajevo started with an attempt to wake up for the sunrise. Our alarm was set for 5am assuming that sunrise was closer to 6am. Unfortunately this assumption was based on our experience in Istanbul and failed to take into account the 1 hour time change. We managed to hike across town and up a hill arriving at about 7am, so two hours after sunrise. However, the view was still gorgeous and it was nice to see the city slowly come to life.
After descending back into the streets of the old town, we spent a few hours in a café people watching and relaxing. We followed up by lunch and a tour of the Sarajevo History Museum with its touching exhibit of photos and items from the civil war.

After that it was time to catch a train for Mostar. Again the scenery that we drove through was simply amazing. As the train meandered along mountain ridges, high above valleys on both our sides, we lost count of the number of tunnels that we had to go through. While it remained light outside there was really not much point to sitting down, as every few minutes we would jump up to the window pointing out yet another gorgeous view.

Mostar was one of the most devastated cities in Bosnia following the war. By 1995 it resembled Dresden after WWII with all of its bridges destroyed and all but one of its 27 Ottoman era mosques utterly ruined. As such there is a stark contrast between the quaint cobblestone streets filled with endless millhouse restaurants and trinket sellers and the ruined buildings still lining many of the side streets.

Mostar’s chief attraction is the “Stari Most” or old bridge. The original survived 427 years including both world wars, but was eventually destroyed November 1993 by Bosnian-Croat artillery. It has since been rebuilt and forms a picturesque arc over the turquoise waters of the fast flowing river Neretva River and the medieval towers on either side of the bank.

We spent a day wandering these cobblestone streets and then headed towards what had only a decade earlier constituted the front line. There we managed to climb up the remainders of a staircase in a multistory bank that served as a sniper nest throughout the war. The building was completely gutted with parts of it burned out, all the windows blown out and much of it devastated by bombing and shelling. I think the photos speak for themselves. What was most amazing to me was that a mere meter or so from this building life continued as normal. As I ascended the windowless stairwell I could look into the apartments of the people living next door: I saw their tables set for lunch, the laundry hanging out the window, the things cooking on their stove. The scars were ever present and to them a constant reminder every time they looked out their window, yet life continued.

Our following day was to be spent with a much raved about tour of the countryside. Our hostel was ran by the fabulous Majda and her brother, Bata, organized these tours that everyone seemed to praise everywhere from Sarajevo down to Dubrovnik. The tour was to start at 10:30 am and to go until about 10:00pm if not later and was to take in the major sites in the vicinity including Medugorje (a pilgrimage site where the Holy Virgin apparently spoke to six local teenagers in 1981), the Kravice Waterfalls, Pocitelj fortress and Blagaj with its Dervish House.
Bata turned out to be an over-the-top, crazy, insane Bosnian. He was loud, did not stop with the rapid-fire jokes and puns and was simply a Bosnian reincarnation of Robin Williams on speed. As entertaining as this was for the first half hour it got a bit tiring when you had 19 people crammed into a cargo van that should officially have seated 10 or 12 people. Add to this his insistence to drive the van to the beat of the music, jerking on the gas and breaks respectively, blaring Serbian Turbo Folk music at absolute max with a subwoofer right under our seats making any kind of conversation with your sandwiched neighbor absolutely impossible and his determination to keep us all awake by swerving the vehicle from side to side tossing us against one another, the 14 hour tour without air-conditioning more closely resembled a nightmare than a highlight. I’m not quite sure how but others were surprised that we did not enjoy it, especially since some of them had done it three times already (at 25 Euro per tour where a vehicle rental for the day might have cost a maximum 50 Euro divided between the number of passengers). As informative as Bata was the tour simply dragged on and could easily have been completed in 6 hours.

The waterfall was a very miniature version of Iguacu Falls in Argentina/Brazil, quite pretty but not quite breathtaking. The fortress at Pocitelj offered spectacular views but we weren’t even given the opportunity of walking down to the base of the mountain to visit the mosque. The Dervish House at Blagaj was amazingly located, at the foot of soaring cliffs topped with the Herceg Stjepan Fortress and at the mouth of the Buna River emerging straight out of a gaping cave. However we arrived there when it had already become dark, were not given the opportunity to go into the Dervish House or to climb up the fortress. We arrived at the hostel just before midnight exhausted and disappointed vowing not to do any more tours on our trip.

From Mostar it was off by a 7am bus to Kotor, Montenegro. However, more about Kotor in a day or two after we have more to say about it aside for mere exultations on how beautiful it is.

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Bosnia and Herzegovina: Sarajevo

So if you think that the Sea-to-Sky Highway used to be narrow and windy, think again. The road between Belgrade and Sarajevo would have put it to shame. Our bus covered the distance of approximately 325km in just under 8 hours. The reason for this was twofold: firstly we seemed to be traveling through every small village possible; and secondly, once we crossed into BiH the road was so narrow and eternally S shaped, that there simply was no way to cover the distance any quicker. That last stretch of road was at the bottom of a valley with steep mountains on either side of a narrow one lane road (which in fact was a two lane road). Immediately to our left would be a giant green wall continuing seemingly eternally upwards, on the immediate right was a little mountain river with an equally giant green wall on its other side.

And once again I must admit that I have been taken completely by surprise. Just as I had certain preconceptions about the appearance of the Middle East, I also had a preconceived image in my mind about Sarajevo. This turned out to be completely false. I must say that I don’t think there are many capital cities that could compete with Sarajevo in terms of charm.

The guidebook describes Sarajevo as a cozy, vibrant capital whose humanity, wonderful café scene, attractive contours and East-meets-West ambiance are increasingly making it a favorite summer traveler destination. This description is definitely accurate. The green hills rise out almost from the very center of the city. There are virtually no high-rise buildings, no office center. Instead, the hills are spotted with little white houses with red shingled roofs with an occasional minaret interspersed amongst them. It feels like a cross of an Austrian alpine town with a Muslim accent. Half of the center is in a European Austro-Hungarian style and the other half with more of a Turkish character.

The very recent turbulent history is evident on almost every step. Although many buildings have been rebuild and there are very few completely destroyed buildings left, there is no shortage of shelled walls. In the outskirts of the city nearly all blocks and buildings are dotted with bullet holes and holes from the artillery shells that hit them. Many have patched up sections where bricks were used to fill in the larger holes or to rebuild parts of the walls. Other buildings still contain numerous apartments that remain deserted, burnt out during the war or destroyed to such an extent that there was little to save.

For some further info, please check out the following couple of links. The first is a compilation of documentary footage from the war put together to "Crazy" by Seal. The second is a website with photographs from throughout the war. There are various albums on the website all with amazing shots. The photo that is linked to directly entitled Novo Sarajevo shows the building in which we were hosted. Dario lives, and at time time of the war, lived in the building on the left on the 9th floor.

We spent the day roaming the old town and the many pedestrian streets. However, our sightseeing was primarily contained to a two block radius filled with fanatic cafes and restaurants. We started with a traditional Bosnian lunch comprised of cevapi. From there we walked about 20 meters to another restaurant for some delicious Sarajevsko pivo. Feeling too guilty to simply move over to the seats on our right we decided to walk around the block and came back to a third restaurant for some fantastic Bosnian ice cream. From there we went on to meet up with Dario, our amazing CS host and with him swung by a fruit market where we stocked up on strawberries, bananas and apples only to proceed home and make another trip to a bakery for some bread. At least we made up for it by walking up the 9 flights of stairs.

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Serbia: Belgrade

From Bucharest we headed by a 13 hour night train to Belgrade. Finding our seat on the train was an adventure in itself. We couldn’t sort out the car numbers, but when we found our seat numbers, we figured we were in the right place. When the conductor came by she started pointing us down the corridor towards the next car. So we continued our journey with the giant bags occasionally hitting a few of the seated passengers over the head and stopped two cars down at seats that again contained our numbers. This didn’t last long since when the conductor came by again we were informed that we had to keep on going. Moving from a semi new car to a rickety old one we thought we had the right spot only to be informed that no, we should continue on further. On second thought the conductor took pity on us and indicated that since this part of the train is nearly empty we should stay where we are and make ourselves comfortable.

We did exactly that. Our compartment had two cushioned benches running along either side. Paulina stretched out on one and Julita and I on the other. After about ½ an hour Julita decided that the floor would be more comfortable and took out her rain poncho, stretching it out on the floor, pulled out her sleeping bag and proceeded to fall asleep on the floor of our compartment.

This comfort lasted until about 2am when they decided to turn on the heating. The vents must have been directly under the benches as both Paulina and I were getting roasted alive and all the hot air was blowing directly onto Julita. There truly was no helping it. We opened the window in our compartment as much as possible; opened the compartment door to have some breeze; and opened every window in the corridor. Yet we continued to roast. Finally at around 4am someone must have realized that a trainload of roasted passengers is not the best way to cross a border and the heat was turned off.

We arrived in Belgrade semi-refreshed and were greeted by Ray, our next couchsurfing host.
Belgrade proved to be a much nicer capital city than Bucharest. It was much smaller, had a pleasant old town, quaint pedestrian streets, nice citadel, beautiful government buildings, an amazing Orthodox cathedral as well as some fantastic food.

I think the highlight of our visit was our dinner at the Little Bay restaurant. This restaurant is designed as a small opera house, with our table being located in one of the balcony booths. Normally, every day of the week there is live opera performances. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to us, on Sundays this only takes place during lunch. As such we had to make do with fantastic three course meal and opera music from the sound system. It has been a long time since I had a meal like that: artichoke and mushroom salad, shrimp and avocado salad, stuffed sweet peppers, duck with vegetables, cheesecake and some fantastic Serbian wine. You can’t go wrong when the bill comes out to a mere $25CAD per person.

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The breathtaking Peles Castle

Our last day in Transylvania started out in the pouring rain. There was little point taking any of the gondolas up to the peaks, whether in Brasov, Busteni or Sinaia, given that all we would have seen were the inside of the clouds.

Instead we headed to the Peles Castle in Sinaia where King Carol and his wife Elizabeth would spend the summers. I have seen quite the share of castles in my travels, everything from Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany to the Alhambra in Spain and many in between. However, everything paled in comparison to what we saw in Peles.

Some credit has to be given to the fact that Peles is a relatively recent castle, having been constructed in 1886 with additional construction continuing on into around 1911. However, aside for the absolutely stunning architecture, the use of what must have been at least a dozen groves of cherry, oak, walnut and ash to provide enough wood for the interior decoration, the intricate carvings that adorned nearly every single space of the wall, the Italian marble, the Venetian glass, the Spanish leather, the palace also had an internal vacuuming system, an elevator, telephone and telegraph exchange and a functioning movie theater a mere 10 years after its invention.

I was not joking when I said that at least a dozen groves of trees must have been used to decorate the castle. I have not seen so much intricately carved wood adorning everything from floor, wall to ceiling. Every room was finished with excuisite detail. We had a chance to see only the bottom floor of this stunning three floor castle and amongst the most impressive rooms were: the hall of honor with an electrically movable stain glass ceiling that would let more light into the castle and allow it to be aired out in the summer; a library (one of three) that contained close to 10,000 books in German, Romanian, Russian, Italian, French, English, Latin etc as well as a secret passage way; a dining room that could seat 40 guests complete with the original china and silverware; the armory with a collection of weapons from all parts of Europe and the Orient; the oriental smoking room; the Moorish reception hall; King Carol’s office; and the 60 seat theater/cinema.

Unfortunately photographs inside were not permitted so you will have to look the castle up on the internet to get an impression of what the insides were like.

From Peles we continued back into the Romanian plains on our way to Bucharest. We made one little stop in at Sagova Lake where Vlad Tepes is supposed to have been buried. However, having 6 LEI left to our name and less than half an hour before needing to return the car, the stop was more of a relaxing lunch break at the waterfront.

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Transylvania: where vampires still roam the forrests

(I’m too tired to write anything coherent so for now this will have to do. Maybe over the next few days I will be able to revise this post.)

Transylvania is famed as the home of Dracula, steeped in mystery and legend. Yet it is so much more. First and foremost it is green. I do not think Ireland could be any greener. The forests are incredibly dense and lush; the rolling hills never have a brown speck; green plains fill the valleys; the orchard floors are covered in grass.

Our little green Metiz took us up through the Romanian plains, into the mountains and to Brasov, a decently sized city with a historic core that has the feel of a little village. It is home to the narrowest street in the world, a number of beautiful churches and a “BRASOV” equivalent of the Hollywood sign.

On our first day we drove to Bran to walk through the famed Bram Stoker castle and to fill up on our vampire lore. Part of Stoker’s inspiration came from Vlad Draculae, ruling prince of Wallachia from 1456 till 1462. He posthumously gained the moniker “Tepes” (Impaler) after his favoured form of punishing his enemies – impaling. A dull wooden stake was carefully inserted into the anus, driven slowly through the body avoiding vital organs, until it emerged from the mouth, resulting in hours, even days, of agony before death. Vlad was later vilified in history, but to many Romanians he was considered the equivalent of a local Robin Hood and was by no means any more brutal than most of his contemporaries.

From Bran we headed into the countryside and into little villages in search of various picuresque fortified churches that abound in this region. Our stops included the amazing churches in Prejmer, Harman and Sanpetru followed by a very enjoyable hike through some fields and hills overlooking the entire valley.

Our next day was to include a stop in Fagaras to see another fortified church and then a trip through the mountains to Poienari, the true home of Vlad Dracula that is only reachable by climbing over 1400 stairs. The loop we had planned was to be about 400km and should have taken us about 5 hours to drive with a few hours to climb the stairs. However, things don’t always turn out as planned and today was the perfect example.

We headed up towards Poienari over the mountain pass road. However, after 35 km of serpentine driving we came to a dead end. The pass was closed at least until June. Looking at the map we realized we could go back to the main highway and attempt a circular detour that might take about an hour and a half. Unfortunately Romanian roads and Romanian maps don’t always correspond. What on the map was shown to be the same type of road as the one we had just traveled down proved to be little more than a dirt road through tiny villages with our little Matiz having a hard time clearing most of the potholes. It took us over 2 hours to drive approximately 35 km but we finally made it to the turnoff for Poienari.

Our second attempt at reaching Poienari proved equally unsuccessful. After about 20 minutes of pothole filled road we found our way blocked by a gate and a guard who said we had to turn around. So we continued through the villages, alternating between short stretches of paved road, longer stretches of paved but incredibly “holly” road, and even longer sections of mere dirt.
We finally came to yet another turnoff point for Poienari. The sign said 3.5 km to a nearby town from where it was supposed to be yet another 4 km to the main road. However, after 2 km our little Metiz was barely fitting and to add to it was sliding backwards on the clay. After some sliding, pushing and stalling we decided to give up.

Three failed attempts, 8 hours of driving, endless villages, numerous herds of sheep, countless horses roaming the countryside, a family of little piglets, a week old yearling, a “flock” of baby geese and the occasional cow wondering down the main roads of the towns, we still had not seen Vlad’s home and no longer had the time to see it.

By 5:30pm we managed to show up in a town where we had hoped to be 3 hours earlier (after seeing Vlad’s castle). While there we grabbed our first bite to eat and then went to check out a beautiful monestary before continuing our drive back to Brasov.

We arrived back at our Pension at 10pm, exhausted and with a rattling vehicle (it now makes clickity noises when in neutral and a very weird rattling noise when in gear). Despite the day not having gone as planned, it was nevertheless an enjoyable and memorable day.

Tomorrow it’s off to see a few more of Transylvania’s gems and then back to Bucharest from where we will be taking a night train to Belgrade.

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Bucharest

There truly isn’t much to say about Bucharest. It is a large city with a very communist feel to it. The communist housing blocks comprise probably over 80% of the city and quite often hide the true gems that are stuck somewhere in between, be it churches, villas or some other form of monuments.

The old city which was to be comprised of little cobblestone streets seemed to be under construction. The cobblestones were dug up, most of the old building fronts were crumbling with only the ground floors being occupied. Every now and then you would come across an excavated part of a street that was fenced off because apparently underneath there were ruins. However, the city seemed unsure what to do about these ruins and simply left them partly exposed like a half-completed construction site.

However, there were a couple noteworthy things about Bucharest. The first were their absolutely delicious doughnuts. These aren’t your usual Tim Horton’s doughnuts. They were more akin to the Polish ponczki except double in size and with enough jam to fill more than half of the doughnut. They must have just come out of the oven and were absolutely delicious.
The other item was the Romanian Parliament building. It is the second largest building in the entire world (after the Pentagon). Comprised of 330,000 sq meters and over 1000 rooms there probably is not much that can equal it in the world. Construction began in 1984 and about 70% of it was completed in the first five years, but to date it still remains unfinished. On an average day there are about 5000 people working in the building, meaning about one per every 60 square meters. The banquet halls, conference rooms, staircases, and halls are absolutely amazing. A carpet, in one of the banquet halls, weighed a staggering 3 tones. The rental of such a hall for a private function was a mere 70,000 – 100,000 Euro, perfect for a graduation party.

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Bulgaria: Country with the weird alphabet but fantastic food

We’ve now spent a couple days in Veliko Tarnovo, a quaint little town in the heart of Bulgaria located on the steep banks of the meandering Yantra River. The region is fantastic for day trips, hikes and rock climbing, but all these activities are weather dependant and unfortunately for us, our luck for sunshine has run out.

We are being hosted by three young and incredibly energetic guys who took us out for some delicious Bulgarian food and drinks. Today we spent the day wandering the town and hiking the local mountains while trying to hide from the rain and wind. However, with the weather not cooperating, there is not much to do and as such we will be bidding VT and Bulgaria goodbye and heading to Bucharest tomorrow morning.

It’s unfortunate since it does seem like a fantastic and picturesque country plus the food is absolutely delicious and dirt cheap. Our dinner last night, including an incredibly filling traditional Bulgarian dish, a large bottle of beer and some shots of the local Bulgarian liquor (Rakia) came out to an amazing $7CAD per person. You can get most main courses for anywhere between 4 and 10 lev ($3 – 7).

On a slight side note, we are still getting used to how quite Bulgaria is in comparison to Turkey and especially Istanbul. It is often advantageous to travel in the off season as you avoid the crowds, generally have cheaper prices and never have to worry about tracking down accommodations. The downside of it is that most places you visit are like ghost towns. The hike we did today was one such example. It took us to a nearby picturesque village filled with cafés, restaurants and hotels. This would have been quite pleasant if they had been opened, but when they’re closed, all we could do was walk around and come back home (hitchhiking with the very first car that passed us).

Other than that, there is not much to add. We will write again when we have our next internet connection.

PS: When trying to get hold of our Couchsurfing host and having no luck with the local pay phone I approached a girl sitting at the station seeing that she had a cell. I asked if she spoke English, she nodded her head so I proceeded to explain my predicament and was absolutely stunned when I got completely ignored with absolutely no response. Only later did it sink in that the up-down nod in Bulgaria is a "NO" whereas the side-to-side shake is a "YES". Take my word for it, it takes some getting used to. Our hosts did the same a number of times, each time resulting in the same confused expressions on our part.

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Sozopol: Our first true European stop

We arrived yesterday in Sozopol, a little coast town on the Black Sea, absolutely exhausted. It was the perfect place to rest up and relax and an ideal first stop in a new chapter of this journey. The Middle East and Turkey, as fascinating and enjoyable as they were, have now been left behind. I breathed another sigh of relief, welcoming the more familiar and less exotic scenery.

Sozopol, according to our guidebook, is a little town with a population of 4650 located on a jutting peninsula in the south of Bulgaria. In the early morning hours of our arrival, the population seemed to have been closer to 100 than nearly 5000. Having wandered through the entire town I could have counted on my fingers the amount of people I came across. The absolute quietness gave this cobblestoned town with its century old wooden houses an eerie yet peaceful feel and if not for needing to find some form of accommodations, the quietness would have been a welcome change after Istanbul.

Even in the afternoon the town did not become much livelier. We stumbled on a handful of tourists around some corners; there would be the elderly grandpa doing some gardening in front of his home; a grandma heading back with a small bag of groceries from the corner store; some kids playing in the streets or some men repairing the boats in the small port. But there were no crowds. Most of the stores remained closed, most bars and cafes were empty and the beaches were virtually desolate.

The town was nevertheless pleasant. It would have made a great summer retreat and we suspect that most of the population total is comprised of families who simply have summer apartments in the town but in reality live elsewhere.

In all respects, there could not have been a starker contrast between our previous days: the crowds were gone, the five time daily call to prayer was no longer to be heard; the skyline was free of all minarets; there were no bazaars; there was no hassling or haggling; communication was virtually limited to Bulgarian and not the plethora of languages spoken by most in Istanbul; the alphabet had reverted not to the indecipherable Arabic squiggles, but nevertheless to an equally indecipherable Cyrillic; and most importantly the feel had changed: the town was truly European as was the countryside.

We spent the day soaking all this in with the intentions of catching a 6am bus to Veliko Tarnovo. Unfortunately it proved impossible to get the girls out of bed on time and we opted for the later 1:30am connection.

Now at 2pm I’m sitting in the bus, looking out over gentle rolling green hills occasionally dotted with orchards and pastures. White fluffy clouds dot the crystal clear blue sky throwing moving shadows over the hills. Julita said that the town reminded her of Poland, and in a way she’s right. Both the towns and the countryside have that Eastern European feel to them. They are little villages where life’s requirements are simply the necessities of life. It is not to say that time has stood still here contrary to the impression I got in Cappadocia, but anyone who has lived in Poland or traveled through these little Eastern European towns, will immediately know the character which I’m now trying and failing to describe. Although France and Germany might have such little towns and similar countryside, there is something a bit different about them.

Funnily enough Julita says she doesn’t like it, I, on the other hand, feel at home. Even the Bulgarian is at times sounding an awful lot like Polish. Now if only I could master their alphabet, I might choose to stay here longer.

PS: On an odd note, at dinner in Sozopol we watched the sun set over the water. In the morning I sat on the beach in Sozopol watching the sun rise over the Black Sea. Go figure.

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Istanbul: From Asia to Europe all in one day

We are currently running on maybe 5 hours of sleep over the last 72 hours and are likely to add only a couple more to that total over the next 24 hours. As such, if this entry makes little sense, please accept my apologies.

We left Bergama on the 10 hour night bus to Istanbul. As comfortable as these buses are, there is only so much sleep you can get in such a position. It is therefore not surprising that when we arrived in Istanbul at 6am we were quite exhausted. However, we somehow managed to find our way to the center and to track down the meeting point for our pickup by Gokhen, our next Couchsurfing host.

In the past, whenever I’ve referred to our Couchsurfing experiences, I’ve generally kept it quite brief, especially when discussing our hosts. However, I think this time round a bit more detail is necessary. Gokhen is a Human Rights lawyer in Istanbul. He has completed his masters and is now working on his PhD while practicing full time. He informed us prior to our arrival that he lives relatively near the old town of Istanbul. Maybe I should have learned by now not to have any expectations, or rather to expect the unexpected when traveling through the Middle East as well as most other places. However, having scanned through a number of Couchsurfing profiles, seen relatively roomy apartments etc, I had some kind of standard in mind when I thought of a lawyer hosting us. That is not to say that I expected luxury or felt cheated by the lack of it. What I’m getting at is that what greeted us was the complete unexpected.

Gokhan’s flat was a very small two bedroom place that had seen better days. Officially there were at least 5 guys sharing the flat, sleeping 2 or 3 to a room on mattresses spread on the floor. Unofficially the rotation of tenants at times was unpredictable, often with more than 6 people sleeping there (that is excluding any Couchsurfers). Furniture was comprised of several mattresses, two couches in the little living room, a table, a tiny TV, several laptops and some hangers for clothes that hang in various spots across the flat. The toilet was a traditional Arabic style toilet and from the kitchen window you could shake hands with the neighbor in the building across from you (beneficial if you ran out of tomatoes while cooking pasta etc.).

Various reasons came to mind for such living arrangements: rent might be extremely high in Istanbul; there might be a shortage of flats; this was a temporary arrangement. All three of these proved to be false. Rent for the flat was approximately 500 TL or 250 Euro a month; apparently a flat double the size could easily be obtained for the same price in a similar area; and the living arrangement had been in existence for a number of years. This was simply the way they chose to live.

We were welcomed into these small quarters; a few of the tenants were woken up and told to move to the other room so that we could have somewhere to change; and we were informed that the sleeping arrangements would be sorted out in the evening.

After a quick breakfast we headed out onto town first towards the Blue Mosque, where through the massive crowds of tourists we managed to catch some glimpses of the gorgeous interior of this building. However, we decided to pass on the massive lineup to the Aya Sofya and instead visited the fantastic Basilica Cistern – an underground chamber 65 meters wide and 143 meters long and supported by 336 columns arranged in 12 rows. It once held 80,000 cubic meters of water. Now there are only several inches of water in the cistern, but the atmospheric lighting and the occasional dripping of the water make this a truly memorable place.

From there it was off to lunch, followed by some Turkish tea, and an excursion to the Great Bazaar where I got yelled at by a shop attendant for talking too much and meddling in other people’s affairs (as I haggled for a good price for Julita and tried to do the same for Paulina). He told me to stay out of it and having gotten mad, refused to lower the price any further.

We then returned to Sultanahmet Square and realizing that there was no longer a lineup to Aya Sofya, decided to go in. For me, this 1500+ year old building that used to be a Christian Basilica and then was converted into a Mosque seemed to be missing its identity. The interior was in a state of great disrepair with renovations ongoing but to little effect. Some of the Christian mosaics were visible as were most of the Muslim decorations that had been added, but all of it lacked luster and failed to make an impression. What did, however, make an impression was the giant dome which seemed to float unsupported over the massive center chamber. The architectural design of this structure was truly amazing.

A side note: all of these sights have security checks that you go through. The last time we had made ourselves sandwiches, Paulina had pulled out her knife, put it into her day pack and completely forgotten about it. As we went through the security check to the Aya Sofya they noticed the knife on the x-ray machine and told Paulina to remove it from her bag. After fiddling with it for a while the security guard asked us where we were from, and upon hearing that we were from Canada, handed the knife back to Paulina saying that Canada is good and that it’s no problem. Go figure. I wonder if he would have been as generous if he knew we were also Polish citizens.

From there we headed towards the water, rounding the Golden Horn and strolling along the Sea of Marmara and the Bosphorus Strait until we reached the Galata Bridge. From there it was up the hill, all the way down Istiklal Caddesi, Modern Istanbul’s most pretentious street, filled not only with the best brandname stores, but also an endless array of restaurants, bars, clubs and embassies. By 8:30pm we had finally made it to Taksim Square where we were to meet our Couchsurfing entourage. Unfortunately plans had changed, they had decided to sleep and we had to continue our exhausted march back down Istiklal Caddesi until we got to Gokhan’s office.

There we finally were given the opportunity to have dinner and eventually dragged out for some drinks on what must have been the 7th floor of a restaurant. The stairs were never-ending. We finally made it back home at around 2am at which point we were advised that Paulina and I would be sleeping on the balcony (not a large balcony – barely long and wide enough for a single mattress). At 5:30am the alarm rang and we were up on our feet again to see the sunrise over the Blue Mosque.

As exhausted as we were, this proved to be a wise decision. The view was stunning and the lack of crowds was amazing. We went back to the Blue Mosque and aside for the janitor vacuuming the carpets, had the mosque to ourselves. Next on our list was the Topkapi Palace where the highlights must have been the Topkapi dagger with its giant emeralds encrusted in the hilt, the 48kg solid gold candlesticks, each encrusted with thousands of diamonds, as well as the Spoonmaker’s Diamond, an 86 cerate rock that had been found in the dump and bought by a street peddler for three spoons (it’s the 5th largest diamond in the world).

The Place was followed by a visit to the spice bazaar, some haggling for jewelry with an elder Turk who spoke a beautifully accented Polish and was of the opinion that Polish and Russian girls were the most beautiful in the world. He also spoke fluent German and English as well as being able to communicate in Russian, Hungarian, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Spanish and a couple other languages.

By this point it was already 4pm. It took us nearly an hour to make it back to the apartment and the plan was to quickly pick up (reserve) our bus tickets to Bulgaria and swing by a Haman (Turkish bath) prior to heading out to the bus station for 7:30pm. Well, everything seemed to take much longer than expected. By the time we got our tickets we were dripping wet from sweat (after having carried all our packs in the 32 degree weather), desperately needing one of those scrubs offered up in the Haman, but having absolutely no time to do so. Instead, still soaked, we stocked up on some incredibly delicious Balaclava, boarded the tram, then transferred to the metro and headed to catch our next 10 hour bus that would take us into Europe proper.

We are scheduled to arrive in Burgas early in the morning and from there plan to take a minibus for another hour or so to Sozopol. Hopefully there we will be able to rest up a bit.

PS: And rest we desperately needed. Having commenced our commute to Sozopol at around 4pm in Istanbul with a 1.5 hour march through the blazing hot streets, the last half hour with all our gear, followed by local transit for another hour, we finally got on the bus at around 7:30pm. Exhausted, we started to fall asleep around 10:00pm only to be woken up for a half hour stop at 10:30pm. We got back on the bus at 11pm and an hour or so later started to fall asleep (as opposed to just dozing), but were again woken up at 1am for all the border formalities. The same situation repeated itself with a stop at 2:30am and at 4am when we were really desperate for some rest, we arrived in Burgas. There were no ongoing buses to Sozopol nor was anything open at that ungodly hour. We grabbed some benches in the park, pulled out our sleeping bags, stretched out and decided to nap for a couple hours. I got up just before 6am, found a nice bakery and was informed that a bus would be departing for Sozopol in less than 10 minutes. By 6:45am we were in Sozopol, a town whose official population is 4900. However, on a Saturday morning at 7am in the offseason the population is likely closer to 20. We could not find a single hotel reception that was open despite having wondered through the “new” and “old” part of town twice. Eventually at around 8am I tracked down a couple eating breakfast in one of the hotels and managed to secure a room where we all passed out.

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Pergamum and the crowds

Just as in Ephesus we got up early and arrived at the ruins shortly after the opening of the gates. Again, the crowds were not bad, but everywhere we turned we could see them scurrying across the ruins, ducking behind corners, peaking around the bends. Just when we thought that we were alone in the amphitheater or tunnel, one would peak out his head and stare at us. However, this time around the crowds were not tourists, but rather lizards.

The first place we went to in Pergamum was the Asclepion (the ancient healing spa). Aside for two other tourists, we did not see a single other person until we left, but as I’ve mentioned, there was no shortage of lizards. The ruins weren’t anything extravagant, but it was nice to walk around them in absolute silence, with only the birds chirping offering a continuous accompaniment. We even spotted a tiny little turtle. He did not seem to think very highly of our Turkey Lonely Planet Book.

From there it was off to the Red Basilica where again we were on our own and then up the mountain to the Acropolis were we stumbled across a few busloads of tourists but they seemed to disperse themselves quite nicely.

However, in all honesty, if someone is pressed for time, Pergamum does not really have much to offer and can easily be skipped. The ruins are described quite impressively in the guides, but in reality are little in comparison to Ephesus, Palmyra, Jerash and even Side. It is a pleasant enough place to stop if you are slowly meandering your way down the Turkish coast, but not worth going out of your way.

Since there’s not much to say about our current excursions, this might be a good place for some Turkish facts:

• While some countries are battling it out in courts about policies pertaining to wearing headscarves and turbans, it is illegal for women to wear these scarves to universities or to work in government offices. Many of them, in order to abide by their religious believes, continue to wear them, but over top of the scarves will put on a plastic black wig.
• Many apartment blocks remain unfinished throughout the bigger cities. Consturction is often started as a form of speculation, or as a cooperative, with various people contributing money. Sometimes that money runs out, sometimes there are disagreements or the builders run off with all the investments, but at other times it simply is no longer profitable to continue building, and whatever tax breaks the builder had in the beginning might no longer be in existence. As such, numerous unfinished blocks dot the skyline.
• Military service is mandatory. For someone who did not complete university, mandatory service lasts approximately 14 or 15 months. If you have completed univserity you have two options: you can either serve for 6 months as a normal soldier, not be allowed to leave the base throughout that entire time and not be paid anything; or you can serve for a year commanding a group of 300 people, be allowed off the base after 5pm and be paid a small but not insignificant sum of money. The downfall of both these options is you never know where you will be placed and might be required to move halfway across the country for service.
• Gas is probably the most expensive I have seen in a long time: at most stations petrol costs 3.78 TL or $2.70 CAD per liter.
• When walking through a bazaar, even in a relatively small town, be prepared to be accosted in every possible language. The vendors are incredibly good at guessing your nationality and will address you first in the language they believe to be appropriate. If we were walking and talking in English, that would be their default. To fend them off I would reply in Polish which in turn would be met with invitations from the same vendor to come into his shop and relatively fluent Polish along with comments such as “Ale ladna dziewczyna. Sliczne masz oczy” (usually addressed to Julita). With that attempt having failed I would begin to answer in German, but their response was equally fluent. We tried the same with some basic French to no avail. I think Greek was the only language we tried which didn’t receive and equally fluent response.

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Same country, different sea

The last time I wrote we were on the south coast of Turkey relaxing on the Mediterranean Sea. We've now made it to Turkey's west coast and with it to the Agean sea.

Our boat trip, although relaxing, did not turn out quite as we would have wished. We woke up to a cloudy sky that quickly started to dump rain on us. By 11am it had cleared up enough so that the trip was not called off and we became optimistic that things would continue to improve. Unfortunately, they did not do so until about 5pm. Up until that point the clouds alternated with sunshine and were interspersed by periods of drizzling rain. Overall we didn’t mind too much and it was still relatively warm. The downside was that the gorgeous turquoise sea simply did not have the same impact and color as it would have in full sunshine. Secondly, because there was no guarantee of warming oneself up in the sunshine, I did not have enough courage to go for a swim in the slightly chilly waters. But you can’t go wrong when you’re sailing through gorgeous bays all day long and are fed a fantastic fish lunch for a whole $10CAD.

The following day, despite the hotel managers valiant attempts to convince us to stay longer (on the house), we hit the road again. Our initial trip took us the scenic route through little villages, winding roads, high “mountain” (hill) passes, gorgeous valleys, beautiful lakes and a number of detours all the way to Pamukkale.

Yellowstone National Park has one site in it that is like a white waterfall of calcium like shelves. On photos it looks like snow with icicles. Well, Pamukkale is a large scale equivalent of this. The site is 2,700 meters long, 600 meters wide and 160 meters high. It can be seen from the hills on the opposite side of the valley in the town of Denizli, 20 km away. These travertines (terraces of carbonate minerals left by the flowing hot spring water) are quite the sight. They would be even more impressive if they were filled (and overflowing) with water.

Unfortunately, unlike in Yellowstone where nature is left to do its thing, humans have intervened in Pamukkale. By the 1990 the human effect on these shelves was becoming apparent, especially since there had been a road leading directly through them and hotels which diverted the spring water for their own purposes. Most of these pristine white shelves had started to turn grey. To reverse this effect, the road was shut down, much of the area was closed to tourists and you could no longer bathe in them (with the exception of a small area specially designated for that purpose). However, most significantly the water was diverted from the pools to allow them to bleach out in the sun. Now the water is controlled on a weekly rotating schedule with the result that only a small amount of the travertines are filled with water. All the gorgeous photos you can see on the internet, are taken during special times during which all pools are temporarily filled.

Nevertheless, Pamukkale was quite a sight, and it was neat to walk around some of the shelves and take a dip in the 36 degree Celsius water.

From Pamukkale it was a semi quick drive down highway-like roads all the way to Selcuk where we spent the night and bright the next morning went to explore the ruins at Ephesus. Following the advice of travelers I had met in Cappadocia, we showed up shortly after opening hours and were rewarded by much lesser crowds (most of the tour buses not yet having arrived). The highlight was the Library of Celsus which had been gorgeously reconstructed. The library was build to house 12,000 scrolls and to serve as a monumental tomb for Celsus. It was not as large as I had imagined it to be, but nevertheless impressive (especially when we managed to snap a few shots without ANY people in them (well – aside for maybe us). By the time we were leaving the site, it was difficult to squeeze by all the people, even on the main roads.

The cacophony of languages surrounding us by that point in time was crazy. But we did manage to pick up some interesting bits of information from the various tour groups: from a German group we found out that the communal washrooms with about 40 “toilet” holes surrounding what originally used to be a fish pond were quite the meeting place but the marble slabs had to be pre-warmed by slaves during the winter; from the Polish group we learned that the town hall was the place for all welcome-parties and all such events were paid for by the citizens of the city; and from the British group we learned that the four statues at the front of the Library symbolized: wisdom (Sophia), knowledge (Episteme), intelligence (Ennoia) and valor (Arete).

From Ephesus we headed up the mountains into the midst of various fruit orchards to a little village of Sirince. There we got to taste some interesting (and not so tasty) wines, including mandarin, blueberry, cherry and blackberry, stroll cobbled streets, get invited by an elderly lady into her home for some tea, have a delicious lunch comprised of Turkish pizza (almost like savory pancakes), and simply meander through the village. Although there was nothing particular about this little place, it was probably the highlight of the day. The only thing that would have made it better would have been the absence of tour buses, which unfortunately seem to make it virtually everywhere.

We’re now in Bergama with plans to see the ruins of Pergamum tomorrow morning; in the afternoon we will be parting with our vehicle (which we have grown very fond of); and in the evening we will be hoping onto a 10 hour night bus to Istanbul.

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Antalya and Standard Transmission Vehicles

From Side to Antalya it’s about 80km, so one would have thought about an hour would have been enough to make the trip. Well, I left Side at 3:30pm and finally managed to meet up with my next Couchsurfing host in Antalya at around 7:30pm.

Antalya had not much to recommend. It was simply a big city with a semi-nice old town and port. Unfortunately the weather was turning a little sour so the coast and the water had lost a bit of its charm. Julita and Paulina arrived after a long flight from Vancouver via Calgary and Frankfurt and then a 12 hour bus ride from Istanbul to Antalya. They were good sports and more than willing to immediately head to town to explore, albeit at times in a zombie-like fashion.

Our main goal in Antalya was to figure out a vehicle rental so that we could explore the coast at our leisure. The catch was that all main rental agencies were at the airport and we had no intentions of going there. We finally managed to find a place that was going to rent us a nice Suzuki Jeep like vehicle with gas (propane) for about 450 TL for 5 days with a drop off on the west coast of Turkey. The upside of the gas vehicle was that normal petrol costs about $2.20 per liter whereas gas is only about $1.20. The lady who rented us the vehicle reminded me of Estelle, Joey Triviani’s agent and it was hard to tell whether she was any more reputable than her Hollywood counterpart. However, this had been the best price we had found all day so we signed the contract and arrange to come for the vehicle the following morning.

Well, the next morning it turned out that Estelle got yelled at by her husband for offering us a price that they couldn’t honor. After some arguing and frustration we ended up getting a small Diesel Renault Clio at the rental place next door for 550 TL. We’ll see whether the decision was a good one or not, but it is definitely beneficial to have a vehicle and to be able to travel wherever we want.

Paulina started out as the designated driver, I the navigator and Julita as backseat decoration. However, after ½ hour of driving and after having stalled the vehicle about 10 times on an intersection, Paulina gave up and handed the wheel over to Julita. Now Julita is our designated, and speedy driver, I’m still the navigator and Paulina has been promoted to the backseat tour guide that tells us all about the Turkish history.

Our first day’s adventures took us to Chimera, a place where some form of gas escapes from the earth and upon contact with the air catches fire. There are about 30 of these little fire spouts dotting the hillside. Next was Olympos where Greek and Roman ruins go all the way down to the sea and where backpackers abound. There we fell asleep on the beach, had a delicious meal and got back in the car to head towards Kas.

In Kas we spent a nice night, wandered around in the morning and then hit the road again.

Can (John), our Couch Surfing host in Antalya, wonder how the three of us ended up traveling together and today so did I. Here’s a sample of the dialog that went on this morning.

Julita: Do you have a sister?
Paulina: Yes, but she doesn’t really look like me.
Kasia: She actually looks more like Julita than you.
Paulina: I don’t know a Julita.
Julita: WHAT???

And the saddest part of it was that none of this brilliancy was attributable to jet lag. I think over the next month or so I will definitely have to work on my patience.

Today’s adventure took us to Saklikent Gorge, an 18 km gorge that sometimes reaches 200 meters in hight and is often only a few meters wide. The first 50m of it are a nice boardwalk above the roaring river. However, from that point onwards you’re walking in the river. At times this is only ankle deep, but the further we went, the narrower it got and the stronger the currents. By the way, the water was freezing.

At one point there was simply no way to continue in a manner that would guarantee the safety of my camera. At about the same point in time Julita decided that she wasn’t going to continue any further. Paulina and I handed off most of our belongings and escorted by a few local youth, proceeded onwards. I should mention that the floor of the river is this black clay like sand. As a result the river is this chalky color with absolutely no visibility. You have no idea where you are placing your feet.

After we left Julita we were escorted through the river over boulders with raging currents, waist and chest deep in the water, trusting our guides that if we lounge and place our feet where they are pointing, we will land on a rock and not sink fully into the river. At times this worked, but at other times a moment’s hesitation was enough to make the lounge a few inches to short and to plunge us into the chilling waters. After passing a waterfall, and clambering over more of these rapids, we decided that we went far enough and began our return journey.

Later on in the season with the water level lower, the gorge is much easier to explore and from what I have heard, further on along it has fantastic slides carved into the rock by the force of the water. Slightly disappointed that we couldn’t make it that far, we were nevertheless happy to have gotten as far as we did, despite being soaked and frozen.

From Saklikent it was off to Oludeniz with a brief stop for a goat. Driving over 60kph along little narrow roads in the Turkish countryside Julita all of a sudden slammed on the breaks, stalling the car to a complete stop. All of this was because the little car that passed us in the opposite direction had a goat in the backseat that was sticking its head out of the window. It took some convincing to stop Julita from turning our car around to give chase so that she could have a picture of this unusual sight.

Now it’s time for a day of relaxation in Oludeniz with a boat cruise in store for tomorrow.

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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.

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Cappadocia: a land where time stood still?

I’m sitting right now on the terrace of our cave hostel trying to soak in the last rays of the setting sun as the temperature slowly begins to drop. Every time the wind blows a shiver runs down my arms and spine. As hot as it is during the day, the air remains crisp and as soon as the sun sets, you know you need to layer up.

Goreme stretches out below me; a lady in the fairy chimney across from us has just finished hanging up the laundry. The kids are playing soccer with a Japanese tourist on the bit of street in front of our hostel trying to teach him some Turkish. A grandma sits on some steps on the opposite corner deep in contemplation. Behind her, on the room of her cave like house are a couple satellite dishes and solar panels. Further down the street the local construction crew is wrapping up their day’s work after having spent most of it forming perfectly straight bricks, about 2 feet by 1 foot. They accomplish this by scraping with shovel-like tools the soft rock from all sides. Every now and then a blow or scrap goes awry and the brick cracks into pieces or too much of it is shaved off.

Goreme is a town filled with tourists. There are easily in excess of a hundred hostels, pensions and hotels catering to every form of traveler. You can have a simple cave like dwelling or a honeymoon suite with private jacuzzi and a swimming pool. The hostels and hotels all have wireless internet connections and satellite TV. And yet as I sit here on the patio the only sounds surrounding me are the twittering birds, the tapping of horse hooves coming down a street, the yells and laughter of the kids playing down below me and an occasional scolding yell from one of their relatives.

It is difficult to imagine a town of greater contrasts; a town in which the massive influx of tourism has not really changed the way that life is led. For the locals here life continues the same way as it has for centuries. They work in the fields, they live sometimes in stone built homes, but often still in the fairy chimney caves. This traditional life is at times augmented by the benefits of civilization, such as the solar panels on the roofs, but for the large part it remains unchanged. Down near the main street of the town, a grandma sits day in and day out, weaving a complex carpet by hand. Over the last two days maybe a couple inches of this carpet have been created. On one of our walks through the valleys today we passed many families toiling in the fields, laundry hanging outside little holes in the walls as an elder Turk poked his head out one of holes, brushing his teeth and checking why his dog was barking up a storm, only to nod to us as we passed by.

It is an idyllic place; truly a land of fairies and all that is needed to discover it is to wander away from all the busloads of tourists.

Those wanderings today took us on some interesting adventures. Goreme lies in the center of this Cappadocia region with various valleys of hoodoos like formation, chimneys and pinnacles stretching in all directions. The catch is when you are on the plateau it all looks flat. Only if you look from up above or as you approach a rim of such a valley do you realize its extent. This, along with incredibly poor signage of all the trails, proved to be our downfall today.

We started out in the morning with the intensions of hiking through the Zemi Valley, the Iceri Dere Valley and the Pigeon Valley. However, we quickly realized that if we continued along the Zemi Valley we would be led in the opposite direction to the one we wanted. As such we managed to track down the trail to the Iceri Dere Valley and were hoping to continue along it’s length and eventually cross in the Pigeon Valley.

Unfortunately, shortly after we started out, the valley in which we were hiking seemed to come to an end and the path led us up to the plateau. Disoriented and unable to pinpoint our locations on the incredibly poorly designed maps, we decided that the best course of action was to proceed into the valley to our right. Across this valley (or so it seemed to us) we could see the lookout points that we had past the day before while coming back by road to Goreme. As such, we felt fairly certain that if we could only manage to get down into the valley, we would be on the right path.

And so the scramble began. To put it into perspective, the valley into which we decided to scramble was about 40m deep. Its edges are primarily comprised of tuff (condensed volcanic ash) that is incredibly crumbly and unstable. Quite often the edges include little caps or rims and what looks like a gentle slope might all of a sudden have this bulging rim and then drop vertically down. Walking along the edge of this valley we managed to spot a section which seemed to have significant amount of grass growing along its sides and slightly more gentle slopes. As far as we could tell, there were also no unexpected bulges.

And so we began the scramble. The first 20 or so meters were relatively easy but then we got to this 5 meter slanted section which was pure tuff. There was nothing to hold on and no way to get a firm foot hold since the moment you stepped on the slant, everything would begin to crumble all around you. Inching our way down, desperately trying to find little protruding rocks that were more deeply embedded and that would provide at least a bit of grip, we eventually got to a point where we either had to slide down it or attempt to run down it. My dad somehow managed the latter, and like a mountain goat, with is feet quickly looking for new spots, ran/slid down this slope. I, on the other hand, got myself into a bit more precarious position, having secured footholds to a certain point along the wall, but then being too afraid to stand up and simply make a run/scramble for it. In the end, the footholds gave way and I began to slide, on my feet, butt and hands. Overall it wasn’t too bad. The only problem is that this tuff rock is quite sharp and having worn thin linen pants, the sliding on my butt resulted in a nice ventilation hole stretching across the entire left butt cheak as the pants were torn to shreds (as was my left palm). Thankfully I had a long enough shirt on that I was able to cover my backside.

Thinking that the worst was over, we proceeded along the valley floor down what seemed to be a trail. This quickly turned out to be the dry stream bed that would on numerous occasions simply drop vertically several meters at a time and at other times would be blocked by gigantic boulders. All this meant more scrambling down sheer walls and up steep sandy embankments while desperately trying to maintain some kind of footholds and avoid a serious tumble.
Eventually we emerged amongst little fields were we managed to help a grandpa break a tree which he had been trying to swing of off in a futile attempt to accomplish this task. From these little fields we somehow emerged back in the center of Goreme.

Slightly disheartened, but with sufficient energy left in us to give the valleys another attempt, we managed to find the entrance to the Pigeon Valley and continued along the winding path through its fantastic formation all the way to the nearby town of Uchisar.

Uchisar is built around a steep hill or castle that rises high above the town and the surrounding plateau. An ascent to the peak of this castle provided us with stunning views of the Cappadocia region and the distant snow clad Erciyes Volcano (3917m) which was one of the primary contributors to the formation of this region’s geography.

A hitched ride with some locals brought us back to Goreme were we got to relax a bit and in the evening will head out for a Whirling Dervishes performance.

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Cappadocia: the land of fairies

One of the first things that came to our mind after we crossed the border into Turkey was the wish that all places were the size of most Middle Eastern countries. In Lebanon we managed to travel through nearly half the country in one morning. Unfortunately the same is not true in Turkey.

Our journey started in Aleppo at 4:30am. From there it was off to the Syrian border where after some pocket money to the border guards (paid by the bus driver to speed things up) and another expensive border tax, we managed to successfully leave Syria. The next step was to enter Turkey while swapping passports to avoid the $60US visa required of Canadian citizens (Polish citizens only had to pay $20US for a visa). The problems began when the Turkish border guard could not find the Syrian exit stamps in our Polish passports. Eventually, after showing them our Canadian passports as well, they let us in.

We arrived in Antakya, the first main Turkish town across the border, at 8:45am. Our bus for Cappadocia was leaving at 9am giving us just enough time to withdraw some money, purchase the bus tickets and grab a quick sandwich. Then it was an 8 ½ hour bus journey from the south of Turkey into central Turkey. Temperatures dropped to about 12 degrees and we had the first rain in the course of the last 3.5 weeks. Rain, however, might be a bit of an understatement. Although we were riding in a bus, we felt like we were inside an aquarium. The water just poured down in drapes down both sides of the bus. I had not seen a rain storm like that in a long time. The depressing part was that the black clouds seemed to cover all of Turkey with no prospect of the rain easing up.

Fortunately, once we arrived in Kayseri at 5:15pm the rain had stopped. We again had 15 minutes before our next bus and at 5:30pm settled down for another 1.5 hour journey. We finally arrived in Goreme (Cappadocia) at around 7pm after around 14 hours in transit.
Cappadocia has proved to be absolutely amazing. Just outside the bus station was a tourist information office offering pictures of the hundreds of little cave hotels and hostels in the town. The guy working there refused to offer recommendations saying that he had to stay impartial. He could tell us the prices of any that we chose and would call to inquire as to availability. We finally picked one of them, were picked up and driven a short distance up the mountain and dropped off in front of a little fairy chimney hotel where we secured a cave room and settled down to our first meal since the prior day.

Over dinner we met some fantastic Polish travelers: two who had spent 4 days in Cappadocia and were about to leave, and later another Polish girl who had just arrived.
We spent a fantastic evening chatting and relaxing.

The relaxation ended on the following day. Together with Judyta we started early in the morning into the local valleys and in a matter of the day probably did well in excess of 20km of up and down trails amongst fantastic hooodos like formations, fairy chimneys and picturesque countryside. True heaven!

It has been an absolute constant everywhere we’ve travelled: in all these tourist destinations there are endless busloads of pre-packaged tourists. Stay to the main road, main view points and main trails and you will have a hard time avoiding the hoards. Walk off the main path for 5 minutes and you will not have a soul in sight. This was true in Petra, in Palmyra and the same thing here in Cappadocia.

Enjoying this fairyland we have now decided to spend another couple days here. Photos to follow soon.

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