Stranded
Day 11
There is really mountainous terrain very near the coast in Turkey, it took us a lot longer to make the journey that the mere distances would have suggested. My Marie Celeste hostel was deserted, so being offered breakfast was never going to happen (I’m sure the bloke pocketed the 10 lira I paid for the bed). The Metro buses had tended to stop every two hours or so, so I wasn’t too concerned that my snack supplies were all but exhausted. I’d be munching on Pide or something similar before long. Wouldn’t I? After 6 and a half hours on the bus, I was still some way from renouncing vegetarianism and thinking my fellow passengers looked tasty, but it was becoming a matter of time. Lunch at 4.00 did seem Mediterranean with knobs on. Rather killed my appetite for the tasty local coking in the hostel later. It took an hour of traffic and passenger chaos to travel the 4 km from the Otogar into the Old Town of Antalya, but more friendly local help got me to the church on time. About 5 pointed me in the direction (all straight down, it’s on your right) when I was walking to the hostel. I couldn’t really be bothered to explore in the dark and I knew there wasn’t so much to see in town, so I arranged a trip to Aspendos and Perge for Sunday (more Roman ruins) and did the last post.
Day 12
In the morning I found the Aussie girls I’d been to Gallipoli with had stalked me so cunningly that they’d arrived in the same hostel 24 hours earlier-they’re repeating the trick by heading to Goreme tonight. They confirmed today would be plenty of time to see Antalya and I was going to head off when one of the hostel guys said the agency had called and could I change my tour. I didn’t really want to, but I was the only one who wanted to head to the ruins. When I saw of the photos of the sunken city and the crazy tombs in the wall tour they were offering instead, I realised that I had chosen poorly, so agreed to it and got a bus ticket to Goreme and the crazy Cappadocian landscapes while I was at it.
The sights of Antalya are as follows: 2 minarets, a couple of Roman gates, a (none too exciting) clock tower, a museum of pottery and scenes from Ottoman life and the views:
Views win I reckon. The place has real character and a good feel to it, I enjoyed walking around through the narrow mazey streets with the old building on either of side of me (and yes I realise this shows no consistency of emotion to Bodrum). I guess the place has charisma.
I reckon anyone who has lived in Oxford will have had the thought, why don’t they just repair all the roads at once? Instead the simpletons (I believe council is their preferred name) dig up a road for months, give you two minutes of normality and then dig up another one, then another and so on. Just do it all once, cause chaos and get it out of the way. It’s what they’re doing in Antalya. Although here most of the traffic is on foot.
Day 13
With an early start, I was too early for breakfast, which I figured was fair enough. Yesterday I had been promised a sandwich to keep me going; in the end I and the others 4 from the hostel received a bag with a tip top cheese sarnie, an orange and a bottle of water. They really are some very nice people (this place was about £12.50 for 2 nights inc breakfast and free wireless).
The one bad thing about today is we’re looking at about 6 hours in the people carrier thing, then I get dropped off at the Ottogar for 11 hours on the night bus. I wasn’t thinking about that at when we set off on the boat for the sunken city at Kekova.
Earthquake hit the Roman city and it was a bit parky to swim and look at the submerged bits, but there were some parts on the island to snap at.
In Myra we visited the church of St Nicholas. It has some marvellous frescoes that they’re working on restoring
and has also managed to spawn a toursity feel from an old friend.
After lunch and Alvaro’s birthday
(check my healthy lunch in the background) it was off to the day’s crowning glory. Here’s a taster
Check this
They also had a 12,000 seater theatre. The crazy Petraesque stuff is tombs, all have been broken into. Around many of the sights are plentiful evidence of the importance of farming to Turkey. There is plenty of orange production as well as whole areas of greenhouses growing tomatoes and so on, much of it for export. I can’t think of another country where I’ve seen tractors being sold, in numbers, in city centres.
No avoiding it this time, night bus. I think it’ll be the only one. I am whacked tho: nice bloke from San Fran was in my dorm last night and I reckon we talked till 2; had to leave at 7 this morning and the crew on the underwater city trip were good value so no sleep there either. Maybe, just maybe, I can kick the night bus curse.
Day 14
It’s fair to say that I’ve had worse. The early part of the bus trip I spent sat next to a nice lad, who strongly felt that Turkey’s proposed entry to the EU would be a mistake and that they would lose their culture as a result. I found myself rather flummoxed as to what entry to the EU would actually mean (aside from Turkey having to stop charging people £10 to enter the country). The bus wasn’t too full, so I was able to move to a double seat and get some kip.
I had to wait an hour in chilly Nevsehir to get a shuttle the few kms to Goreme; I passed it with a very nice travel agent in his warm office-drinking tea, chatting and not buying any of his tours.
I had decided to spend the ¾ of a day left to me after checking into the dorm of my cave hostel
walking around the local sights including the Goreme open air museum. A combination of volcanic eruption and erosion has created some bizarre landscape features, while people have buried into the rock walls to create numerous rooms and churches. The open air museum focuses on the latter. The majority of the ‘buildings’ are churches, quite small ones at that
The frescoes are very nearly as impressive as feel of the place is unreal.
Once again it was impossible to prevent my thought turning to Indy and Petra.
Tombs were placed in the highest parts to be closer to God
After the open air museum I set off in search of Fairy Chimneys. I think these are they
I think, because these seemed to be in the right sort of spot for where I thought I was on the map. Given I spent most of the two hours off roading, they might very well be something else. As I slipped around, taking chunks out of the earth and sliding down slopes I hoped the Turks didn’t fine tourists for environment destruction in the same way as the Aussies. I was on no recognised trail, which was made clear when the only marks in the snow were large paw prints. I had some distant memory that the area had lynx or something. With the rock walls towering over me, I was certainly in grave danger of being stalked, jumped and eaten-had I been in a movie.
As I walked my thoughts kept turning to the morrow. I had decided to go on a tour to the Ilhara valley-since it was something like a 200km round trip and included a stop at an 8 level underground city, this seemed a no brainer. What was taxing was the hot air balloon. Cappadocia is one of the places in the world to go hot air ballooning. It was quite easy to combine this with the Ilhara valley as the balloons set off at 6.30 a.m. (a lie in compared to the summer’s 5.15) so that you catch sunrise over the rock formations. At 105 Euro, it was also something of a bargain for ballooning. The mention of being 3,000 feet up had made me a little nervous. I texted Stanners as I knew she’d done it and looked around at the variety of the colours while I walked
thinking that the light wasn’t especially good, although the dusting of snow gave the area an icing sugar appeal. I was dithering and not sure what to do. Then the snow came properly and rendered any of my decision making irrelevant
In fact the weather made quite an impact on my plans. On Monday night I went down to book a bus ticket for Wednesday morning-although the journey to Antakya is quite long I wanted to do it by day to see the landscape. However, the only company that ran a day bus said they had no seats till Friday. This seemed odd as there weren’t a lot of people about. Not wishing to hang around that long, I reluctantly booked a night bus for Tuesday night. With the snows of Monday night and Tuesday day, all the buses for Tuesday were cancelled, so I rearranged the bus for Wednesday night. On Wednesday, the road to Kayseri was still closed by snow. I managed to find a lunchtime bus that was running to Adana, from where I was told there were loads of buses to Antakya. I even managed to persuade the night bus company to give me my money back. My problems were slight compared to those trying to get out to catch flights and once weekly trains.
Day 15
When all the buses are cancelled, you can bet 200km round trip tours are going to get cancelled. But what to do? I’d done the local stuff. I certainly wasn’t walking beyond that immediate vicinity in what was essentially a blizzard. Many are those who would have chilled out by the fire with a book and had a look at the BBC website. But me? Well, I decided to go on a more local organised tour. With the only company crazy enough to still be running. In truth it was pretty silly-conditions were appalling. It must have been -5 to -10 before the wind chill. We couldn’t walk much, the snow was half way to my knee on average: after the first stop this meant my jeans were soaking. Later they were simply frozen solid. Still, I had walking boots while most of the others had trainers, so I wasn’t the only one. I’m really not exaggerating how bad it was
We were meant to climb up to this castle
We did manage to climb a ladder to get into this church
Ordinarily it wouldn’t have been my kind of thing as the trip included a trip to a potters and a winery, but it was just so ridiculous that it fostered a great spirit. Well until the last stop when it was too cold and wet to be funny any more. We also visited a formation that looked remarkably like a camel, covered in snow. At this stage my camera went on strike-I could see its point. It took a good hour for feeling to return to all of my body and I’m not sure my hat will ever be dry.
Given how much I missed out, I shall have to return to Cappadocia. In the summer I think. It would combine nicely with a trip to Mt Nemrut, where they have the heads of statues that look like something out of Lord of the Rings.
Day 16
This was the archetypical travel day. When I woke up I was catching a bus at 8.30 in the evening, after spending an hour running round bus companies changing that plan, I threw my junk in my bag and started the Odyssey to Antakya. As this took 4 different buses this gave me many opportunities for getting juiced on the bus. This is where one of the stewards, with surprisingly frequency, comes round and squirts some lemony stuff in your hands for you to freshen them up. Everyone takes it, so on the occasions I have declined, you get some odd looks. I even saw one bloke smear it lightly across his hands and then run it through his hair. I wonder if we’ll get that in Syria. Unless the exchange rate in Syria has changed dramatically, then an hour’s flight from Aleppo to Damascus cost £9.50. It looks ridiculously cheap and that’s also the word I’ve heard.
Day 17
Antakya has an embarrassment of names: formerly known as Antioch and referred to as Hatay by the locals. Despite these riches, I was surprised and relieved to find the tourist information office-being without a map in a city of 140,000 in which one of the sights was ‘3km west of the centre’ was the kind of challenge I could do without. The LP’s half column on the city had been just enough to entice me into making this my final stop in Turkey. The other 4 tourists who arrived with me at 9.30 in the very dead city centre went straight onto Syria; I was happy to have enough time not to be doing so and was even happier when a hotel a minute’s walk from the bus station gave me a room for 20 lira.
The LP has two sights and the tourist office revealed no more. It would be fair to say that the wealth of other parts of Turkey has not spread down here. Antakya is part of a parcel of land that used to be in Syria until France gave it to the Turks in an attempt to gain their neutrality in WW2. The vibe is different here, maybe it is Syrian. In some ways I hope not as I caught some blighter trying to pinch my camera out of my back pack as I walked towards St Peter’s church. Antioch was quite a den of iniquity, perhaps that’s why Peter came here for some preaching
The Church is not that old, but it is positioned to mark where the Christians first met. Barnabus, Paul and Peter all spent time here, so it quite a significant spot. There’s not much else to mark that in smoky, run down Antakya. The other magnet here is the Archaeology museum, which has some blinding mosaics.
So the time has come to say Tesekkur Ederim to Turkey and Marhaba to Syria. As long as my bus doesn’t get snowed in tomorrow morning.
There is really mountainous terrain very near the coast in Turkey, it took us a lot longer to make the journey that the mere distances would have suggested. My Marie Celeste hostel was deserted, so being offered breakfast was never going to happen (I’m sure the bloke pocketed the 10 lira I paid for the bed). The Metro buses had tended to stop every two hours or so, so I wasn’t too concerned that my snack supplies were all but exhausted. I’d be munching on Pide or something similar before long. Wouldn’t I? After 6 and a half hours on the bus, I was still some way from renouncing vegetarianism and thinking my fellow passengers looked tasty, but it was becoming a matter of time. Lunch at 4.00 did seem Mediterranean with knobs on. Rather killed my appetite for the tasty local coking in the hostel later. It took an hour of traffic and passenger chaos to travel the 4 km from the Otogar into the Old Town of Antalya, but more friendly local help got me to the church on time. About 5 pointed me in the direction (all straight down, it’s on your right) when I was walking to the hostel. I couldn’t really be bothered to explore in the dark and I knew there wasn’t so much to see in town, so I arranged a trip to Aspendos and Perge for Sunday (more Roman ruins) and did the last post.
Day 12
In the morning I found the Aussie girls I’d been to Gallipoli with had stalked me so cunningly that they’d arrived in the same hostel 24 hours earlier-they’re repeating the trick by heading to Goreme tonight. They confirmed today would be plenty of time to see Antalya and I was going to head off when one of the hostel guys said the agency had called and could I change my tour. I didn’t really want to, but I was the only one who wanted to head to the ruins. When I saw of the photos of the sunken city and the crazy tombs in the wall tour they were offering instead, I realised that I had chosen poorly, so agreed to it and got a bus ticket to Goreme and the crazy Cappadocian landscapes while I was at it.
The sights of Antalya are as follows: 2 minarets, a couple of Roman gates, a (none too exciting) clock tower, a museum of pottery and scenes from Ottoman life and the views:
Views win I reckon. The place has real character and a good feel to it, I enjoyed walking around through the narrow mazey streets with the old building on either of side of me (and yes I realise this shows no consistency of emotion to Bodrum). I guess the place has charisma.
I reckon anyone who has lived in Oxford will have had the thought, why don’t they just repair all the roads at once? Instead the simpletons (I believe council is their preferred name) dig up a road for months, give you two minutes of normality and then dig up another one, then another and so on. Just do it all once, cause chaos and get it out of the way. It’s what they’re doing in Antalya. Although here most of the traffic is on foot.
Day 13
With an early start, I was too early for breakfast, which I figured was fair enough. Yesterday I had been promised a sandwich to keep me going; in the end I and the others 4 from the hostel received a bag with a tip top cheese sarnie, an orange and a bottle of water. They really are some very nice people (this place was about £12.50 for 2 nights inc breakfast and free wireless).
The one bad thing about today is we’re looking at about 6 hours in the people carrier thing, then I get dropped off at the Ottogar for 11 hours on the night bus. I wasn’t thinking about that at when we set off on the boat for the sunken city at Kekova.
Earthquake hit the Roman city and it was a bit parky to swim and look at the submerged bits, but there were some parts on the island to snap at.
In Myra we visited the church of St Nicholas. It has some marvellous frescoes that they’re working on restoring
and has also managed to spawn a toursity feel from an old friend.
After lunch and Alvaro’s birthday
(check my healthy lunch in the background) it was off to the day’s crowning glory. Here’s a taster
Check this
They also had a 12,000 seater theatre. The crazy Petraesque stuff is tombs, all have been broken into. Around many of the sights are plentiful evidence of the importance of farming to Turkey. There is plenty of orange production as well as whole areas of greenhouses growing tomatoes and so on, much of it for export. I can’t think of another country where I’ve seen tractors being sold, in numbers, in city centres.
No avoiding it this time, night bus. I think it’ll be the only one. I am whacked tho: nice bloke from San Fran was in my dorm last night and I reckon we talked till 2; had to leave at 7 this morning and the crew on the underwater city trip were good value so no sleep there either. Maybe, just maybe, I can kick the night bus curse.
Day 14
It’s fair to say that I’ve had worse. The early part of the bus trip I spent sat next to a nice lad, who strongly felt that Turkey’s proposed entry to the EU would be a mistake and that they would lose their culture as a result. I found myself rather flummoxed as to what entry to the EU would actually mean (aside from Turkey having to stop charging people £10 to enter the country). The bus wasn’t too full, so I was able to move to a double seat and get some kip.
I had to wait an hour in chilly Nevsehir to get a shuttle the few kms to Goreme; I passed it with a very nice travel agent in his warm office-drinking tea, chatting and not buying any of his tours.
I had decided to spend the ¾ of a day left to me after checking into the dorm of my cave hostel
walking around the local sights including the Goreme open air museum. A combination of volcanic eruption and erosion has created some bizarre landscape features, while people have buried into the rock walls to create numerous rooms and churches. The open air museum focuses on the latter. The majority of the ‘buildings’ are churches, quite small ones at that
The frescoes are very nearly as impressive as feel of the place is unreal.
Once again it was impossible to prevent my thought turning to Indy and Petra.
Tombs were placed in the highest parts to be closer to God
After the open air museum I set off in search of Fairy Chimneys. I think these are they
I think, because these seemed to be in the right sort of spot for where I thought I was on the map. Given I spent most of the two hours off roading, they might very well be something else. As I slipped around, taking chunks out of the earth and sliding down slopes I hoped the Turks didn’t fine tourists for environment destruction in the same way as the Aussies. I was on no recognised trail, which was made clear when the only marks in the snow were large paw prints. I had some distant memory that the area had lynx or something. With the rock walls towering over me, I was certainly in grave danger of being stalked, jumped and eaten-had I been in a movie.
As I walked my thoughts kept turning to the morrow. I had decided to go on a tour to the Ilhara valley-since it was something like a 200km round trip and included a stop at an 8 level underground city, this seemed a no brainer. What was taxing was the hot air balloon. Cappadocia is one of the places in the world to go hot air ballooning. It was quite easy to combine this with the Ilhara valley as the balloons set off at 6.30 a.m. (a lie in compared to the summer’s 5.15) so that you catch sunrise over the rock formations. At 105 Euro, it was also something of a bargain for ballooning. The mention of being 3,000 feet up had made me a little nervous. I texted Stanners as I knew she’d done it and looked around at the variety of the colours while I walked
thinking that the light wasn’t especially good, although the dusting of snow gave the area an icing sugar appeal. I was dithering and not sure what to do. Then the snow came properly and rendered any of my decision making irrelevant
In fact the weather made quite an impact on my plans. On Monday night I went down to book a bus ticket for Wednesday morning-although the journey to Antakya is quite long I wanted to do it by day to see the landscape. However, the only company that ran a day bus said they had no seats till Friday. This seemed odd as there weren’t a lot of people about. Not wishing to hang around that long, I reluctantly booked a night bus for Tuesday night. With the snows of Monday night and Tuesday day, all the buses for Tuesday were cancelled, so I rearranged the bus for Wednesday night. On Wednesday, the road to Kayseri was still closed by snow. I managed to find a lunchtime bus that was running to Adana, from where I was told there were loads of buses to Antakya. I even managed to persuade the night bus company to give me my money back. My problems were slight compared to those trying to get out to catch flights and once weekly trains.
Day 15
When all the buses are cancelled, you can bet 200km round trip tours are going to get cancelled. But what to do? I’d done the local stuff. I certainly wasn’t walking beyond that immediate vicinity in what was essentially a blizzard. Many are those who would have chilled out by the fire with a book and had a look at the BBC website. But me? Well, I decided to go on a more local organised tour. With the only company crazy enough to still be running. In truth it was pretty silly-conditions were appalling. It must have been -5 to -10 before the wind chill. We couldn’t walk much, the snow was half way to my knee on average: after the first stop this meant my jeans were soaking. Later they were simply frozen solid. Still, I had walking boots while most of the others had trainers, so I wasn’t the only one. I’m really not exaggerating how bad it was
We were meant to climb up to this castle
We did manage to climb a ladder to get into this church
Ordinarily it wouldn’t have been my kind of thing as the trip included a trip to a potters and a winery, but it was just so ridiculous that it fostered a great spirit. Well until the last stop when it was too cold and wet to be funny any more. We also visited a formation that looked remarkably like a camel, covered in snow. At this stage my camera went on strike-I could see its point. It took a good hour for feeling to return to all of my body and I’m not sure my hat will ever be dry.
Given how much I missed out, I shall have to return to Cappadocia. In the summer I think. It would combine nicely with a trip to Mt Nemrut, where they have the heads of statues that look like something out of Lord of the Rings.
Day 16
This was the archetypical travel day. When I woke up I was catching a bus at 8.30 in the evening, after spending an hour running round bus companies changing that plan, I threw my junk in my bag and started the Odyssey to Antakya. As this took 4 different buses this gave me many opportunities for getting juiced on the bus. This is where one of the stewards, with surprisingly frequency, comes round and squirts some lemony stuff in your hands for you to freshen them up. Everyone takes it, so on the occasions I have declined, you get some odd looks. I even saw one bloke smear it lightly across his hands and then run it through his hair. I wonder if we’ll get that in Syria. Unless the exchange rate in Syria has changed dramatically, then an hour’s flight from Aleppo to Damascus cost £9.50. It looks ridiculously cheap and that’s also the word I’ve heard.
Day 17
Antakya has an embarrassment of names: formerly known as Antioch and referred to as Hatay by the locals. Despite these riches, I was surprised and relieved to find the tourist information office-being without a map in a city of 140,000 in which one of the sights was ‘3km west of the centre’ was the kind of challenge I could do without. The LP’s half column on the city had been just enough to entice me into making this my final stop in Turkey. The other 4 tourists who arrived with me at 9.30 in the very dead city centre went straight onto Syria; I was happy to have enough time not to be doing so and was even happier when a hotel a minute’s walk from the bus station gave me a room for 20 lira.
The LP has two sights and the tourist office revealed no more. It would be fair to say that the wealth of other parts of Turkey has not spread down here. Antakya is part of a parcel of land that used to be in Syria until France gave it to the Turks in an attempt to gain their neutrality in WW2. The vibe is different here, maybe it is Syrian. In some ways I hope not as I caught some blighter trying to pinch my camera out of my back pack as I walked towards St Peter’s church. Antioch was quite a den of iniquity, perhaps that’s why Peter came here for some preaching
The Church is not that old, but it is positioned to mark where the Christians first met. Barnabus, Paul and Peter all spent time here, so it quite a significant spot. There’s not much else to mark that in smoky, run down Antakya. The other magnet here is the Archaeology museum, which has some blinding mosaics.
So the time has come to say Tesekkur Ederim to Turkey and Marhaba to Syria. As long as my bus doesn’t get snowed in tomorrow morning.
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