Yesterday was the big day, the day that I left Los Angeles for Peru. It´s been two years since my last big adventure and I was just yearning to exploring new countries and cultures. Being couped up in Los Angeles can´t be too healthy for anyone. So Robby and I made it to Miami with ease. Our adventure really started as we waited for our plane to Lima. We were delayed by 35 minutes because the cleaning crew could not be found to clean our plane and therefore no one could board. Eventually we were allowed on our plane and we got the two seats next to the window, so we didn´t have to strain our necks trying to sleep in a four person row with a fat guy leaning on us (guy in the row next to me).
Unfortunately though, we had the fortune of having grandparents behind us that insisted on taking their two grand children (both about 1 and a half years old) from their parents and entertaining them. But of course, the babies were not at all thrilled to be away from their parents, who were 10 rows in front of us, and so they insisted on kicking our seats while screaming, "Daddy, Daddy.". After about 20 minutes the grandparents realized that they sucked at comforting their grandkids and thankfully gave them back to their parents. This happened about three times during the five hour flight. ON top of that enjoyment, i had a shitty set of headphones where the left ear was loud static and the right ear was barely audible. It was lovely watching "21". Luckily I´ve already seen the movie.
Ok, Sorry about the plane prattle. None of you care, i know. So, 11 hours after we left Los Angeles, we stepped foot in Lima and took our first whiffs of Peruvian air. Ah the lovely smell of, cough, diesel? Apparently there are a lot of cars here that don´t have to pass a smog check. most of them look like they are on their last legs, but everyone is riding around in them like they are not going to drop to the ground with the engine coughing up black smoke, any second. I think this country could give "Pimp your ride" a run for it´s money. There would be too many cars for the show to fix that the show could be on for about 30 years.
We picked our Hostel taxi driver out of the horde of sign waving taxi people at the airport and hoped in his car. We had about 30 minutes to admire the Lima traffic system as we sat in a traffic crawl while approaching a no-stoplighted intersection that had six lanes of traffic up and back and four lanes of cross traffic along with pedestrians all trying to get about without hitting anyone. I would never, ever drive here. Half the streets have no lanes and the ones that do are useless because the people just drive in the middle of the lanes to begin with. No one signals, they all tail gate and flash their brights, but everyone uses their horns. People DO NOT have right of way. IT´s more like, right to move out of the way... quickly.
Ok, finally we made it to our hostel and put our bags in our 8 person dorm room. We ended up waking a poor guy who decided to go to bed before 10:30pm, when we´d arrived. What a loser, this was Lima, the city that parties. After realizing that out hostel receptionist didnn´t speak a word of english and didn´t understand our very broken spanish, we head out into the night in search of food and exploration. We didn´t really have an idea where to go or what to do in Lima, but we gathered from the receptionist that if we went left we would hit the square with "International Food" and if we went right we would find the supermarket. We asked if there were any vegetarian places and the receptionist said "supermarket". I guess we will be eating alot of fish and chicken.
We decided to go left and see what "international" meant. Apparently it meant American Fast food. After wandering for a bit while my stomach growled, I was almost set on eating McDonalds. We started our Israeli journey at McDonalds and that turned out great, so why not start our Peruvian trip the same. Well, maybe because Robby said that she would kill me and partly because we really wanted to try some Peruvian food. We ended up staying in Miraflores, which is the safe, touristy part of town and also one of the most expensive districts. Every thing was about 20-30 Sol´s per dish. (1 US dollar = 2.9 Sol) We knew there had to be something cheaper.
luck would have it that when i finally got annoyed with wandering, we came upon a random restaurant stand that sold tacos for 6 Sol. we ordered and sat down. i don´t think there were many tourist in Miraflores that night and for sure we were the only white people eating at that place. The taco turned out to be delicious. It was like a Mexican soft taco with a dressing that taste like egg salad. This restaurant also happened to be where we met Oreana, Ana Lu, and their two other friends that I don´t remember the names of (yes, i know, bad, but they said them fast). We ended up talking because Oreana spoke English, as she was studying in New York. The rest of the people spoke little to no English. Oreana invited us to go to a dance club with them. SInce we were exhausted and decided earlier that we didn´t want to go dancing the first night, we naturally said "sure." When else are you going to have someone from Peru (Ana Lu and friends)show you the best dance clubs?
We walked to the dance section of town and went into one club, but made it about ten feet into the door before we got stopped. It was very pàcked, very loud, and very smoky. I think i will probably jump my percentage of getting lung cancer by 20% by being here. Everyone smokes everywhere. My clothes and hair reek. I might not need to even wash my clothes because you wont be able to smell my BO over the smoke. Anyhow, we decided to go to "Downtown", a gay club. The girls liked it because it wasn´t too crowded. On our way to Downtown we met up with Ricardo, Oreana´s friend. He wasn´t too happy about going to the gay club as he was straight, but he agreed to come anyhow. We got our bags searched at the door and told that no cameras were allowed in the club because people tended to get "naked" and do weird things. They locked them away for us and after paying 15 Sol each to enter we experienced our first dance club in Peru.
There were a fair amount of people at the club, but most of them we gay guys. They listened to bad Peruvian Pop music that was kind of of low volume and no one really danced except the two drag queens who were being paid to show off. We talked for about an hour with our new friends and then agreed to meet them the following day for a free guided tour of Lima. Oreana and Ana Lu were free, but everyone else had to work. Robby and I figured that it was easier to have locals take us about then us try and figure out the taxis and look like dumbasses as we used the spanish to english dictionary and read the Peru guide book. We arrived back at our hostel, well worn down by the flight, the time change and just plain weariness. We hoped into bed and went to sleep about 3 in the morning.
I awoke about 6 am to the some very noisy backpackers in the bunk over packing their gears and getting ready to ship out. I know that hostel dorms our community rooms, but there is usually a certain respect that other backpackers are supposed to have for the remaining sleeping people in the dorm room. Mainly they are suppose to attempt to be quiet, but no, they were loud as hell. Robby eventually rolled out of bed and grabbed the shower. I had called next, but the girl a bed over didn´t hear me and Robby told her she could have the shower after her. The girl´s name turned out to be Ana Paula. She was from Mexico, she spoke great English, and was traveling by herself. I invited her on Robby and I´s field trip around the city with the other "Ana´s". She agreed to come.
After Ana Paula translated our plans to get a bus ticket to Trujillo for this evening organized through our hostel, we headed to Oreana´s hostel to meet her. Oreana and Ana Lu had had a long night and didn´t get to bed until about when we woke up. They were a little tired, but still agreed to show us the sites. We headed to the main square of Lima, a place where all the government buildings are and someone important people live, I think the Governor, but I´m not sure. The buildings looked very European with the steeples and archways to the doors. Ana Paula was saying that Peru was influenced by the Spanish when they invaded during the war.
First stop was to get real Cerviche from a restaurant that Oreana said wouldn´t make us sick. She said that if we ate at the cheaper stores on the side streets we would save money, but pay for it later in the bathroom. The place we went was ironically called "tourista", but only locals went there. It was off the main path and a tourist, if lucky, would stumble across it, but might not go in. The food was really good. Ceviches tastes like sashimi with lime juice. It´s accompanied with lima beans and corn. Yummy.
Next stop was the Church of Saint San Francisco and the Catacombs. We decided to take the English tour because 4 of us five spoke English. It turned out that Robby and I couldn´t understand half of what was being said because of the docents thick accent and the Ana´s were all completely confused. Robby and I tried to translate what we understood, but mostly we looked at the statues and giggled about stupid stuff in the corner. There was no photo taking inside the Church, so of course we all wanted to sneak pictures. Robby and Oreana usually lagged behind us to snap off a few shots while the rest of us entertained the docent. I told them not to get caught before the Catacombs because i really wanted to see the bones.
YOU could smell the Catacombs before you entered them. Kind of like a morgue mixed with moth balls. Ana Lu didn´t like it. She was slightly squeamish. Robby managed to get caught using the camera and scoulded by some random lady. It was kind of funny, but it didn´t stop her from taking mopre snap shots of the heads and femurs further into the tombs. About 17,000 people were bured in the Church and only a handful were religious people. It was a Public Cemetery. When you died, your body was thrown on top of the last person who died. The docent said that a monk had died two weeks ago and was bured at the church, so i guess if you wanted, you could be buried there today.
We left the gloomy underworld for the brisk air of the Lima shopping district. We wandered around a few market stalls looking at numerous trinkets, but nothing really caught our eyes. Robby really wanted Hot Chocolate because she thinks that it will be spicy like Mexican Hot Chocolate, so we kept our eyes out for it, but Oreana kept telling us not to buy it from the small stores because it wouldn´t taste good. So instead we ended up taking a taxi to the expensive part of Miraflores to get Starbucks. I had also said i wanted real Peruvian coffee. Ana Paula, Robby and i didn´t want to pay tourist prices and we didn´t want to drink Star-crap. We decided to head back to our hostel and find something around there because there were cheaper shops on the side streets.
I have to back up a second to tell you the mischief that i made Oreana do. She had bought a sheet of small colorful dolls attached to horoscopes. She gave all of us a doll, but still had seven of them. i told her to start handing them out to random people on the street. She looked at me and asked if it was an "American fun" thing to do. I said sure. I just think it is funny to give people random things and see what happens. Most of the time people are scare to take anything offered because they think there is a catch. the Peruvians looked a little bewildered, but some laughed. Most because we gave them a horoscope that was probably not theirs. Ana Lu ended up handing out the remaining 4 dolls and got practically attacked when she gave one to a small child selling gum. The kid had a few siblings that wanted a doll as well and so Ana Lu, who is about 4´9" and weights all of 90 pounds, was surrounded by 8-10 kids yelling "give me" and grabbing all over for the dolls. We all stood to the side and laughed. It was awesome. Oreana enjoyed the mischief. Not so sure about Ana Lu.
Ok, back to the hostel. Ana Paula, Robby and i were tired and ready to just call it a night. Ana Paula wanted to relax a bit and Robby and I had about two hours to kill before our Trujillo bus. So we said goodbye to Ana Lu and Oreana, thanking them immensely for all their help and taking the time to give us a tour and be our friends. It was extremely nice.
So that ends this portion of the blog. i have to mentally prepare myself to sit on my ass for the next 8 hours to trujillo and hopefully not get a creak in my neck from trying to sleep in teh seat. I´m also sick of typing as you are no doubt sick of reading. Have a lovely evening or morning and come back to this blog in a few days. Audios!!
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Peruvian Adventure Intro
Hi Everyone,
Welcome to my Peruvian Adventure blog. I know there are probably about three people right now reading this, but that is three less people I have to personally send an email to explaining that, no, I am not dying of malaria, and yes, I majority am going to be in a Tour group, so no worries on me being kidnapped or lost in the Amazon. I figure, since I made it through the Middle East relatively unscathed, Peru should be a breeze. I will have about 8 days to wander around the Northern region of Peru with just Robby, my backpack and my sense of direction before meeting up with the Tour group. Pretty much, I plan to see where the wind blows me. For our Tour free 8 days, Robby and I have a basic plan to visit Trujillo and Cajarmarca, but we will probably ask the first backpackers we see if there is any interesting place we should visit that we don't know about. I find it exhilarating to just follow other people's advice and go where they were because you end up seeing some of the most amazing sights.
After Northern Peru, we will be meeting up with our Tour group for a 14 days adventure covering Lima, The Amazon, Cuzco, Puno, and La Paz. We figured that since Peru is very spread out and plane tickets to get from one side of the country to the other are expensive, we'd have a tour group set up the hotel and travel arrangements for us. Our tour takes us to most of the places we want to see anyhow and with out the hassle of finding descent hostels and dealing with the crazy taxi hagglers. So, this is just the intro to let everyone know the plan of action for Robby and myself. Please check back in about 4 days for an update on the first leg of the trip. Hopefully I will be able to add some pictures as well. Once again, thank you to everyone who is reading. I appreciate you taking the time to see what I've been up to.
PS. to all my film people out there, I will be available for work in October, so if you hear of anything, please keep me in mind. :)
Saturday, September 16, 2006
I'm Back
Just a quick note to let everyone know that I made it back to LA without too many complications and I am in good spirits. I have a job starting in a month and I move into my new place this weekend. So, when I get everything settled I will write the rest of my journey from Prague to Krakow. Sorry it is taking so long to update, but there is a surprising amount of things that need to happen when you reintrograte yourself back into society. That's all for now. Oh, and my phone is up and running again if anyone wants to call.
bye
bye
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Eastern Europe
Ok, before we get any further into the story of Em, let me explain why Robby and I decided to go to Eastern Europe instead of Greece. We had originally planned to do Greece for 7 days before I flew home from Tel aviv, but with the war (yes, I know it ended) and the trouble of finding a plane or ferry or anything back to Israel, we realized it would be better to just continue on to Eastern Europe and then find a way home from there. Plus we were both kinda sick of seeing Roman and Byzantine pillars. There are only so many marble and stone monument you can see before they end up blending into each other. We decided a change of scenery was in order and so Gothic castles became our next challenge. I also got to extend my trip another 6 days - was suppose to fly home from Tel Aviv on the 4th and now I fly to LA on the 10-11th via Krakow to Dublin.
Now back to the saga. We made it to Istanbul at 11am and went in search of the bus that would take us to Budapest. We were told that there was a direct bus, but after going from bus company to bus company we found that we were going to have to take a night bus to Sophia, Bulgaria and then catch a bus to Budapest. Apparently there was no direct bus, go figure. We had a 9 hour lay over in Istanbul so we ventured up to the Carrefour- the lovely supermarket/mall that made us extremely happy in Egypt actually existed in Turkey.
We enjoyed the next 8 hours looking at ugly clothes, eating something besides a kebob, keeping cool in the AC, and getting my hair colored and Robby's cut. When you have time to waste you end up doing stupid stuff... well, semi-stupid stuff. I've always wanted my hair to be another color and since the hair salon wouldn't make it blur I decided on Red, but no orange red, the red that is actually red. I wanted maroon, but they didn't have a lot of options and they didn't speak English. Robby and I communicated via a nice patron of the salon who spoke mediocre English and through wide hand gestures and pictures.
While I got my hair gooped up, Robby tried to tell the master Stylist how she wanted her hair. She wanted it shoulder length and with layers. We showed the guy a picture, but for some reason he decided to alter the image a bit and went a little nuts on the cutting. Robby's hair is cute, but short and boyish. We had to practically pull the stylist away when he went in for the kill on Robby's bangs. That's a No-No. So she can now pull her hair back into cute little pig-tail stubs and the rest up curls.
My hair on the other hand is long (I was going to cut it, but I got scared and bowed out)and red. When the dye set and the hair was washed my hair was a reddish-pink. Awfully bright pink more so than red, but after the first wash it went dimmer and since it's been about 12 days from when I got it dyed it's all but a natural red color. I think my hair hates anything un-natural and so it won't let dyes stay. So I have red hair, but it's red-headed step-child hair rather than punk red hair. Since I got it dyed I've run into at least 200 other people with red hair. It seems the color that everyone and their grandma dyes their hair in Europe. I feel so unoriginal. :( Hopefully America just has boring hair colors so I can stand out a bit when I get back.
So, hair cuts and shopping out of the way we headed back to the bus station and boarded our 10 hour bus to Bulgaria. The bus was a tight squeeze with the knees, but at least there wasn't an evil man kicking the seat behind me. About 12:30 am the bus stopped at the boarder and practically the whole bus got off. Robby and I weren't sure what to do, but once we realized everyone was headed to the duty-free store we relaxed and went back to sleep. At 1 am the bus stopped again, 10 feet further to the exit gate. Everyone got off again and we were sort of grunted at by a fellow passenger who told us to get off. We had to take all our bags because the inspectors were suppose to go through them, but they pretty much looked at us, rifled through 2 bags and told us to get back on the bus.
We wanted to go to sleep, but 15 minutes later we had to get off the bus again and this time it was a mad rush to get to the inspection window and have the very tired and bored officer inspect and stamp our passports. Robby, I and two other people got to be the lucky winners of the inspection officer keeping our passports. After the whole bus (about 50 people) went through inspection, us and the other couple were called to answer a few stupid questions about why we were headed to Bulgaria. We told him we wanted Budapest and he thought we said Bucharest, which started more stupid questions, but eventually he stamped our passports and handed them back.
We climbed on board the bus again, only to get off at the boarder into Bulgaria (we were exiting Hungary) where we went through the "In" stamp process to Bulgaria. After 3 annoying hours we were headed to Sophia and finally allowed to get a little shut eye. Night buses save on hotel fairs, but you never get any sleep. We arrived at the Sophia bus station at 6 am and were told by the bus people in Istanbul to go to EuroBus for the connecting bus to Budapest. EuroBus didn't open until 8 am. We camped out in front of the office waiting and harassing the other bus companies for buses to Budapest. We started to get nervous when every other company said they didn't go to Budapest. We found one company that did go, but they were full and they didn't have another bus going until 2 days later. We did not want to spend two days in Sophia.
While we were waiting for EuroBus to open we bumped in a girl that went on the Goreme trip with us. She was trying to get to Budapest as well and so we banned together in finding a bus. At 8 am EuroBus opened and to our disappointment they told us they did not, and never had, any buses going to Budapest. Great! For some reason I decided to go back to the place that said they had a bus and see if there were any more buses leaving that day. Miracouisally they had spots available on the 9 am bus. Hum. Robby and Hollie (the other girl) ran around the station looking for an ATM machine to get Bulgarian currency because the bus station wouldn't take USD or credit cards. None of the ATMs accepted the Debit cards and so they went frantically searching for an open exchange place. About 15 minutes to 9am they returned, with me practically freaking out that we would lose the newly available seats. They paid, got tickets, and the bus driver rushed us aboard.
The bus left 10 minutes early, but we didn't care because we had seats. It was an old school bus of sorts with rickedy seats, no TV, no free coffee or water (like on the Turkey buses), and bad working AC - as we later came to find out. The bus stalled at the first stop light, but seemed to run ok after that. We had two more boarder crossings to deal with in our 12 hour bus ride that went fairly smooth and there were only 2 minor problems to deal with. The first was the fact that I couldn't pee in Serbia because I didn't have any Serbian money and I wasn't about to exchange a $50 USD into useless money for a 50 cent Serbia toilet. I pretty much went frantically searching for someone to give me a 50 cent Serbian piece and when no one did I thrust a Turkish dollar (way more that the 50 cent Serbian piece) in the toilet lady's hand and said, "I'm pissing!" and got in line. The problem with traveling in random countries for a short amount of time is that you will never have the right money and toilets always cost something Europe.
The second issue was the fact that no one on the bus spoken English and so at the first gas station stop RObby, Hollie and I spent too long in the store searching for food when the driver came to yell at us and motion that the bus was leaving. He was not a happy camper. At least he came to find us or we would have been stuck on the side of the road in Serbia. After that the lady behind us flashed 15 on her hands every time we stopped to let us know how much time we had at the stop.
9:30 pm we departed the sweaty bus (the AC had broke some 10 hours earlier) and found ourselves in a new city without money and no idea how to catch the metro we needed to the hostel we were staying at. We found an ATM to get money, but there was no Exchange place to make smaller bills for the metro ticket machine. Luckily Budapest is one of those trusting cities were they assume everyone will buy a ticket for the metro or buses, but they only ever have people check for tickets randomly. We boarded a metro without an problems and found our hostel in no time.
The Downtown Hostel was anything but friendly and clean. The bathrooms were small and smelly, the guy who worked there looked like he had never taken a shower in his life and never left the place (he was there everytime we we there), most of the other people staying there were cold-shouldered Hungarian girls that glared and smoked indoors, and for some reason the hostel loved to give the backpackers wine, but for some reason the hostel guy never learned that you do not serve red wine chilled... it's just wrong.
Hollie stayed the one night and then moved to Astoria Hostel because her friend was staying there. In the morning Robby and I wandered the town for a bit to take in the sights and get our barrings. Budapest is broken up into 2 sides. It was originally two different cities, Buda and Pest until a king came and combined them. Buda is the more rustic and rural of the two sides. Pest is shopping and monuments. We were staying on the outskirts of Pest. About a 10 minute walk to downtown Pest. We took photos of the giant church, went to the Jewish Synagogue, ate at a cute pub, and enjoyed the day. We met Hollie in the evening and went to see The Sentinel. We had all been stressed and tired and so we figured a movie would relieve some pressure. It turned out to be a great film and we had a nice evening.
The next day Robby and I walked 5 million miles to the City Park which is like Central Park in NY, but on a smaller scale. It's the main hub for people to chill out and walk their dogs or play soccer or go for a picnic. The Park also houses ever type of transportation museum you can think of. The train museum was cool because the building has train engines sticking out so it looks like the train is pulling the building. We didn't go into any of the museums, but they were nice to walk by. The park also has the the oldest bath house in Hungary.
Hungary is known for it's bath houses like Turkey is known for it's Turkish Baths and Thailand is known for it's massages. The bath house in the park is suppose to be rather large with about 15 different swimming pools all ranging in temperature. The water is mostly from natural hot and cold spring that are filtered in from the hills. There are whirlpools, jacuzzis, and a kids play area also in the bath house. Robby and I wanted to go in and take a look, but it was very expensive and since we didn't have our suits on we opted to do it another day.
The front of the park has a nice courtyard of Roman and Greece statues that look down upon the visitors. On either side of the courtyard is an art museum. We mostly just walked around the park and didn't really go into any of the museums. Next time. We did however find Death. We were wandering around and then we spotted him. He is a marble statue wearing a hooded cloak and holding a large book that is open. The head is practically concealed beneath the hood and so it looks like Death is thinking and writing the names of his victims in the book. The statue turned out to be of Anoymos - a famous Monk that wrote poetry. But to us and the people we met at Astoria Hostel, he is Death.
That evening we went to pick up Hollie at her hostel, but after waiting around for an hour we figured she'd forgotten our date and so we went off to find something else to do. We ended up at another movie theater and watched Thank You for Smoking. If you haven't seen this movie I advise you to go watch it. It is brilliant, well written and and beautifully acted. Well worth it.
The next day we said goodbye to the yucky Downtown Hostel and moved to Astoria Hostel. It was much cleaner, the people were friendlier and there was free breakfast. We left our bags in the lobby and headed out to eat lunch and then to Sandwiching. No Sandwiching is not a town fair competition of stuffing ones face with the most sandwiches, it is in fact caving - getting really dirty by squeezing your body through small caverns and holes inside the Earth.
Robby and I met about 20 other adventures at the #6 bus stop where we were all told to met with our little white sheets of paper. No one knew who was in charge, but pretty soon the white sheets gave away who was on the tour so that there weren't 20 of us just milling about go, "what do we do now," by themselves. Eventually the tour guy came and we boarded two buses that took us into the Buda hills. We got broken up into groups, Robby and I being put with 6 other girls.
We donned a lovely jumpsuit of and hard hat so that we looked like the 7 dwarfs off to work. The suits were great because we could freely crawl around in the mud and not care that our clothes were going to get all dirty. I hate to say it, but I'm a girl and I wouldn't want to be crawling on my stomach across wet mud while in my own clothes. The suits took away the dirty clothes fear and we were free to move about as we pleased. The 8 of us followed our guided across the street and into a tunnel that lead us down a 30 feet ladder into the belly of the Earth. For the next 2 1/2 hours we crawled, climbed, twisted and turned through about 700 meters of rocks.
Hungary is littered with underground caves. The one that we sandwiched through happened to be the World's 2nd largest network of caves spanning a distance of 20 KMs. It used to be only 5 KMs, but the combined it which a neighboring cave to in large it. The biggest connecting cave system is in Kentucky and is 25 KMs.
The best part about the caving adventure was the "Pooh Hole." The hole was very small, maybe 2 feet by 2 feet and aptly named the "Pooh Hole" because of Winnie the Pooh and the hole he tried to squeeze through after he had eaten all the honey and thus got stuck causing Christopher Robin and the others to push him through. Well, the guide first squeezed through the hole with little difficulty and then told all of us to give it a go. Now the only different between the tour guide and us is the fact that he is a man and therefore has no hips. 5 of the girls went, including Robby and only the small, skinny girl made it through. Everyone's hips got stuck and they had to back out. Even though almost everyone failed to go through, I felt I should give it a try and for some reason I pushed and pulled and managed to squeeze my hips through the hole. It was awesome.
After caving Robby and I followed a few of the girls back to their hostel on the Buda side in the promise of going to an all-you-can-eat buffet, but once we got to the place we found out that it was closing and not worth the price since it was so late. So we said goodbye to the girls and headed back to our hostel for the night.
The next day was Saturday and the main reason why we decided to stay in Budapest an extra 2 days. Budapest was having some sort of Festival and parade and it sounded like fun, even though no one could tell us why they were having the parade. We spent the morning looking around the Chinese Market which is essentially a huge Flea market before hopping on a train to the City Park and watching the parade. On the way to the parade route we stopped to watch the people in the make-shift skate park. It was refreshing to see tons of people of all ages and talents sharing the different ramps and runways. Little girls skates alongside an old man on a bike and teenagers jumping ramps on skate boards.
The beginning of the parade was cool because there were many different types of acts, most of them resembling some type of Carnival (Venice version) theme with people wearing elaborate costumes with feathers, stilts, masks, and odd ornaments. The Carnivaler's lead way for the capoeira fighters, about 50 or so people with balloon made porcupine spikes on their backs, belly dancers of all shapes and ages, and the Stomp street cleaners. Hungary apparently isn't too worried about parade safety and so Robby and I and anyone who wanted were allowed to walk along the parade path and through the parade participants if we chose to. It was great because I got some cool close up pictures of the people.
After all the interesting acts dances by the floats started. These floats were not good and all the same. They we pretty much semi after semi of half naked girls dancing to introduce the "After Party" of some club. Almost everyone of the floats had a following of 50-100 teeny boppers dancing beside it screaming and acting stupid. We saw girls ranging in age from 14 to about 25 strut their stuff (or lack of stuff) while idiotic boys took pictures and tried to picture up the girls. After an hour or so of this madness we opted to find an interest cafe and escape the bad Techno music the floats screamed. Too much nonsense.
On Sunday we rented bikes and peddled around St. Margaret's Island, another beautiful park/island with happy families out for a stroll with their puppies. We biked to the Buda side and got lost in the trees of the suburbs before finding our way back to the Danu. We didn't mind because it was beautiful and we were biking just to see stuff. We walked our bikes up the huge driveway of the Palace to see the view from the top. It turned out to be nice, but nothing spectacular, although you got to see the Danu below and all the bridges that lead from Buda to Pest.
We had to return our bikes after 6 hours, pick up our packs from the hostel and head to the train station because we were headed to Eger (pronounced Egg-ger) for the next 3 days. Eger is a small, very quaint town two hours by train from Budapest. Some of the people that we met at Astoria hostel recommended the place because it was peaceful, had a hot spring swimming pool, and was near a National Park. When we arrived in Eger at about 9:30pm we were told to walk about 700 meters to find the hostel that we were to stay at, but after a half hour of pacing back an dforth from one street to the next we decided that the idiot who gave us directions had no clue as to wear the train station was in regards to the hostel. We basically spent the next hour and 15 minutes walking around with our heavy packs getting crankier and crankier while we walked down a barely lit rural street looking for an address that seemed to not exist. We eventually found the hostel/dorm in middle of nowhere.
Like most small towns in Europe, Universities rent out their dorms as hostels for the summer to make a little extra cash and so when we showed up, not too happy, we were greeted by moronic college kids that didn't really speak English and could have cared less if we walked two feet to get to their door or the 2 miles we really walked. We were at least given our own dorm room, so we didn't have to bother with stupid other students while there. I really wanted a drink after the long hike to the hostel, but the only thing nearby was a gas station that didn't even have hot water for hot chocolate. Robby and I decided to change hostels in the morning.
When we awoke the following day it was of course raining, but we didn't care because we were getting the hell out of the hostel. The people we not friendly and we were about a 1/2 hour walk from anywhere near town. We hopped on a bus and ended up near the center of town not knowing where to stay. I made Robby hike all around as we followed the Pension signs, but everything seem too expensive. Eventually we found the Tourist office and they pointed us in the direction of a dorm/hostel near the center of town. Luckily the dorm had space and we were allowed to set our packs down. I don't mind not knowing where I am going, but with heavy backpacks it can be a pain.
We decided that we needed to relax and so we packed our bathing suits and headed out in search of the hot springs we were told about. They turned out to be fairly close to the hostel. It was a large complex with 6 swimming pools filtering in natural sulfur water. All the pool varied in temperature and we opted to stay in the pool that was about 38 degrees C. The pool had pipes that poured extra hot water on your back with was nice. We also went in the neighboring pool that was slightly colder, but had a water jet bed and a whirlpool. It was very relaxing and cleansing.
We spent the rest of the day window shopping through the downtown square that was picturesque from some TV show of a small town. The cute cobblestone street with appealing shops to the side and happy people walking about. I nicknamed the town "Sunnydale," because at about 7 pm the shops closed and the majority of the people went home. The only things still open were the pubs that served only alcohol and coffee and a few restaurants. We ended up at McDonalds because it was open to at least 11pm. On the way back to the dorm we passed the park and it looked so creepy I felt we needed crucifixes and stakes to walk through it (hence the name Sunnydale).
The next day we visited the castle on top of the hill. It was interesting, but we didn't get to see the cool prison cells and the hero's walk because the tour took you there and we had hopped off the tour in the beginning since it was in Hungarian and we didn't understand anything. We looked around the museum that gave a timeline for when the castle was built and how it evolved over the centuries. There was a nice view of the town and farming villages in the distance. We got to see a small exhibit on the olden torture devices, but all the info was in Hungarian and so we just looked at the pictures. Overall the castle was nice and gave us something to do because we spent the rest of the day rewalking the downtown square and wondering what people did here.
The last day of Eger we spent in Bukk National Park, hiking through the hills of Szilvasvarad. We decided that we wanted to stretch our legs and get some fresh air so we started our journey up a small hill to visit the prehistoric cave of some cave dwellers before blindly following a group of hikers up and up and up a large mountain trail. Halfway up the trail we decided to ask someone where exactly the trail we were on lead. The Hungarian first asked us what the hell we were doing there, since we were American and it probably looked a little weird having two Americans come up to her and ask where they were headed, but she eventually told us we were about a KM away from a nice lookout point on the tip of the mountain. Since we had spent the last hour or so huffing and puffing up the stupid hill (why we decided to go up I don't know) we decided to continue to the top.
Yeah, the 1 KM turned out to be more like 3 KMs and the lovely lookout spot turned out to be a grassy knoll hidden in the mist of tall trees. No lookout to anything. We did however get to see a nice large cross planted in the grass and a bird house sign that said we'd reached 959 meters. Yea us. All our hard work climbing and we didn't get to take one nice picture of the valley below. We decided to head down a different direction from the slippery and steep one we climbed up and some how managed to get a tad bit lost.
We knew that we needed to go in a certain direction, but the clearly labeled paths seemed to become unclear and sometimes vanish all together the further we went down the mountain. It was suppose to be a 4.5 KMs journey back to town, but it took us about 6 Miles to reach the bottom. Our journey up the hill started out on the Green Triangle path which lead to the Red Triangle, The Yellow Dash, The Blue Slash, the Yellow Cross, The Yellow dash again, and the Green Dash got us out. Along the way we off roaded a bit, lost all paths completely and backtracked a bit. It was fun, but freezing and threatening to rain on us at any moment. We hit the town with growling stomachs and entered the first restaurant that sounded edible.
The day turned out to be a blast and made us too tired to find something to do during the night. We headed back to the dorm and went to sleep. We had to get up early to catch a train to Budapest to get another one to Prague, but that is another story. So long for now.
Now back to the saga. We made it to Istanbul at 11am and went in search of the bus that would take us to Budapest. We were told that there was a direct bus, but after going from bus company to bus company we found that we were going to have to take a night bus to Sophia, Bulgaria and then catch a bus to Budapest. Apparently there was no direct bus, go figure. We had a 9 hour lay over in Istanbul so we ventured up to the Carrefour- the lovely supermarket/mall that made us extremely happy in Egypt actually existed in Turkey.
We enjoyed the next 8 hours looking at ugly clothes, eating something besides a kebob, keeping cool in the AC, and getting my hair colored and Robby's cut. When you have time to waste you end up doing stupid stuff... well, semi-stupid stuff. I've always wanted my hair to be another color and since the hair salon wouldn't make it blur I decided on Red, but no orange red, the red that is actually red. I wanted maroon, but they didn't have a lot of options and they didn't speak English. Robby and I communicated via a nice patron of the salon who spoke mediocre English and through wide hand gestures and pictures.
While I got my hair gooped up, Robby tried to tell the master Stylist how she wanted her hair. She wanted it shoulder length and with layers. We showed the guy a picture, but for some reason he decided to alter the image a bit and went a little nuts on the cutting. Robby's hair is cute, but short and boyish. We had to practically pull the stylist away when he went in for the kill on Robby's bangs. That's a No-No. So she can now pull her hair back into cute little pig-tail stubs and the rest up curls.
My hair on the other hand is long (I was going to cut it, but I got scared and bowed out)and red. When the dye set and the hair was washed my hair was a reddish-pink. Awfully bright pink more so than red, but after the first wash it went dimmer and since it's been about 12 days from when I got it dyed it's all but a natural red color. I think my hair hates anything un-natural and so it won't let dyes stay. So I have red hair, but it's red-headed step-child hair rather than punk red hair. Since I got it dyed I've run into at least 200 other people with red hair. It seems the color that everyone and their grandma dyes their hair in Europe. I feel so unoriginal. :( Hopefully America just has boring hair colors so I can stand out a bit when I get back.
So, hair cuts and shopping out of the way we headed back to the bus station and boarded our 10 hour bus to Bulgaria. The bus was a tight squeeze with the knees, but at least there wasn't an evil man kicking the seat behind me. About 12:30 am the bus stopped at the boarder and practically the whole bus got off. Robby and I weren't sure what to do, but once we realized everyone was headed to the duty-free store we relaxed and went back to sleep. At 1 am the bus stopped again, 10 feet further to the exit gate. Everyone got off again and we were sort of grunted at by a fellow passenger who told us to get off. We had to take all our bags because the inspectors were suppose to go through them, but they pretty much looked at us, rifled through 2 bags and told us to get back on the bus.
We wanted to go to sleep, but 15 minutes later we had to get off the bus again and this time it was a mad rush to get to the inspection window and have the very tired and bored officer inspect and stamp our passports. Robby, I and two other people got to be the lucky winners of the inspection officer keeping our passports. After the whole bus (about 50 people) went through inspection, us and the other couple were called to answer a few stupid questions about why we were headed to Bulgaria. We told him we wanted Budapest and he thought we said Bucharest, which started more stupid questions, but eventually he stamped our passports and handed them back.
We climbed on board the bus again, only to get off at the boarder into Bulgaria (we were exiting Hungary) where we went through the "In" stamp process to Bulgaria. After 3 annoying hours we were headed to Sophia and finally allowed to get a little shut eye. Night buses save on hotel fairs, but you never get any sleep. We arrived at the Sophia bus station at 6 am and were told by the bus people in Istanbul to go to EuroBus for the connecting bus to Budapest. EuroBus didn't open until 8 am. We camped out in front of the office waiting and harassing the other bus companies for buses to Budapest. We started to get nervous when every other company said they didn't go to Budapest. We found one company that did go, but they were full and they didn't have another bus going until 2 days later. We did not want to spend two days in Sophia.
While we were waiting for EuroBus to open we bumped in a girl that went on the Goreme trip with us. She was trying to get to Budapest as well and so we banned together in finding a bus. At 8 am EuroBus opened and to our disappointment they told us they did not, and never had, any buses going to Budapest. Great! For some reason I decided to go back to the place that said they had a bus and see if there were any more buses leaving that day. Miracouisally they had spots available on the 9 am bus. Hum. Robby and Hollie (the other girl) ran around the station looking for an ATM machine to get Bulgarian currency because the bus station wouldn't take USD or credit cards. None of the ATMs accepted the Debit cards and so they went frantically searching for an open exchange place. About 15 minutes to 9am they returned, with me practically freaking out that we would lose the newly available seats. They paid, got tickets, and the bus driver rushed us aboard.
The bus left 10 minutes early, but we didn't care because we had seats. It was an old school bus of sorts with rickedy seats, no TV, no free coffee or water (like on the Turkey buses), and bad working AC - as we later came to find out. The bus stalled at the first stop light, but seemed to run ok after that. We had two more boarder crossings to deal with in our 12 hour bus ride that went fairly smooth and there were only 2 minor problems to deal with. The first was the fact that I couldn't pee in Serbia because I didn't have any Serbian money and I wasn't about to exchange a $50 USD into useless money for a 50 cent Serbia toilet. I pretty much went frantically searching for someone to give me a 50 cent Serbian piece and when no one did I thrust a Turkish dollar (way more that the 50 cent Serbian piece) in the toilet lady's hand and said, "I'm pissing!" and got in line. The problem with traveling in random countries for a short amount of time is that you will never have the right money and toilets always cost something Europe.
The second issue was the fact that no one on the bus spoken English and so at the first gas station stop RObby, Hollie and I spent too long in the store searching for food when the driver came to yell at us and motion that the bus was leaving. He was not a happy camper. At least he came to find us or we would have been stuck on the side of the road in Serbia. After that the lady behind us flashed 15 on her hands every time we stopped to let us know how much time we had at the stop.
9:30 pm we departed the sweaty bus (the AC had broke some 10 hours earlier) and found ourselves in a new city without money and no idea how to catch the metro we needed to the hostel we were staying at. We found an ATM to get money, but there was no Exchange place to make smaller bills for the metro ticket machine. Luckily Budapest is one of those trusting cities were they assume everyone will buy a ticket for the metro or buses, but they only ever have people check for tickets randomly. We boarded a metro without an problems and found our hostel in no time.
The Downtown Hostel was anything but friendly and clean. The bathrooms were small and smelly, the guy who worked there looked like he had never taken a shower in his life and never left the place (he was there everytime we we there), most of the other people staying there were cold-shouldered Hungarian girls that glared and smoked indoors, and for some reason the hostel loved to give the backpackers wine, but for some reason the hostel guy never learned that you do not serve red wine chilled... it's just wrong.
Hollie stayed the one night and then moved to Astoria Hostel because her friend was staying there. In the morning Robby and I wandered the town for a bit to take in the sights and get our barrings. Budapest is broken up into 2 sides. It was originally two different cities, Buda and Pest until a king came and combined them. Buda is the more rustic and rural of the two sides. Pest is shopping and monuments. We were staying on the outskirts of Pest. About a 10 minute walk to downtown Pest. We took photos of the giant church, went to the Jewish Synagogue, ate at a cute pub, and enjoyed the day. We met Hollie in the evening and went to see The Sentinel. We had all been stressed and tired and so we figured a movie would relieve some pressure. It turned out to be a great film and we had a nice evening.
The next day Robby and I walked 5 million miles to the City Park which is like Central Park in NY, but on a smaller scale. It's the main hub for people to chill out and walk their dogs or play soccer or go for a picnic. The Park also houses ever type of transportation museum you can think of. The train museum was cool because the building has train engines sticking out so it looks like the train is pulling the building. We didn't go into any of the museums, but they were nice to walk by. The park also has the the oldest bath house in Hungary.
Hungary is known for it's bath houses like Turkey is known for it's Turkish Baths and Thailand is known for it's massages. The bath house in the park is suppose to be rather large with about 15 different swimming pools all ranging in temperature. The water is mostly from natural hot and cold spring that are filtered in from the hills. There are whirlpools, jacuzzis, and a kids play area also in the bath house. Robby and I wanted to go in and take a look, but it was very expensive and since we didn't have our suits on we opted to do it another day.
The front of the park has a nice courtyard of Roman and Greece statues that look down upon the visitors. On either side of the courtyard is an art museum. We mostly just walked around the park and didn't really go into any of the museums. Next time. We did however find Death. We were wandering around and then we spotted him. He is a marble statue wearing a hooded cloak and holding a large book that is open. The head is practically concealed beneath the hood and so it looks like Death is thinking and writing the names of his victims in the book. The statue turned out to be of Anoymos - a famous Monk that wrote poetry. But to us and the people we met at Astoria Hostel, he is Death.
That evening we went to pick up Hollie at her hostel, but after waiting around for an hour we figured she'd forgotten our date and so we went off to find something else to do. We ended up at another movie theater and watched Thank You for Smoking. If you haven't seen this movie I advise you to go watch it. It is brilliant, well written and and beautifully acted. Well worth it.
The next day we said goodbye to the yucky Downtown Hostel and moved to Astoria Hostel. It was much cleaner, the people were friendlier and there was free breakfast. We left our bags in the lobby and headed out to eat lunch and then to Sandwiching. No Sandwiching is not a town fair competition of stuffing ones face with the most sandwiches, it is in fact caving - getting really dirty by squeezing your body through small caverns and holes inside the Earth.
Robby and I met about 20 other adventures at the #6 bus stop where we were all told to met with our little white sheets of paper. No one knew who was in charge, but pretty soon the white sheets gave away who was on the tour so that there weren't 20 of us just milling about go, "what do we do now," by themselves. Eventually the tour guy came and we boarded two buses that took us into the Buda hills. We got broken up into groups, Robby and I being put with 6 other girls.
We donned a lovely jumpsuit of and hard hat so that we looked like the 7 dwarfs off to work. The suits were great because we could freely crawl around in the mud and not care that our clothes were going to get all dirty. I hate to say it, but I'm a girl and I wouldn't want to be crawling on my stomach across wet mud while in my own clothes. The suits took away the dirty clothes fear and we were free to move about as we pleased. The 8 of us followed our guided across the street and into a tunnel that lead us down a 30 feet ladder into the belly of the Earth. For the next 2 1/2 hours we crawled, climbed, twisted and turned through about 700 meters of rocks.
Hungary is littered with underground caves. The one that we sandwiched through happened to be the World's 2nd largest network of caves spanning a distance of 20 KMs. It used to be only 5 KMs, but the combined it which a neighboring cave to in large it. The biggest connecting cave system is in Kentucky and is 25 KMs.
The best part about the caving adventure was the "Pooh Hole." The hole was very small, maybe 2 feet by 2 feet and aptly named the "Pooh Hole" because of Winnie the Pooh and the hole he tried to squeeze through after he had eaten all the honey and thus got stuck causing Christopher Robin and the others to push him through. Well, the guide first squeezed through the hole with little difficulty and then told all of us to give it a go. Now the only different between the tour guide and us is the fact that he is a man and therefore has no hips. 5 of the girls went, including Robby and only the small, skinny girl made it through. Everyone's hips got stuck and they had to back out. Even though almost everyone failed to go through, I felt I should give it a try and for some reason I pushed and pulled and managed to squeeze my hips through the hole. It was awesome.
After caving Robby and I followed a few of the girls back to their hostel on the Buda side in the promise of going to an all-you-can-eat buffet, but once we got to the place we found out that it was closing and not worth the price since it was so late. So we said goodbye to the girls and headed back to our hostel for the night.
The next day was Saturday and the main reason why we decided to stay in Budapest an extra 2 days. Budapest was having some sort of Festival and parade and it sounded like fun, even though no one could tell us why they were having the parade. We spent the morning looking around the Chinese Market which is essentially a huge Flea market before hopping on a train to the City Park and watching the parade. On the way to the parade route we stopped to watch the people in the make-shift skate park. It was refreshing to see tons of people of all ages and talents sharing the different ramps and runways. Little girls skates alongside an old man on a bike and teenagers jumping ramps on skate boards.
The beginning of the parade was cool because there were many different types of acts, most of them resembling some type of Carnival (Venice version) theme with people wearing elaborate costumes with feathers, stilts, masks, and odd ornaments. The Carnivaler's lead way for the capoeira fighters, about 50 or so people with balloon made porcupine spikes on their backs, belly dancers of all shapes and ages, and the Stomp street cleaners. Hungary apparently isn't too worried about parade safety and so Robby and I and anyone who wanted were allowed to walk along the parade path and through the parade participants if we chose to. It was great because I got some cool close up pictures of the people.
After all the interesting acts dances by the floats started. These floats were not good and all the same. They we pretty much semi after semi of half naked girls dancing to introduce the "After Party" of some club. Almost everyone of the floats had a following of 50-100 teeny boppers dancing beside it screaming and acting stupid. We saw girls ranging in age from 14 to about 25 strut their stuff (or lack of stuff) while idiotic boys took pictures and tried to picture up the girls. After an hour or so of this madness we opted to find an interest cafe and escape the bad Techno music the floats screamed. Too much nonsense.
On Sunday we rented bikes and peddled around St. Margaret's Island, another beautiful park/island with happy families out for a stroll with their puppies. We biked to the Buda side and got lost in the trees of the suburbs before finding our way back to the Danu. We didn't mind because it was beautiful and we were biking just to see stuff. We walked our bikes up the huge driveway of the Palace to see the view from the top. It turned out to be nice, but nothing spectacular, although you got to see the Danu below and all the bridges that lead from Buda to Pest.
We had to return our bikes after 6 hours, pick up our packs from the hostel and head to the train station because we were headed to Eger (pronounced Egg-ger) for the next 3 days. Eger is a small, very quaint town two hours by train from Budapest. Some of the people that we met at Astoria hostel recommended the place because it was peaceful, had a hot spring swimming pool, and was near a National Park. When we arrived in Eger at about 9:30pm we were told to walk about 700 meters to find the hostel that we were to stay at, but after a half hour of pacing back an dforth from one street to the next we decided that the idiot who gave us directions had no clue as to wear the train station was in regards to the hostel. We basically spent the next hour and 15 minutes walking around with our heavy packs getting crankier and crankier while we walked down a barely lit rural street looking for an address that seemed to not exist. We eventually found the hostel/dorm in middle of nowhere.
Like most small towns in Europe, Universities rent out their dorms as hostels for the summer to make a little extra cash and so when we showed up, not too happy, we were greeted by moronic college kids that didn't really speak English and could have cared less if we walked two feet to get to their door or the 2 miles we really walked. We were at least given our own dorm room, so we didn't have to bother with stupid other students while there. I really wanted a drink after the long hike to the hostel, but the only thing nearby was a gas station that didn't even have hot water for hot chocolate. Robby and I decided to change hostels in the morning.
When we awoke the following day it was of course raining, but we didn't care because we were getting the hell out of the hostel. The people we not friendly and we were about a 1/2 hour walk from anywhere near town. We hopped on a bus and ended up near the center of town not knowing where to stay. I made Robby hike all around as we followed the Pension signs, but everything seem too expensive. Eventually we found the Tourist office and they pointed us in the direction of a dorm/hostel near the center of town. Luckily the dorm had space and we were allowed to set our packs down. I don't mind not knowing where I am going, but with heavy backpacks it can be a pain.
We decided that we needed to relax and so we packed our bathing suits and headed out in search of the hot springs we were told about. They turned out to be fairly close to the hostel. It was a large complex with 6 swimming pools filtering in natural sulfur water. All the pool varied in temperature and we opted to stay in the pool that was about 38 degrees C. The pool had pipes that poured extra hot water on your back with was nice. We also went in the neighboring pool that was slightly colder, but had a water jet bed and a whirlpool. It was very relaxing and cleansing.
We spent the rest of the day window shopping through the downtown square that was picturesque from some TV show of a small town. The cute cobblestone street with appealing shops to the side and happy people walking about. I nicknamed the town "Sunnydale," because at about 7 pm the shops closed and the majority of the people went home. The only things still open were the pubs that served only alcohol and coffee and a few restaurants. We ended up at McDonalds because it was open to at least 11pm. On the way back to the dorm we passed the park and it looked so creepy I felt we needed crucifixes and stakes to walk through it (hence the name Sunnydale).
The next day we visited the castle on top of the hill. It was interesting, but we didn't get to see the cool prison cells and the hero's walk because the tour took you there and we had hopped off the tour in the beginning since it was in Hungarian and we didn't understand anything. We looked around the museum that gave a timeline for when the castle was built and how it evolved over the centuries. There was a nice view of the town and farming villages in the distance. We got to see a small exhibit on the olden torture devices, but all the info was in Hungarian and so we just looked at the pictures. Overall the castle was nice and gave us something to do because we spent the rest of the day rewalking the downtown square and wondering what people did here.
The last day of Eger we spent in Bukk National Park, hiking through the hills of Szilvasvarad. We decided that we wanted to stretch our legs and get some fresh air so we started our journey up a small hill to visit the prehistoric cave of some cave dwellers before blindly following a group of hikers up and up and up a large mountain trail. Halfway up the trail we decided to ask someone where exactly the trail we were on lead. The Hungarian first asked us what the hell we were doing there, since we were American and it probably looked a little weird having two Americans come up to her and ask where they were headed, but she eventually told us we were about a KM away from a nice lookout point on the tip of the mountain. Since we had spent the last hour or so huffing and puffing up the stupid hill (why we decided to go up I don't know) we decided to continue to the top.
Yeah, the 1 KM turned out to be more like 3 KMs and the lovely lookout spot turned out to be a grassy knoll hidden in the mist of tall trees. No lookout to anything. We did however get to see a nice large cross planted in the grass and a bird house sign that said we'd reached 959 meters. Yea us. All our hard work climbing and we didn't get to take one nice picture of the valley below. We decided to head down a different direction from the slippery and steep one we climbed up and some how managed to get a tad bit lost.
We knew that we needed to go in a certain direction, but the clearly labeled paths seemed to become unclear and sometimes vanish all together the further we went down the mountain. It was suppose to be a 4.5 KMs journey back to town, but it took us about 6 Miles to reach the bottom. Our journey up the hill started out on the Green Triangle path which lead to the Red Triangle, The Yellow Dash, The Blue Slash, the Yellow Cross, The Yellow dash again, and the Green Dash got us out. Along the way we off roaded a bit, lost all paths completely and backtracked a bit. It was fun, but freezing and threatening to rain on us at any moment. We hit the town with growling stomachs and entered the first restaurant that sounded edible.
The day turned out to be a blast and made us too tired to find something to do during the night. We headed back to the dorm and went to sleep. We had to get up early to catch a train to Budapest to get another one to Prague, but that is another story. So long for now.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Buses, buses, and more fucking buses.
So I don't know what to write about first. I guess I will just go in order of events and then write the trouble of buses in-between.
So, Goreme (Gor-E-may) (which is the main city in Cappadocia - Cappadocia being a region rather than a city) turned out to be a beautiful. Robby and my pension was a room within a cave because Goreme is the Cave town. I truly believe that the creators of Smurfs and Flintstones came to Goreme some 45 years ago, looked around, got ideas and then designed their TV shows.
Goreme is a quaint town surrounded by 100's of miles of hiking trails through colorful canyons of gnome, Phalic, and mushroom looking pointed rocks. They sprang up due to volcanic activity in the region millions of years ago and have been defined and redefined by nature and the public ever since. Most of the Gnome ones were (and are) used as houses for numerous societies, hence the cave we were living in.
We arrived in Goreme at 6am and were shuttled to the Show String Pension. Since check in wasn't until 9 am I got the pleasure of attempting to sleep on a rather B.O. smelling blanket covered bench while Robby and the rest of the 10 tired souls that arrived with us read up on the local history of Goreme and some of the activities to do. Around 8 am Robby rudely awoke me and told me we were going on a journey to find Kristin (the girl we met on the Falucca in Egypt). We had scheduled to met her at Mt Nemrut, but our plans changes and she was in Goreme at the same time as us.
We found Kristin's hostels in no time, but there was no sign of Kristin, so we decided to have breakfast and wait a bit. We didn't have to wait long before she showed up and it was like being back in Egypt. We chatted, telling horror and funny stories before Michelle, a friend of Kristin's, showed up.
Once breakfast was over we headed to Pigeon Valley. We entered the canyon via a tree lined dirt road that opened onto white-brown gnome rocks that had holes and doors cut into them. Pigeon Valley got it's name from all the little square inlets in the gnome rocks that allow Pigeons to poop in. Every once and a while the poop is collected and used as ferterlizer. Gross, but effective and useful.
We walked for a few KMs in the lovely heat admiring all the unique rocks before coming to a town that was up a hill. Now, I used to think I was in shape, but I'm starting to think I was only in shape when I was 12. Going up the hill to the center of the town nearly killed me. I thought I would have a heart attack or something. Huffing and puffing at the top, I splurged on an expensive cold drink.
For some reason I was the deciding vote in climbing a massive rock that was littered with gnome houses so that we could take a picture of the valleys below. You could see for about 50 miles in any direction. I guess once I got my lungs back, it was a rather beautiful sight.
We scouted the next valley and trail that we wanted to take us back to Goreme and then hiked down the hill and down the mountain to relatively flat ground. Along the way we passed a backpacking group of 55+ year olds and I decided that I had no right to complain because if they could do I could do it. We got lost a bit, but eventually found the path to the White Valley.
Somehow our sense of direction sucked and we ended up sliding down parts of a large cliff face to get on the right trail. It was fun, but I would have liked to have shoes with better traction. Once we were on secure footing we managed to find a path that took us through a gorge and inside small cave tunnels. It was like walking through the King David water system again, but there was light every few feet. Nature always has a way of amazing and "awe-ing" oneself.
The White Valley is aptly named for the color of the rocks and cliffs. I think all the rocks were Limestone or just covered in a fine layer of white sand. Most of the surfaces were smooth and more phalic looking rocks reached towards the sky. We passed the mushroom that the giant worm (from Alice and Wonderland) sat on before coming to a paved road that took us back to Goreme. We spent the rest of the day exploring the small town, taking showers, and eating.
The next day we met Kristin at her hostel and headed to the Red and Rose Valleys. To get to the Red Valley we had to walk past the UFO museum (yeah, exactly) and then a valley of many small pumpkin patches. The Valley floor was littered with little green and yellow squashes. Two farming ladies tried to give us some, but we kindly refused. A KM later we made it to Red Valley which is more low key then Pigeon Valley with the gnome houses and consisting o red shaded hills.
We found a fairly large rock face covered in open doorways. The bottom housed a ancient church that had open graves across the entrance floor and a prayer/candle lighting section farther inside the cave. The upper floors of the cliff held small to medium rooms. Robby asked if Kristin and I were interested in renting. We said, "no".
Somehow we ended up climbing another massive hill that would not end going upwards. At least while I was contemplating a soon impending journey to heaven I got to look at lush foliage and small watering holes. Somewhere along the way the trail stopped at a store in the middle of nowhere and a church door. The Christian and Byzantine priests, back in the day, found solace in building their churches in the caves and gnome rocks, so the Valleys surrounding Goreme and other parts of Turkey are littered with 1000's of these small religious sites.
I plopped my ass down outside the church door and admired the Valley floor below. I could see the parts of the trail we hiked up and Goreme in the distance. Behind us there was Rose Valley and more hills. The guy who worked at the store was also the key holder to the Church door. He wanted a ridiculous amount of money to see the church, so we all opted to be content seating in front of the church.
Right when I was starting to feel sorry for the poor store owner, because how does he make a living when very few people venture this far into the mountains and the ones that do are most likely cheap bastards like us than free spending yuppies, when a tour group of money spending Italians showed up and bought 10 over priced cold drinks. When it started to feel too crowded at our rest stop we escaped in time before the 20 person tour group rounded the corner. I guess the store owner sees enough business to make the rent.
We hiked along a ridge that separated the Red Valley from the Rose Valley. The two Valleys were very similar in landscape, but the colors of the rocks were different shades of Red. Since it was another hot day we decided to cut our hike short and head back to town via the pumpkin patches.
The next day we paid to be "sheep" and hopped on boarded a pre-arranged tour. The tour bus was packed and I got the pleasure of being sandwiched between the driver and Robby. Lucky me. Ever since Israel buses have started to have a tendency for lolling me to sleep. I woke up 45 mins later to the driver laughing at me and asking if I had a nice nap. Grrrr. At least I don't snore.
We clamored out of the Van at 2nd largest of the 150 underground cities in the Cappadocia region. Apparently societies in the olden days were riddled with violent tendencies towards each other and this warranted the building of underground "safety" cities. When the bad guys got too close to the above ground cities the people would retreat into the ground. Just like the little cave dwellers of the prehistoric ages, these people built their caves to house 1000's, including farm animals.
The city we visited was 9 floors deep with 2 sheep and goat pens, a church with prison next to it (basically a connecting stalactite/stalagmite with chains on the ceiling to string up the bad guy in a "Y" stance) so all the church goers could scold the bad guy as they entered and exited prayer, numerous housing rooms, a large area for cooking including underground ovens, two large air vents, massive rocks to block the entrance to each new floor in case the enemy penetrated the city, and a school to teach the little ones.
Other than there being no sunlight, the cave dwelling was a cool place to live. I would have to get used to climbing up and down stairs all the time and maybe shrink in size since half the stairwells were 5 feet tall, but I think I could become an underground cave dweller for a bit. The temperature was a comfortable 65 degrees and the houses were quite roomy.
Next stop on the tour was our 3Km hike through a lush gorge. Since Robby, Kristin, and I were accustomed to walking through the Goreme Valleys at a leisurely pace it really sucked when we realized we were in a beautiful place and all we were going to see was the person in front of us' feet. The Tour women kept such a strict pace that we didn't have time to take a decent picture or even take in our surroundings. The trail was very rocky that if we didn't look down we were likely to fall.
The two bits of information that the Tour lady gave us about the trail were about as useful as the imitated one that one of the girls in the group did; "This is a tree. It breathes and grows." "This is a trail, you walk along it to get to a different place." The Tour lady was that good.
We stopped for a mini break along a muddy stream in the mist of dense foliage, so that we couldn't even get a great picture of the high cliff faces that boarded the gorge we were standing in. 10 minutes later we were hiking/walking again. We ended the hike at a very busy cafe along the muddy river for lunch. Some poor 15 year old that worked at the restaurant looked as though he was going to suffer a stroke any minute. His face was flushed and he was beyond stressed bring all 50 of us our soups. I don't think anyone would have cared too much if he took his time, but he continued to over strained himself bringing heavy trays of meat and vegetable dishes to the tables and briskly walking back to the kitchen for more. The youth in Turkey grow up fast.
After lunch was another power nap for me and a stop at an old Chruch. The Church looked more like a castle and had an indoor part that was used during the winter to stay warm and an outdoor part that was shaded during the summer. I didn't learn much else because the tour lady didn't say a lot and she gave us a whole 5 minutes to explore.
Next up, the Goreme Onyx factory. Yeap, every country that survives on Tourism loves to invite its tourist to view the makings of their wonders. We were all lead into the basement of the factory and privy to a private showing of a hard onyx block being magically turned into a smooth and shiny egg. Ohhhh, Ahhhhh, Snorrrre. Next was the "subtle" herd into the 5 beautiful onyx and other precious metals show rooms. After 5 minutes Robby, Kristin and I escaped to the ice cream stand across the street and waited not so patiently for the 15 moronic shoppers to exit the factory - we did not pay to shop. There were clearly more than just poor backpackers on our tour.
Eventually everyone exited the factory and we drove to the Fairy Chimney rocks or almost drove to the Fairy Chimney rocks. The van hit something in the road, a loud pop was heard, and 10 minutes later we were all walking our asses through the desert. At least the weather was a nice temperature since a storm looked to be brewing. It caused rays of sunlight to poke through the dark gray clouds and shroud the land in angelic light. Quite beautiful, except for the ugly orange color of the rays and the muddy gray of the clouds.
15 minutes later we rounded a corner to look down on the Fairy Chimney rocks. The rocks are basically phalic looking poles of limestone that shoot upwards and are toped with a small triangle looking stone at the top. Someone nicknamed the Valley the Valley of Penis'. We snapped pictures and waited around for the new Van to show up. So far I still have a high loathing for Tours, but half the places we went we couldn't' easily get to without a tour bus.
We made it back to Show String with enough time to grab our bags and head to the bus station to catch our 8:30pm bus to some small town to catch a night bus to Katha. The little bus that came was so packed that three unlucky souls had to sit on the floor near the door for the two hours to the bigger town. For our night bus to Katha we had to wait around the bus station for 2 hours (an hour after the departure time of the bus) frantically asking every bus that pulled up if they were the bus we needed since no one could tell us exactly were our bus was going to dock. So I don't know what to write about first. I guess I will just go in order of events and then write the trouble of buses in-between.
So, Goreme (Gor-E-may) (which is the main city in Cappadocia - Cappadocia being a region rather than a city) turned out to be a beautiful. Robby and my pension was a room within a cave because Goreme is the Cave town. I truly believe that the creators of Smurfs and Flintstones came to Goreme some 45 years ago, looked around, got ideas and then designed their TV shows.
Goreme is a quaint town surrounded by 100's of miles of hiking trails through colorful canyons of gnome, phalic, and mushroom looking pointed rocks. They sprang up due to volcanic activity in the region millions of years ago and have been defined and redefined by nature and the public ever since. Most of the Gnome ones were (and are) used as houses for numerous societies, hence the cave we were living in.
We arrived in Goreme at 6am and were shuttled to the Show String Pension. Since check in wasn't until 9 am I got the pleasure of attempting to sleep on a rather B.O. smelling blanket covered bench while Robby and the rest of the 10 tired souls that arrived with us read up on the local history of Goreme and some of the activities to do. Around 8 am Robby rudely awoke me and told me we were going on a journey to find Kristin (the girl we met on the Falucca in Egypt). We had scheduled to met her at Mt Nemrut, but our plans changes and she was in Goreme at the same time as us.
We found Kristin's hostels in no time, but there was no sign of Kristin, so we decided to have breakfast and wait a bit. We didn't have to wait long before she showed up and it was like being back in Egypt. We chatted, telling horror and funny stories before Michelle, a friend of Kristin's, showed up.
Once breakfast was over we headed to Pigeon Valley. We entered the canyon via a tree lined dirt road that opened onto white-brown gnome rocks that had holes and doors cut into them. Pigeon Valley got it's name from all the little square inlets in the gnome rocks that allow Pigeons to poop in. Every once and a while the poop is collected and used as ferterlizer. Gross, but effective and useful.
We walked for a few KMs in the lovely heat admiring all the unique rocks before coming to a town that was up a hill. Now, I used to think I was in shape, but I'm starting to think I was only in shape when I was 12. Going up the hill to the center of the town nearly killed me. I thought I would have a heart attack or something. Huffing and puffing at the top, I splurged on an expensive cold drink.
For some reason I was the deciding vote in climbing a massive rock that was littered with gnome houses so that we could take a picture of the valleys below. You could see for about 50 miles in any direction. I guess once I got my lungs back, it was a rather beautiful sight.
We scouted the next valley and trail that we wanted to take us back to Goreme and then hiked down the hill and down the mountain to relatively flat ground. Along the way we passed a backpacking group of 55+ year olds and I decided that I had no right to complain because if they could do I could do it. We got lost a bit, but eventually found the path to the White Valley.
Somehow our sense of direction sucked and we ended up sliding down parts of a large cliff face to get on the right trail. It was fun, but I would have liked to have shoes with better traction. Once we were on secure footing we managed to find a path that took us through a gorge and inside small cave tunnels. It was like walking through the King David water system again, but there was light every few feet. Nature always has a way of amazing and "awe-ing" oneself.
The White Valley is aptly named for the color of the rocks and cliffs. I think all the rocks were Limestone or just covered in a fine layer of white sand. Most of the surfaces were smooth and more phalic looking rocks reached towards the sky. We passed the mushroom that the giant worm (from Alice and Wonderland) sat on before coming to a paved road that took us back to Goreme. We spent the rest of the day exploring the small town, taking showers, and eating.
The next day we met Kristin at her hostel and headed to the Red and Rose Valleys. To get to the Red Valley we had to walk past the UFO museum (yeah, exactly) and then a valley of many small pumpkin patches. The Valley floor was littered with little green and yellow squashes. Two farming ladies tried to give us some, but we kindly refused. A KM later we made it to Red Valley which is more low key then Pigeon Valley with the gnome houses and consisting o red shaded hills.
We found a fairly large rock face covered in open doorways. The bottom housed a ancient church that had open graves across the entrance floor and a prayer/candle lighting section farther inside the cave. The upper floors of the cliff held small to medium rooms. Robby asked if Kristin and I were interested in renting. We said, "no".
Somehow we ended up climbing another massive hill that would not end going upwards. At least while I was contemplating a soon impending journey to heaven I got to look at lush foliage and small watering holes. Somewhere along the way the trail stopped at a store in the middle of nowhere and a church door. The Christian and Byzantine priests, back in the day, found solace in building their churches in the caves and gnome rocks, so the Valleys surrounding Goreme and other parts of Turkey are littered with 1000's of these small religious sites.
I plopped my ass down outside the church door and admired the Valley floor below. I could see the parts of the trail we hiked up and Goreme in the distance. Behind us there was Rose Valley and more hills. The guy who worked at the store was also the key holder to the Church door. He wanted a ridiculous amount of money to see the church, so we all opted to be content seating in front of the church.
Right when I was starting to feel sorry for the poor store owner, because how does he make a living when very few people venture this far into the mountains and the ones that do are most likely cheap bastards like us than free spending yuppies, when a tour group of money spending Italians showed up and bought 10 over priced cold drinks. When it started to feel too crowded at our rest stop we escaped in time before the 20 person tour group rounded the corner. I guess the store owner sees enough business to make the rent.
We hiked along a ridge that separated the Red Valley from the Rose Valley. The two Valleys were very similar in landscape, but the colors of the rocks were different shades of Red. Since it was another hot day we decided to cut our hike short and head back to town via the pumpkin patches.
The next day we paid to be "sheep" and hopped on boarded a pre-arranged tour. The tour bus was packed and I got the pleasure of being sandwiched between the driver and Robby. Lucky me. Ever since Israel buses have started to have a tendency for lolling me to sleep. I woke up 45 mins later to the driver laughing at me and asking if I had a nice nap. Grrrr. At least I don't snore.
We clamored out of the Van at 2nd largest of the 150 underground cities in the Cappadocia region. Apparently societies in the olden days were riddled with violent tendencies towards each other and this warranted the building of underground "safety" cities. When the bad guys got too close to the above ground cities the people would retreat into the ground. Just like the little cave dwellers of the prehistoric ages, these people built their caves to house 1000's, including farm animals.
The city we visited was 9 floors deep with 2 sheep and goat pens, a church with prison next to it (basically a connecting stalactite/stalagmite with chains on the ceiling to string up the bad guy in a "Y" stance) so all the church goers could scold the bad guy as they entered and exited prayer, numerous housing rooms, a large area for cooking including underground ovens, two large air vents, massive rocks to block the entrance to each new floor in case the enemy penetrated the city, and a school to teach the little ones.
Other than there being no sunlight, the cave dwelling was a cool place to live. I would have to get used to climbing up and down stairs all the time and maybe shrink in size since half the stairwells were 5 feet tall, but I think I could become an underground cave dweller for a bit. The temperature was a comfortable 65 degrees and the houses were quite roomy.
Next stop on the tour was our 3Km hike through a lush gorge. Since Robby, Kristin, and I were accustomed to walking through the Goreme Valleys at a leisurely pace it really sucked when we realized we were in a beautiful place and all we were going to see was the person in front of us' feet. The Tour women kept such a strict pace that we didn't have time to take a decent picture or even take in our surroundings. The trail was very rocky that if we didn't look down we were likely to fall.
The two bits of information that the Tour lady gave us about the trail were about as useful as the imitated one that one of the girls in the group did; "This is a tree. It breathes and grows." "This is a trail, you walk along it to get to a different place." The Tour lady was that good.
We stopped for a mini break along a muddy stream in the mist of dense foliage, so that we couldn't even get a great picture of the high cliff faces that boarded the gorge we were standing in. 10 minutes later we were hiking/walking again. We ended the hike at a very busy cafe along the muddy river for lunch. Some poor 15 year old that worked at the restaurant looked as though he was going to suffer a stroke any minute. His face was flushed and he was beyond stressed bring all 50 of us our soups. I don't think anyone would have cared too much if he took his time, but he continued to over strained himself bringing heavy trays of meat and vegetable dishes to the tables and briskly walking back to the kitchen for more. The youth in Turkey grow up fast.
After lunch was another power nap for me and a stop at an old Chruch. The Church looked more like a castle and had an indoor part that was used during the winter to stay warm and an outdoor part that was shaded during the summer. I didn't learn much else because the tour lady didn't say a lot and she gave us a whole 5 minutes to explore.
Next up, the Goreme Onyx factory. Yeap, every country that survives on Tourism loves to invite its tourist to view the makings of their wonders. We were all lead into the basement of the factory and privy to a private showing of a hard onyx block being magically turned into a smooth and shiny egg. Ohhhh, Ahhhhh, Snorrrre. Next was the "subtle" herd into the 5 beautiful onyx and other precious metals show rooms. After 5 minutes Robby, Kristin and I escaped to the ice cream stand across the street and waited not so patiently for the 15 moronic shoppers to exit the factory - we did not pay to shop. There were clearly more than just poor backpackers on our tour.
Eventually everyone exited the factory and we drove to the Fairy Chimney rocks or almost drove to the Fairy Chimney rocks. The van hit something in the road, a loud pop was heard, and 10 minutes later we were all walking our asses through the desert. At least the weather was a nice temperature since a storm looked to be brewing. It caused rays of sunlight to poke through the dark gray clouds and shroud the land in angelic light. Quite beautiful, except for the ugly orange color of the rays and the muddy gray of the clouds.
15 minutes later we rounded a corner to look down on the Fairy Chimney rocks. The rocks are basically phalic looking poles of limestone that shoot upwards and are toped with a small triangle looking stone at the top. Someone nicknamed the Valley the Valley of Penis'. We snapped pictures and waited around for the new Van to show up. So far I still have a high loathing for Tours, but half the places we went we couldn't' easily get to without a tour bus.
We made it back to Show String with enough time to grab our bags and head to the bus station to catch our 8:30pm bus to some small town to catch a night bus to Katha. The little bus that came was so packed that three unlucky souls had to sit on the floor near the door for the two hours to the bigger town. For our night bus to Katha we had to wait around the bus station for 2 hours (an hour after the departure time of the bus) frantically asking every bus that pulled up if they were the bus we needed since no one could tell us exactly were our bus was going to dock.
After annoying the guy at the ticket office we were stuck with another guy going on the same bus with us and from there we dragged our bags back and forth across the bus station before some guy was running across the street to stop our bus as it was driving passed the station. We hauled ass to the illegally parked bus, handed our backpacks over to the bus guy and boarded a very hot and very packed bus. Our seats were the 2 before the row of four at the back of the bus. Three little kids were in our seats that begrudenly moved into the ailse and behind us when we came. We sat down with 4 adults, 3 kids under three, 2 kids about 7, and one grandma sharing the 4 seats behind us, one adult under the back of our seats and three small ones passed out in the ailse. This was the start of a fun nights rest.
Kristin got the pleasure of sitting next to a nice Turkish man, but he feel asleep with his head constantly rolling on Kristin. I had a 7 year old sleeping on the back of my head rest. I didn't want to hit the kid so I couldn't really stick my head all the way back and I couldn't lean my chair back because of all the people behind me. The bus stopped every three hours for a 30 minute piss break where the lights went on, the kids hit our elbows on the way outside and the AC was turned off.
Around 6:30am we rolled into dank bus station and sort of continued to doze because we figured the bus guy would tell us when we reached Katha. Nope, everyone got off the bus and Kristin told us we had arrived when she ventured out to see were we were. Katha, a small dust pit of despair. We wearily exited the bus, grabbed our bags and wondered what to do next. We knew that a city bus to Mt. Nemrut didn't leave until about 2pm and so we were decided to wander into town when a guy offered to take us to our hostel for an exorbitant price. We told the guy no, but he kept asking and telling us we wouldn't get a better deal. We opted to wait until the city bus. On top of the lovely haggler, a 12 year old with his fly unzipped stared at us like we were monkeys in the zoo. We were not in the mood. Just as we picked up our bags to walk into town to find a coffee shop a nice man told us he was headed to Mt. Nemrut and offered to take us for a reasonable sum. We agreed.
Our pension was the last rest stop before the entrance to Mt. Nemrut and that is why we choose it, but the beds were most likely wood planks covered in sheets on top squeaky springs inside an airless room with a shower that dripped freezing cold water. We'd found paradise. At least we got to sleep the morning away instead of being goggled at by the Katha locals.
We woke at noon, decided to venture down the mountain to the pension we saw earlier with all the tour buses and find a bite to eat. The pension turned out to be farther than we thought and by the time we got there all the buses had gone. It was us and the Hotel staff and eggs for lunch. We wished someone would drive us back up the 2KM hill to our pension, but instead we worked off the eggs by climbing the 25 degree incline hill. The rest of the day was spent reading and relaxing.
We woke at 2 am to hike the 10 Km to the top of Mt. Nemrut to watch the sunrise. Mt. Nemrut is known for its 2 meter high stone heads that lie at the feet of the statue bodies. The heads used to be attached to the bodies, but after an earthquake, they rolled to the ground. The statues were built by a crazy king (sort of like Ramese II) who worshiped himself among other gods. He somehow built a large stone peak on top of Mt. Nemrut, put statues around it and most likely buried some dead people within the peak.
We walked uphill under the cover of a cool starry night, chatting and enjoying ourselves. Surprisingly multiple cars passed us on the way up. We secretly wished they'd give us a ride, but if you saw three dark figures walking along a mountainside at 3 in the morning would you stop and offer a ride? The Lonely Planet had said that the trek to the top of Mt. Nemrut was only 6KM, which it was really 10, so when it told us that the last 3 KM of the trek would have to be driven in 1st gear we paid no attention. Apparently someone got some information right and the last 3 KM sucked big time. Nearly a 40 degree incline that didn't even out even for a brief bit. Up, up, and up. We passed a car that stalled out and was being pushed up the hill, but soon that car regained its engine and passed us.
2 hours and 7 minutes since we had started our journey we were regaining our breathes on a bench a mere 600 meters from the top. Somehow the coffee seller and his buddies knew we were from Cesme Pension. I guess not many people walk and the pension guy told his friends we planned to walk. We climbed the 600 meters of steps to the top and watched the sun rise through a foggy haze. At least the heads were interesting or the walk was for nothing. There were about 8 heads on the East side of the mountain. The human looking head was of the King and the rest were various animal heads that represented the Gods. 5 of the bodies sat in a line above the heads. We walked around the top of the peak to the West side where there were more heads, but most of the statues were destroyed. As we walked back towards the East side and the exit, the sun came out of the fog and showed us its orange and yellow rays. The journey was worth it afterall.
We lucked out in hitchhiking down the mountain to the pension because it would have torn our knees to shred's walking. A nice group of guys pulled over and stuffed us three, along with 2 bigger guys in the back of a small Neon while two guys rode in front. Hey, a free rides a free ride. Besides, we had to catch a 7:30 am city bus back to Katha to catch another city bus to Urfa.
We loaded into a 15 pass van with a family of 5 kids and 2 parents for an hour before we transferred to another 15 pass van that crammed us, the family, 13 other people, and Robby's backpacking backpack into the non ACed and closed windowed van. We sped along the city streets looking for more passengers and slowly made our way to Urfa, a big city in Eastern Turkey. Three hours later we breathed fresh air at another dirty bus station while collecting ourselves.
Urfa basically looks like another Cairo. Poor, dirty, and covered in annoying hecklers and catcallers. Somehow we found our way to Hospitality Hostel, a bunch of rooms in a house of a happy old couple. We were given a nice room, again with the lumpy hard beds and no air circulation, but it was clean and the owners were very friendly. We dropped our bags and were lead into town by Aziz, the owner of the Hostel.
He took us to a holy fish pool that is said to house the fish of the Prophet Mohammed. The story of the fish somehow goes like this: There was a castle on the hill that Mohammed was living in and a bad guy wanted to live there so he blasted Mohammed out of the castle which blew Mohammed into the air and down onto the pond, which saved his life, and all the fiery bits of castle turned into fish in the pond. Something like that and now the fish are sacred and people from all over come here to feed them. Aziz left us with a 13 year old that looked about 10 and told us he was his nephew and a Jr. Tour guide.
We asked the nephew to take us to an internet cafe and ended up seeing the fish pond again, along with a mosque, a giant park, numerous streets, and eventually a very smoky, all male internet cafe. We checked our emails, lost the nephew and ventured into downtown Urfa. We came upon a bazaar, looked about, tried in vain to find food that wasn't ke-bob or pizza and went back to the Hostel. The mother of the hostel cooked RObby and I a homecooked dinner and we retired early, but not before meeting the other 20 or so people that were staying at the house. We didn't think there were that many rooms, but I guess they were good at cramming in the beds.
The next morning we took a city bus to Harran. We boarded a fairly empty 15 pass van and spent the next hour going up and down the city streets trying to find more passengers before the driver would head to Harran. The drivers don't like to drive places without a full van because gas is so expensive, but I would think driving 5 miles an hour up and down hills would waste more gas than just driving to the location. Good thing I'm not a bus driver.
Harran is the world's longest inhabited city...now barely inhabited city. We pulled up along side a bee hive house, got out and took in the dirt and tussle weeds. The old section of Harran is know for the Oldest Mosque, the castle and the bee hive houses. The bee hive houses are basically bee hive looking dome roofs placed on top square walls, all made of mud, bricks, and plants. The domes of the bee hives were reinforced with bricks stolen from the Mosque and Castle.
The place we stopped at was a bee hive house that visitors could look in and see how the people lived. The temperature was a cool 80 degrees while outside burned under the 105 degree sun. Mats and little chairs covered the floors, a stone table was set up in the kitchen, good luck charms hung from the ceiling, and old men stared at us over their huka containers. We ventured into town.
What remained of the largest Mosque in the world was a half destroyed rectangular bell tower and one wall. Piles of rubble lay forgotten and crumbled along the dimensions of the old walls and many more pieces of crumbled rocks littered the valley for a distance. Harran looked to be quite large in its hay day.
The castle was falling apart, but one could still climb the three floors and look out at the town. Harran used to be covered in grass and surrounded by lakes, but now it is a dust bowl surrounded by farmland. It's weird because the castle, the Mosque, the bee hive houses and a few other houses are all set upon dirt while just out of reach is bright green crops and water. It's like the land is trying to gave up on life, get rid of life and fade into nothingness, but humans won't let it go.
We headed back to Urfa, wandered about some more and went to the bus station to board our respective buses. Kristin was headed to Olympos for a week of relaxation while Robby and I were headed to Istanbul to catch a bus to Budapest. We decided that it was too expensive to travel in Greece for a week, so we might as well travel to Budapest and Prague for cheaper and see more. We were kind of sick of the same old Roman and Greek ruins anyhow and needed something new, like gothic buildings and castles. (Short note, it is really expensive and quite hard to get to Tel Aviv from Europe, so I will be forfeiting my semi free ticket home from Israel and boarding a plane from Krakow to Dublin to LA on September 11th. Now I have a few extra days to explore Europe and I don't have to backtrack to the Middle East, especially during a war time.)
Of Course the bus that Robby and I were taking was late and after wandering if it was going to show up, a guy told us to follow him out of the bus station, up and over the over pass, down to the other side of the street and on to an island in the middle of the main road. We stood with our packs wondering what the hell we were doing. We finally understood after a bus stopped at the island (not our bus) and dropped people off. Somehow we had managed to book another bus that didn't stop at the bus station. Kristin (who was catching a later bus), Robby and I decided that in the future on top of asking the bus people if the bus is large (some are 15 passes), ACed, and for a seat in the middle of the bus, we now have to ask if it actually stops at the station or if we need to go chase it down.
45 minutes late our bus stopped at the Island, we said goodbye to Kristin, and boarded a 15 hour hell ride. Now most people know that on a bus the seats go back a little and if it is an over night bus the seats will go back. Somehow this understanding of bus logic didn't get passed along to the mean old man sitting behind me. I pushed my chair back and was immediately launched forward. The old man had pushed his hands down on the top of my seat and let go, effectively flicking the seat. I turned around and was met with an evil glare and an expression that said, "put the seat up". I put it up and cowered in an uncomfortable position. I knew that the seats had about a foot and a half of knee room, but that was still a foot and a half of knee room. Somehow the old man had his chair all the way forward and his knees pressing into the back of my upright chair. I think he was slouching all the way forward.
I asked Robby to watch the man through the crack in the chairs and tell me when he moved so I could slowly move the chair backwards. It worked for a bit, but everytime I got off the bus and back on, the chair was back upright. Smart little bastard. Another night of restless sleeping.
So now I am in Hungary, have been for a while, but I've written enough for this blog and bored you all miserably. So good night and I will write more about horrible bus journeys later.
So, Goreme (Gor-E-may) (which is the main city in Cappadocia - Cappadocia being a region rather than a city) turned out to be a beautiful. Robby and my pension was a room within a cave because Goreme is the Cave town. I truly believe that the creators of Smurfs and Flintstones came to Goreme some 45 years ago, looked around, got ideas and then designed their TV shows.
Goreme is a quaint town surrounded by 100's of miles of hiking trails through colorful canyons of gnome, Phalic, and mushroom looking pointed rocks. They sprang up due to volcanic activity in the region millions of years ago and have been defined and redefined by nature and the public ever since. Most of the Gnome ones were (and are) used as houses for numerous societies, hence the cave we were living in.
We arrived in Goreme at 6am and were shuttled to the Show String Pension. Since check in wasn't until 9 am I got the pleasure of attempting to sleep on a rather B.O. smelling blanket covered bench while Robby and the rest of the 10 tired souls that arrived with us read up on the local history of Goreme and some of the activities to do. Around 8 am Robby rudely awoke me and told me we were going on a journey to find Kristin (the girl we met on the Falucca in Egypt). We had scheduled to met her at Mt Nemrut, but our plans changes and she was in Goreme at the same time as us.
We found Kristin's hostels in no time, but there was no sign of Kristin, so we decided to have breakfast and wait a bit. We didn't have to wait long before she showed up and it was like being back in Egypt. We chatted, telling horror and funny stories before Michelle, a friend of Kristin's, showed up.
Once breakfast was over we headed to Pigeon Valley. We entered the canyon via a tree lined dirt road that opened onto white-brown gnome rocks that had holes and doors cut into them. Pigeon Valley got it's name from all the little square inlets in the gnome rocks that allow Pigeons to poop in. Every once and a while the poop is collected and used as ferterlizer. Gross, but effective and useful.
We walked for a few KMs in the lovely heat admiring all the unique rocks before coming to a town that was up a hill. Now, I used to think I was in shape, but I'm starting to think I was only in shape when I was 12. Going up the hill to the center of the town nearly killed me. I thought I would have a heart attack or something. Huffing and puffing at the top, I splurged on an expensive cold drink.
For some reason I was the deciding vote in climbing a massive rock that was littered with gnome houses so that we could take a picture of the valleys below. You could see for about 50 miles in any direction. I guess once I got my lungs back, it was a rather beautiful sight.
We scouted the next valley and trail that we wanted to take us back to Goreme and then hiked down the hill and down the mountain to relatively flat ground. Along the way we passed a backpacking group of 55+ year olds and I decided that I had no right to complain because if they could do I could do it. We got lost a bit, but eventually found the path to the White Valley.
Somehow our sense of direction sucked and we ended up sliding down parts of a large cliff face to get on the right trail. It was fun, but I would have liked to have shoes with better traction. Once we were on secure footing we managed to find a path that took us through a gorge and inside small cave tunnels. It was like walking through the King David water system again, but there was light every few feet. Nature always has a way of amazing and "awe-ing" oneself.
The White Valley is aptly named for the color of the rocks and cliffs. I think all the rocks were Limestone or just covered in a fine layer of white sand. Most of the surfaces were smooth and more phalic looking rocks reached towards the sky. We passed the mushroom that the giant worm (from Alice and Wonderland) sat on before coming to a paved road that took us back to Goreme. We spent the rest of the day exploring the small town, taking showers, and eating.
The next day we met Kristin at her hostel and headed to the Red and Rose Valleys. To get to the Red Valley we had to walk past the UFO museum (yeah, exactly) and then a valley of many small pumpkin patches. The Valley floor was littered with little green and yellow squashes. Two farming ladies tried to give us some, but we kindly refused. A KM later we made it to Red Valley which is more low key then Pigeon Valley with the gnome houses and consisting o red shaded hills.
We found a fairly large rock face covered in open doorways. The bottom housed a ancient church that had open graves across the entrance floor and a prayer/candle lighting section farther inside the cave. The upper floors of the cliff held small to medium rooms. Robby asked if Kristin and I were interested in renting. We said, "no".
Somehow we ended up climbing another massive hill that would not end going upwards. At least while I was contemplating a soon impending journey to heaven I got to look at lush foliage and small watering holes. Somewhere along the way the trail stopped at a store in the middle of nowhere and a church door. The Christian and Byzantine priests, back in the day, found solace in building their churches in the caves and gnome rocks, so the Valleys surrounding Goreme and other parts of Turkey are littered with 1000's of these small religious sites.
I plopped my ass down outside the church door and admired the Valley floor below. I could see the parts of the trail we hiked up and Goreme in the distance. Behind us there was Rose Valley and more hills. The guy who worked at the store was also the key holder to the Church door. He wanted a ridiculous amount of money to see the church, so we all opted to be content seating in front of the church.
Right when I was starting to feel sorry for the poor store owner, because how does he make a living when very few people venture this far into the mountains and the ones that do are most likely cheap bastards like us than free spending yuppies, when a tour group of money spending Italians showed up and bought 10 over priced cold drinks. When it started to feel too crowded at our rest stop we escaped in time before the 20 person tour group rounded the corner. I guess the store owner sees enough business to make the rent.
We hiked along a ridge that separated the Red Valley from the Rose Valley. The two Valleys were very similar in landscape, but the colors of the rocks were different shades of Red. Since it was another hot day we decided to cut our hike short and head back to town via the pumpkin patches.
The next day we paid to be "sheep" and hopped on boarded a pre-arranged tour. The tour bus was packed and I got the pleasure of being sandwiched between the driver and Robby. Lucky me. Ever since Israel buses have started to have a tendency for lolling me to sleep. I woke up 45 mins later to the driver laughing at me and asking if I had a nice nap. Grrrr. At least I don't snore.
We clamored out of the Van at 2nd largest of the 150 underground cities in the Cappadocia region. Apparently societies in the olden days were riddled with violent tendencies towards each other and this warranted the building of underground "safety" cities. When the bad guys got too close to the above ground cities the people would retreat into the ground. Just like the little cave dwellers of the prehistoric ages, these people built their caves to house 1000's, including farm animals.
The city we visited was 9 floors deep with 2 sheep and goat pens, a church with prison next to it (basically a connecting stalactite/stalagmite with chains on the ceiling to string up the bad guy in a "Y" stance) so all the church goers could scold the bad guy as they entered and exited prayer, numerous housing rooms, a large area for cooking including underground ovens, two large air vents, massive rocks to block the entrance to each new floor in case the enemy penetrated the city, and a school to teach the little ones.
Other than there being no sunlight, the cave dwelling was a cool place to live. I would have to get used to climbing up and down stairs all the time and maybe shrink in size since half the stairwells were 5 feet tall, but I think I could become an underground cave dweller for a bit. The temperature was a comfortable 65 degrees and the houses were quite roomy.
Next stop on the tour was our 3Km hike through a lush gorge. Since Robby, Kristin, and I were accustomed to walking through the Goreme Valleys at a leisurely pace it really sucked when we realized we were in a beautiful place and all we were going to see was the person in front of us' feet. The Tour women kept such a strict pace that we didn't have time to take a decent picture or even take in our surroundings. The trail was very rocky that if we didn't look down we were likely to fall.
The two bits of information that the Tour lady gave us about the trail were about as useful as the imitated one that one of the girls in the group did; "This is a tree. It breathes and grows." "This is a trail, you walk along it to get to a different place." The Tour lady was that good.
We stopped for a mini break along a muddy stream in the mist of dense foliage, so that we couldn't even get a great picture of the high cliff faces that boarded the gorge we were standing in. 10 minutes later we were hiking/walking again. We ended the hike at a very busy cafe along the muddy river for lunch. Some poor 15 year old that worked at the restaurant looked as though he was going to suffer a stroke any minute. His face was flushed and he was beyond stressed bring all 50 of us our soups. I don't think anyone would have cared too much if he took his time, but he continued to over strained himself bringing heavy trays of meat and vegetable dishes to the tables and briskly walking back to the kitchen for more. The youth in Turkey grow up fast.
After lunch was another power nap for me and a stop at an old Chruch. The Church looked more like a castle and had an indoor part that was used during the winter to stay warm and an outdoor part that was shaded during the summer. I didn't learn much else because the tour lady didn't say a lot and she gave us a whole 5 minutes to explore.
Next up, the Goreme Onyx factory. Yeap, every country that survives on Tourism loves to invite its tourist to view the makings of their wonders. We were all lead into the basement of the factory and privy to a private showing of a hard onyx block being magically turned into a smooth and shiny egg. Ohhhh, Ahhhhh, Snorrrre. Next was the "subtle" herd into the 5 beautiful onyx and other precious metals show rooms. After 5 minutes Robby, Kristin and I escaped to the ice cream stand across the street and waited not so patiently for the 15 moronic shoppers to exit the factory - we did not pay to shop. There were clearly more than just poor backpackers on our tour.
Eventually everyone exited the factory and we drove to the Fairy Chimney rocks or almost drove to the Fairy Chimney rocks. The van hit something in the road, a loud pop was heard, and 10 minutes later we were all walking our asses through the desert. At least the weather was a nice temperature since a storm looked to be brewing. It caused rays of sunlight to poke through the dark gray clouds and shroud the land in angelic light. Quite beautiful, except for the ugly orange color of the rays and the muddy gray of the clouds.
15 minutes later we rounded a corner to look down on the Fairy Chimney rocks. The rocks are basically phalic looking poles of limestone that shoot upwards and are toped with a small triangle looking stone at the top. Someone nicknamed the Valley the Valley of Penis'. We snapped pictures and waited around for the new Van to show up. So far I still have a high loathing for Tours, but half the places we went we couldn't' easily get to without a tour bus.
We made it back to Show String with enough time to grab our bags and head to the bus station to catch our 8:30pm bus to some small town to catch a night bus to Katha. The little bus that came was so packed that three unlucky souls had to sit on the floor near the door for the two hours to the bigger town. For our night bus to Katha we had to wait around the bus station for 2 hours (an hour after the departure time of the bus) frantically asking every bus that pulled up if they were the bus we needed since no one could tell us exactly were our bus was going to dock. So I don't know what to write about first. I guess I will just go in order of events and then write the trouble of buses in-between.
So, Goreme (Gor-E-may) (which is the main city in Cappadocia - Cappadocia being a region rather than a city) turned out to be a beautiful. Robby and my pension was a room within a cave because Goreme is the Cave town. I truly believe that the creators of Smurfs and Flintstones came to Goreme some 45 years ago, looked around, got ideas and then designed their TV shows.
Goreme is a quaint town surrounded by 100's of miles of hiking trails through colorful canyons of gnome, phalic, and mushroom looking pointed rocks. They sprang up due to volcanic activity in the region millions of years ago and have been defined and redefined by nature and the public ever since. Most of the Gnome ones were (and are) used as houses for numerous societies, hence the cave we were living in.
We arrived in Goreme at 6am and were shuttled to the Show String Pension. Since check in wasn't until 9 am I got the pleasure of attempting to sleep on a rather B.O. smelling blanket covered bench while Robby and the rest of the 10 tired souls that arrived with us read up on the local history of Goreme and some of the activities to do. Around 8 am Robby rudely awoke me and told me we were going on a journey to find Kristin (the girl we met on the Falucca in Egypt). We had scheduled to met her at Mt Nemrut, but our plans changes and she was in Goreme at the same time as us.
We found Kristin's hostels in no time, but there was no sign of Kristin, so we decided to have breakfast and wait a bit. We didn't have to wait long before she showed up and it was like being back in Egypt. We chatted, telling horror and funny stories before Michelle, a friend of Kristin's, showed up.
Once breakfast was over we headed to Pigeon Valley. We entered the canyon via a tree lined dirt road that opened onto white-brown gnome rocks that had holes and doors cut into them. Pigeon Valley got it's name from all the little square inlets in the gnome rocks that allow Pigeons to poop in. Every once and a while the poop is collected and used as ferterlizer. Gross, but effective and useful.
We walked for a few KMs in the lovely heat admiring all the unique rocks before coming to a town that was up a hill. Now, I used to think I was in shape, but I'm starting to think I was only in shape when I was 12. Going up the hill to the center of the town nearly killed me. I thought I would have a heart attack or something. Huffing and puffing at the top, I splurged on an expensive cold drink.
For some reason I was the deciding vote in climbing a massive rock that was littered with gnome houses so that we could take a picture of the valleys below. You could see for about 50 miles in any direction. I guess once I got my lungs back, it was a rather beautiful sight.
We scouted the next valley and trail that we wanted to take us back to Goreme and then hiked down the hill and down the mountain to relatively flat ground. Along the way we passed a backpacking group of 55+ year olds and I decided that I had no right to complain because if they could do I could do it. We got lost a bit, but eventually found the path to the White Valley.
Somehow our sense of direction sucked and we ended up sliding down parts of a large cliff face to get on the right trail. It was fun, but I would have liked to have shoes with better traction. Once we were on secure footing we managed to find a path that took us through a gorge and inside small cave tunnels. It was like walking through the King David water system again, but there was light every few feet. Nature always has a way of amazing and "awe-ing" oneself.
The White Valley is aptly named for the color of the rocks and cliffs. I think all the rocks were Limestone or just covered in a fine layer of white sand. Most of the surfaces were smooth and more phalic looking rocks reached towards the sky. We passed the mushroom that the giant worm (from Alice and Wonderland) sat on before coming to a paved road that took us back to Goreme. We spent the rest of the day exploring the small town, taking showers, and eating.
The next day we met Kristin at her hostel and headed to the Red and Rose Valleys. To get to the Red Valley we had to walk past the UFO museum (yeah, exactly) and then a valley of many small pumpkin patches. The Valley floor was littered with little green and yellow squashes. Two farming ladies tried to give us some, but we kindly refused. A KM later we made it to Red Valley which is more low key then Pigeon Valley with the gnome houses and consisting o red shaded hills.
We found a fairly large rock face covered in open doorways. The bottom housed a ancient church that had open graves across the entrance floor and a prayer/candle lighting section farther inside the cave. The upper floors of the cliff held small to medium rooms. Robby asked if Kristin and I were interested in renting. We said, "no".
Somehow we ended up climbing another massive hill that would not end going upwards. At least while I was contemplating a soon impending journey to heaven I got to look at lush foliage and small watering holes. Somewhere along the way the trail stopped at a store in the middle of nowhere and a church door. The Christian and Byzantine priests, back in the day, found solace in building their churches in the caves and gnome rocks, so the Valleys surrounding Goreme and other parts of Turkey are littered with 1000's of these small religious sites.
I plopped my ass down outside the church door and admired the Valley floor below. I could see the parts of the trail we hiked up and Goreme in the distance. Behind us there was Rose Valley and more hills. The guy who worked at the store was also the key holder to the Church door. He wanted a ridiculous amount of money to see the church, so we all opted to be content seating in front of the church.
Right when I was starting to feel sorry for the poor store owner, because how does he make a living when very few people venture this far into the mountains and the ones that do are most likely cheap bastards like us than free spending yuppies, when a tour group of money spending Italians showed up and bought 10 over priced cold drinks. When it started to feel too crowded at our rest stop we escaped in time before the 20 person tour group rounded the corner. I guess the store owner sees enough business to make the rent.
We hiked along a ridge that separated the Red Valley from the Rose Valley. The two Valleys were very similar in landscape, but the colors of the rocks were different shades of Red. Since it was another hot day we decided to cut our hike short and head back to town via the pumpkin patches.
The next day we paid to be "sheep" and hopped on boarded a pre-arranged tour. The tour bus was packed and I got the pleasure of being sandwiched between the driver and Robby. Lucky me. Ever since Israel buses have started to have a tendency for lolling me to sleep. I woke up 45 mins later to the driver laughing at me and asking if I had a nice nap. Grrrr. At least I don't snore.
We clamored out of the Van at 2nd largest of the 150 underground cities in the Cappadocia region. Apparently societies in the olden days were riddled with violent tendencies towards each other and this warranted the building of underground "safety" cities. When the bad guys got too close to the above ground cities the people would retreat into the ground. Just like the little cave dwellers of the prehistoric ages, these people built their caves to house 1000's, including farm animals.
The city we visited was 9 floors deep with 2 sheep and goat pens, a church with prison next to it (basically a connecting stalactite/stalagmite with chains on the ceiling to string up the bad guy in a "Y" stance) so all the church goers could scold the bad guy as they entered and exited prayer, numerous housing rooms, a large area for cooking including underground ovens, two large air vents, massive rocks to block the entrance to each new floor in case the enemy penetrated the city, and a school to teach the little ones.
Other than there being no sunlight, the cave dwelling was a cool place to live. I would have to get used to climbing up and down stairs all the time and maybe shrink in size since half the stairwells were 5 feet tall, but I think I could become an underground cave dweller for a bit. The temperature was a comfortable 65 degrees and the houses were quite roomy.
Next stop on the tour was our 3Km hike through a lush gorge. Since Robby, Kristin, and I were accustomed to walking through the Goreme Valleys at a leisurely pace it really sucked when we realized we were in a beautiful place and all we were going to see was the person in front of us' feet. The Tour women kept such a strict pace that we didn't have time to take a decent picture or even take in our surroundings. The trail was very rocky that if we didn't look down we were likely to fall.
The two bits of information that the Tour lady gave us about the trail were about as useful as the imitated one that one of the girls in the group did; "This is a tree. It breathes and grows." "This is a trail, you walk along it to get to a different place." The Tour lady was that good.
We stopped for a mini break along a muddy stream in the mist of dense foliage, so that we couldn't even get a great picture of the high cliff faces that boarded the gorge we were standing in. 10 minutes later we were hiking/walking again. We ended the hike at a very busy cafe along the muddy river for lunch. Some poor 15 year old that worked at the restaurant looked as though he was going to suffer a stroke any minute. His face was flushed and he was beyond stressed bring all 50 of us our soups. I don't think anyone would have cared too much if he took his time, but he continued to over strained himself bringing heavy trays of meat and vegetable dishes to the tables and briskly walking back to the kitchen for more. The youth in Turkey grow up fast.
After lunch was another power nap for me and a stop at an old Chruch. The Church looked more like a castle and had an indoor part that was used during the winter to stay warm and an outdoor part that was shaded during the summer. I didn't learn much else because the tour lady didn't say a lot and she gave us a whole 5 minutes to explore.
Next up, the Goreme Onyx factory. Yeap, every country that survives on Tourism loves to invite its tourist to view the makings of their wonders. We were all lead into the basement of the factory and privy to a private showing of a hard onyx block being magically turned into a smooth and shiny egg. Ohhhh, Ahhhhh, Snorrrre. Next was the "subtle" herd into the 5 beautiful onyx and other precious metals show rooms. After 5 minutes Robby, Kristin and I escaped to the ice cream stand across the street and waited not so patiently for the 15 moronic shoppers to exit the factory - we did not pay to shop. There were clearly more than just poor backpackers on our tour.
Eventually everyone exited the factory and we drove to the Fairy Chimney rocks or almost drove to the Fairy Chimney rocks. The van hit something in the road, a loud pop was heard, and 10 minutes later we were all walking our asses through the desert. At least the weather was a nice temperature since a storm looked to be brewing. It caused rays of sunlight to poke through the dark gray clouds and shroud the land in angelic light. Quite beautiful, except for the ugly orange color of the rays and the muddy gray of the clouds.
15 minutes later we rounded a corner to look down on the Fairy Chimney rocks. The rocks are basically phalic looking poles of limestone that shoot upwards and are toped with a small triangle looking stone at the top. Someone nicknamed the Valley the Valley of Penis'. We snapped pictures and waited around for the new Van to show up. So far I still have a high loathing for Tours, but half the places we went we couldn't' easily get to without a tour bus.
We made it back to Show String with enough time to grab our bags and head to the bus station to catch our 8:30pm bus to some small town to catch a night bus to Katha. The little bus that came was so packed that three unlucky souls had to sit on the floor near the door for the two hours to the bigger town. For our night bus to Katha we had to wait around the bus station for 2 hours (an hour after the departure time of the bus) frantically asking every bus that pulled up if they were the bus we needed since no one could tell us exactly were our bus was going to dock.
After annoying the guy at the ticket office we were stuck with another guy going on the same bus with us and from there we dragged our bags back and forth across the bus station before some guy was running across the street to stop our bus as it was driving passed the station. We hauled ass to the illegally parked bus, handed our backpacks over to the bus guy and boarded a very hot and very packed bus. Our seats were the 2 before the row of four at the back of the bus. Three little kids were in our seats that begrudenly moved into the ailse and behind us when we came. We sat down with 4 adults, 3 kids under three, 2 kids about 7, and one grandma sharing the 4 seats behind us, one adult under the back of our seats and three small ones passed out in the ailse. This was the start of a fun nights rest.
Kristin got the pleasure of sitting next to a nice Turkish man, but he feel asleep with his head constantly rolling on Kristin. I had a 7 year old sleeping on the back of my head rest. I didn't want to hit the kid so I couldn't really stick my head all the way back and I couldn't lean my chair back because of all the people behind me. The bus stopped every three hours for a 30 minute piss break where the lights went on, the kids hit our elbows on the way outside and the AC was turned off.
Around 6:30am we rolled into dank bus station and sort of continued to doze because we figured the bus guy would tell us when we reached Katha. Nope, everyone got off the bus and Kristin told us we had arrived when she ventured out to see were we were. Katha, a small dust pit of despair. We wearily exited the bus, grabbed our bags and wondered what to do next. We knew that a city bus to Mt. Nemrut didn't leave until about 2pm and so we were decided to wander into town when a guy offered to take us to our hostel for an exorbitant price. We told the guy no, but he kept asking and telling us we wouldn't get a better deal. We opted to wait until the city bus. On top of the lovely haggler, a 12 year old with his fly unzipped stared at us like we were monkeys in the zoo. We were not in the mood. Just as we picked up our bags to walk into town to find a coffee shop a nice man told us he was headed to Mt. Nemrut and offered to take us for a reasonable sum. We agreed.
Our pension was the last rest stop before the entrance to Mt. Nemrut and that is why we choose it, but the beds were most likely wood planks covered in sheets on top squeaky springs inside an airless room with a shower that dripped freezing cold water. We'd found paradise. At least we got to sleep the morning away instead of being goggled at by the Katha locals.
We woke at noon, decided to venture down the mountain to the pension we saw earlier with all the tour buses and find a bite to eat. The pension turned out to be farther than we thought and by the time we got there all the buses had gone. It was us and the Hotel staff and eggs for lunch. We wished someone would drive us back up the 2KM hill to our pension, but instead we worked off the eggs by climbing the 25 degree incline hill. The rest of the day was spent reading and relaxing.
We woke at 2 am to hike the 10 Km to the top of Mt. Nemrut to watch the sunrise. Mt. Nemrut is known for its 2 meter high stone heads that lie at the feet of the statue bodies. The heads used to be attached to the bodies, but after an earthquake, they rolled to the ground. The statues were built by a crazy king (sort of like Ramese II) who worshiped himself among other gods. He somehow built a large stone peak on top of Mt. Nemrut, put statues around it and most likely buried some dead people within the peak.
We walked uphill under the cover of a cool starry night, chatting and enjoying ourselves. Surprisingly multiple cars passed us on the way up. We secretly wished they'd give us a ride, but if you saw three dark figures walking along a mountainside at 3 in the morning would you stop and offer a ride? The Lonely Planet had said that the trek to the top of Mt. Nemrut was only 6KM, which it was really 10, so when it told us that the last 3 KM of the trek would have to be driven in 1st gear we paid no attention. Apparently someone got some information right and the last 3 KM sucked big time. Nearly a 40 degree incline that didn't even out even for a brief bit. Up, up, and up. We passed a car that stalled out and was being pushed up the hill, but soon that car regained its engine and passed us.
2 hours and 7 minutes since we had started our journey we were regaining our breathes on a bench a mere 600 meters from the top. Somehow the coffee seller and his buddies knew we were from Cesme Pension. I guess not many people walk and the pension guy told his friends we planned to walk. We climbed the 600 meters of steps to the top and watched the sun rise through a foggy haze. At least the heads were interesting or the walk was for nothing. There were about 8 heads on the East side of the mountain. The human looking head was of the King and the rest were various animal heads that represented the Gods. 5 of the bodies sat in a line above the heads. We walked around the top of the peak to the West side where there were more heads, but most of the statues were destroyed. As we walked back towards the East side and the exit, the sun came out of the fog and showed us its orange and yellow rays. The journey was worth it afterall.
We lucked out in hitchhiking down the mountain to the pension because it would have torn our knees to shred's walking. A nice group of guys pulled over and stuffed us three, along with 2 bigger guys in the back of a small Neon while two guys rode in front. Hey, a free rides a free ride. Besides, we had to catch a 7:30 am city bus back to Katha to catch another city bus to Urfa.
We loaded into a 15 pass van with a family of 5 kids and 2 parents for an hour before we transferred to another 15 pass van that crammed us, the family, 13 other people, and Robby's backpacking backpack into the non ACed and closed windowed van. We sped along the city streets looking for more passengers and slowly made our way to Urfa, a big city in Eastern Turkey. Three hours later we breathed fresh air at another dirty bus station while collecting ourselves.
Urfa basically looks like another Cairo. Poor, dirty, and covered in annoying hecklers and catcallers. Somehow we found our way to Hospitality Hostel, a bunch of rooms in a house of a happy old couple. We were given a nice room, again with the lumpy hard beds and no air circulation, but it was clean and the owners were very friendly. We dropped our bags and were lead into town by Aziz, the owner of the Hostel.
He took us to a holy fish pool that is said to house the fish of the Prophet Mohammed. The story of the fish somehow goes like this: There was a castle on the hill that Mohammed was living in and a bad guy wanted to live there so he blasted Mohammed out of the castle which blew Mohammed into the air and down onto the pond, which saved his life, and all the fiery bits of castle turned into fish in the pond. Something like that and now the fish are sacred and people from all over come here to feed them. Aziz left us with a 13 year old that looked about 10 and told us he was his nephew and a Jr. Tour guide.
We asked the nephew to take us to an internet cafe and ended up seeing the fish pond again, along with a mosque, a giant park, numerous streets, and eventually a very smoky, all male internet cafe. We checked our emails, lost the nephew and ventured into downtown Urfa. We came upon a bazaar, looked about, tried in vain to find food that wasn't ke-bob or pizza and went back to the Hostel. The mother of the hostel cooked RObby and I a homecooked dinner and we retired early, but not before meeting the other 20 or so people that were staying at the house. We didn't think there were that many rooms, but I guess they were good at cramming in the beds.
The next morning we took a city bus to Harran. We boarded a fairly empty 15 pass van and spent the next hour going up and down the city streets trying to find more passengers before the driver would head to Harran. The drivers don't like to drive places without a full van because gas is so expensive, but I would think driving 5 miles an hour up and down hills would waste more gas than just driving to the location. Good thing I'm not a bus driver.
Harran is the world's longest inhabited city...now barely inhabited city. We pulled up along side a bee hive house, got out and took in the dirt and tussle weeds. The old section of Harran is know for the Oldest Mosque, the castle and the bee hive houses. The bee hive houses are basically bee hive looking dome roofs placed on top square walls, all made of mud, bricks, and plants. The domes of the bee hives were reinforced with bricks stolen from the Mosque and Castle.
The place we stopped at was a bee hive house that visitors could look in and see how the people lived. The temperature was a cool 80 degrees while outside burned under the 105 degree sun. Mats and little chairs covered the floors, a stone table was set up in the kitchen, good luck charms hung from the ceiling, and old men stared at us over their huka containers. We ventured into town.
What remained of the largest Mosque in the world was a half destroyed rectangular bell tower and one wall. Piles of rubble lay forgotten and crumbled along the dimensions of the old walls and many more pieces of crumbled rocks littered the valley for a distance. Harran looked to be quite large in its hay day.
The castle was falling apart, but one could still climb the three floors and look out at the town. Harran used to be covered in grass and surrounded by lakes, but now it is a dust bowl surrounded by farmland. It's weird because the castle, the Mosque, the bee hive houses and a few other houses are all set upon dirt while just out of reach is bright green crops and water. It's like the land is trying to gave up on life, get rid of life and fade into nothingness, but humans won't let it go.
We headed back to Urfa, wandered about some more and went to the bus station to board our respective buses. Kristin was headed to Olympos for a week of relaxation while Robby and I were headed to Istanbul to catch a bus to Budapest. We decided that it was too expensive to travel in Greece for a week, so we might as well travel to Budapest and Prague for cheaper and see more. We were kind of sick of the same old Roman and Greek ruins anyhow and needed something new, like gothic buildings and castles. (Short note, it is really expensive and quite hard to get to Tel Aviv from Europe, so I will be forfeiting my semi free ticket home from Israel and boarding a plane from Krakow to Dublin to LA on September 11th. Now I have a few extra days to explore Europe and I don't have to backtrack to the Middle East, especially during a war time.)
Of Course the bus that Robby and I were taking was late and after wandering if it was going to show up, a guy told us to follow him out of the bus station, up and over the over pass, down to the other side of the street and on to an island in the middle of the main road. We stood with our packs wondering what the hell we were doing. We finally understood after a bus stopped at the island (not our bus) and dropped people off. Somehow we had managed to book another bus that didn't stop at the bus station. Kristin (who was catching a later bus), Robby and I decided that in the future on top of asking the bus people if the bus is large (some are 15 passes), ACed, and for a seat in the middle of the bus, we now have to ask if it actually stops at the station or if we need to go chase it down.
45 minutes late our bus stopped at the Island, we said goodbye to Kristin, and boarded a 15 hour hell ride. Now most people know that on a bus the seats go back a little and if it is an over night bus the seats will go back. Somehow this understanding of bus logic didn't get passed along to the mean old man sitting behind me. I pushed my chair back and was immediately launched forward. The old man had pushed his hands down on the top of my seat and let go, effectively flicking the seat. I turned around and was met with an evil glare and an expression that said, "put the seat up". I put it up and cowered in an uncomfortable position. I knew that the seats had about a foot and a half of knee room, but that was still a foot and a half of knee room. Somehow the old man had his chair all the way forward and his knees pressing into the back of my upright chair. I think he was slouching all the way forward.
I asked Robby to watch the man through the crack in the chairs and tell me when he moved so I could slowly move the chair backwards. It worked for a bit, but everytime I got off the bus and back on, the chair was back upright. Smart little bastard. Another night of restless sleeping.
So now I am in Hungary, have been for a while, but I've written enough for this blog and bored you all miserably. So good night and I will write more about horrible bus journeys later.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
damn program
So i just spent literally the last 4 hours typing the next blog entry and then the fucking program goes and deletes everything and I'm too pissed off to re-write it all again right now so this message is to basically say I'm still alive and another installment of my journey will be available sometime soon.
Selcuk, Pamakkale, Water, and Trees
After a very long and grueling 10 hour bus ride from Cannakkale to Selcuk we arrived around 6:30 am to the sleepy little Hostel of Kiwi. We woke up the poor night manager to ask for the room that we had supposively reserved through Hassle Free (Hassle) travel agency, but they messed up again and Kiwi Hostel had expected us the day before we got there. They didn't have any dorm rooms available, but he gave us a room to ourselves in the basement with a King size bed to share. That early in the morning we didn't care, partly because the bed was soft and the room was cool. We slept a few hours and went to officially check in.
The lady that owns Kiwi hostel is a very nice Aussie (yeah, not sure why it's called Kiwi Hostel either) who gave us free breakfast and told us about all the cool things that we could do in Selcuk. We made a plan and set out for Ephesus and Artemis' Temple. 1st stop was to the Archeology museum that had us hanging about for a half hour because they were on lunch break, but turned out to be worth the wait. It was a small museum, but held very beautiful stone reliefs of the Gods and Goddesses. There was a whole room dedicated to the history of the gladiators. It told how they were mostly slaves and captured enemies that fought to the grisly death. Most of the fighters never made it past their 25th birthdays. Sad, but it was at a time where people got off on blood and death.
After the museum we walked along the 1.8 mile tree lined walkway to Ephesus. Along the way we stopped at Artemis' Temple and were very disappointed in one of the 7 Wonders of the World. In the olden days the Temple was a magnificent building of columned courtyards surrounded by 6 small lakes and with the circumference of 3 football fields. In all its glory it was quite an amazing feat to build, but now all that remains are a few piles of columned rubble and one erect column. Some of the lakes are there, but they're muddy and homes to lots of geese. The story goes that a mad lover of Cleopatra got angry and burnt the Temple to the ground. The Greeks really did have quite a temper. Now there is not much to look at for this spectacular monument.
We continued our walk until an empty tour bus stopped and the driver told us to get on. He said that it was a long way to walk and too hot. We gratefully accepted and were at the entrance in no time. We dismissed a ton of hasslers, bought our tickets and a computerized information thing and headed in. For those of you that don't know, Ephesus was a major city and way station for many of the Greek Royal members and the Greek Gods. Like in Karnak, Kings kept adding to the buildings, creating different and bigger complexes.
With a bad map and the trusty audio tour guide we learned about the history of Ephesus and its people. The people under went many changes of laws and governments because they changed ruling parties so any times. Buildings were added and taken down. A grand Library was erected in-between two buildings and so the architect made the higher walls slant inwards to give the Library the appearance of looking mightier than it really was. There were some impressive houses to see, but they cost too much extra so we opted to skip them. We walked the end of the 3km city and then walked the 3km back to the beginning. You weren't allowed to return the audio guide just anywhere. Just where we got them from. It was ok because we had more time to listen to all the background history.
We hopped a bus back to town and pretty much were in bed by 11pm. There is nothing to do in Selcuk during the night unless you are an old man or you go to Attila's - the expensive happening backpackers joint in the area.
The next morning we went to St. John's Church. It is said that when Jesus was about to be crucified, he pulled John away and told him, to look after Mary. So when Jesus was killed, John took Mary and they lived in the huge Church for many years and were happy until someone came and exiled John to an Island. There is the "Home of Mary" near Ephesus and I think that is where Mary went to live after John left. Anyhow, the Church is rather large with a main gate that looks like the entrance to a fortress, large stone wall with turrets. What remains of the buildings inside are several erect archways and columns, a small coliseum, a baptism bath, the treasury (which is some holes in the wall), and pieces of Christian reliefs mixed throughout broken walls and floors.
Above the Church on the hill that looks out over the whole valley is the Castle. I don't know much about it except that it was rather large with a wall surrounding the whole place. Robby and I tried in vain for an hour of fruitless walking to finding the entrance to the Castle only to discover that the entrance was through St. John's Church and that it closed a year ago. Go figure. Well, there is a Castle and there will remain a Castle and hopefully someday I will get to come back and see it.
Since it was really hot and Robby and I hadn't had a true hour of relaxing in the past few days, we headed to the Kiwi pool. Little did we know that the private pool for the Hostel would be a 3km walk along hot asphalt. When we had arrived at Kiwi house they gave us a map, but it was hand drawn and terrible at placing distances. We didn't think it was very far and that's why we never asked for a ride. At least we were nice and sweaty by the time we found the place. The Kiwi pool was hidden in a patch of peach and nectarine groves. The water came directly from a natural spring so was freezingly refreshing. It was us and three other people who enjoyed the serene-like tranquility of the place. No traffic, hardly any people, lush trees everywhere and free fresh fruit. Very nice. We stay for a while and headed back to town for dinner, reading and bed.
The next morning we were up fairly early because we were starting a three day crazed journey of seeing towns for a day and then driving to new towns. We headed to Pamukkale first. Pamukkale is a small ancient village situated on top a mountain ridge overlooking farm land and high peaks across the valley. The best part of the hike up the hill to the ruin city was the calcumite covered rocks. Nature decided there wasn't enough beauty in the world and so it sculpted a whole hillside and beyond with white, snow-like rocks that dripped over bushes or formed into large pools that natural spring water poured into.
My first introduction to Pamukkale was being yelled at by a "lifeguard/security guard" because I had ventured up a few some hills to take a picture of a particular dripping rock and from below a very shrill and annoying whistle starts to go off. I looked around and couldn't see where the noise was originating from through all the happy swimsuit clad people splashing in the pools. I climbed a little high and the whistle didn't shut up. Instinct told me the whistle was directed at me, so I looked around again and this time I saw one very pissed off guy coming towards me, yelling to get down.
I figured, "Well, I’m already up here and I', already in trouble, so I might as well snap my shot." I clicked the shutter and headed to the guard. He pretty much tore my head off because I wasn't allowed to climb the calcumite not on the watered trail (they were trying to preserve the rock)and both Robby and I had our shows on, a huge NO, No. He pointed to a sign a good 10 yards from where I had started climbing and yelled at us some more. When we got close enough to read the sign it said in some really awful English to not climb the rocks. Opps. The sign that said to take your shoes off was turned away from us at the entrance and so we never saw it. We said sorry to the unforgiving guard and continued on our way. We walked up the 1 km calcumite hill admiring the natural beauty of the place and regretting the fact that no one told us to bring a swimsuit. Robby went under one of the waterfalls to get wet.
We eventually reached the museum at the top of the lakes and learned about the Greek Gods and some of the culture that lived in Pamukkale. The museum was housed in the giant bath house of the ancient culture and told the story of the people who lived there. Pamukkale was an epicenter of many people. The town was about 2 times the size of Ephesus with the springs being a major attraction for all. The waters processed healing abilities and so many of the towns folks took baths regularly. A nice idea back then. We wandered along the car road to the columned Temple and then continued on to the numerous grave sites. It seemed that the further we went along the road the less people and pretty soon it was us and bewildered faces from passing cars and tour buses. I guess it was too hot for people to be walking about. We didn't mind because no one got in the way of our shots.
I found the 1km stretch of graveyard to be rather interesting. It looked like Superman had had a really bad day and decided to throw a 100's of stone coffins as a stress reliever. Broken resting places lay littered about the ground. Some sideways, upside down, on top of each other, and crumbling. The insides were all pillages long ago, the bodies missing. It makes you wonder what the world has come too when ancient societies that whole-heartedly believe in an afterlife and in death that they spend their lives preparing for death and in a mere 2000 years their resting places are dug up and looted for the sake of greed. The dead are carelessly thrown to the side, not a thought of remorse among the ones that profit. It makes you wonder if your body will still be lying in its finally resting place in a 1000 years or so or in some random museum for little kids to laugh at.
We managed to walk to the end of the city in search of finding the red calcumite red formations, but we rewarded with a mini-mart/ restaurant that had seen better days. The parking lot and for path to the abandon eatery was covered in weeds and dust. We decided to head back along the cliff edge and admire the valley below. There were many dry calcumite pools spanning across the top of the cliff, but the water had dried up 5 years ago. We climbed a massive hill to look down into the theater and were rewarded with 4 intact statues and a beautiful backstage relief of ancient gods. We couldn't go down the stairs and get a better look because there was a dig in progress. I tried to get Robby to go ask them for a job, but she said, "No," and admired them from afar.
That evening we hopped on two more buses to make it to Koycegiz for the night. We were told by the owner of Kiwi Hostel that Koycegiz was the place to go if you wanted a nice boat ride to relax and not many people because the tourist buses hadn't found the place yet. We checked into one of the nicest Hostels ever and went to sleep in a beautiful wooden dorm room with a slanted ceiling and a view of the lake beyond. In the morning we boarded the day boat cruise that would take us to Turtle Island and mud baths.
Robby and I lucked out and got on a boat with only Turkish people and I think a Croatian family. Since it was not a tourist boat we had an entertainer Turkish man that showed us magic tricks with strings and then dressed up as a female belly dancer and strutted his stuff while amusing us and passing boats. The men on other boats would be really jealous of us because we had a belly dancer, but then they'd realize it was a guy and get embarrassed for drooling.
First stop after sailing through the tall reed water way was Turtle beach. The Turtles come out at night, but during the day everyone lounges around on the beach and takes in the beauty of the water. Robby and I joined the rest of the morons in the water and tried to body surf on the little waves. Both of us ended up with salt water up our noses. Yuck. We stayed at the beach for 3 hours and then headed to a mud bath on the edge of the water. The building looked like a creepy stripped clown tent that houses hot spring baths, but it was $2 USD to cover ourselves in stinky mud, turn to a green cement monster in the sun and then take a dip in the soothing hot water. It was well worth the money.
We went back to the home island, grabbed our stuff and boarded a bus to Fethiye. Someone told us to stay at Ferah hostel, but I think whoever that person was was on crack when they said it was a nice place. Robby and I had to fight with 8 other people for the remaining dorm beds and ended up in a small shack out front in the garden that was used as a TV lounge. There were sheer curtains with a yapping mutt outside and a safety light that flashed on and in our eyes everytime an ant walked by. Needless to say we didn't get much sleep and we paid more than anywhere else we'd been for a whole 9hrs accommodations.
The next day we boarded a large yacht for our splurge trip in Turkey. We were convinced that if you were in Turkey you had to go on a Blue Cruise. Since we went on the felucca we figured that a large, posh boat would be a much better adventure. We and 10 other people were the happy passengers and crew on the boat. Everyone got to buddy up in a room with a queen bed, a small closet, and a bath room with a removable spicket in the sink for a shower. It went about 3 ft, so we opted for swims and the hose on deck for a shower.
Intro to the passengers: Aussie friends, Craig and Melissa (Mel); Aussie friends, Sara and Carrie; The Turk, Yusef; and the Italian Stallions, Andrea (Male), Lorenzo, and Rudy. The crew consisted of Sean (Aussie), 1st mate and cook and Ali (Turk), captain. Everyone was extremely nice, but all the Aussies were party people, the Italian’s were great dancers and the Turks just blended in. Robby and I were part of all the groups, but if we were there we could be invisible if we wanted.
We began the day eating a great lunch prepared by Sean who said that this was only the beginning and the best was yet to come. It was so nice to have a real meal; bread, starch, veggies, and meat. We've been basically getting by on just carbs. Sean was impressed because all the food that we put on the table was devoured. Apparently his last boat didn't eat anything and he was mad. We couldn't get enough.
We sailed to a bay and swam in the clear emerald water for a while. Then we headed to St. Christopher's Island, the home of Santa. Yeah, Santa was a real guy who used to give presents to people and he lived on this island for a brief period of time. We docked for the night, had another swim and laughed at the Italians that arrived late via the ice cream boat. Everyone in Turkey helps each other out.
We all clamored up the steep hillside of St. Christopher's Island to look at the ruin 8 Churches, the remains of the civilization that lived there long ago, and watch the sunset. We climbed back down and spent the rest of the night reading and playing card games. The Aussies played drinking games and sang songs.
We spent the majority of the next day sailing so that we could spend the last day swimming and relaxing. We stopped a few places for a swim and docked for the night at Kas (pronounced Cash). We were allowed to venture through the cute little cobble stone town until dinner time where we came back to enjoy some of the freshly caught fish of the day. I had helped to catch two of them while sailing. We played a few rows of drinking games before heading to a bar and talking into the early morning.
The following day we sailed pass the Sunken City of Kekova while Sean tried to tell us the little information he knew. Large town built on the water, but as nature goes, the waters rose and the town was submerged. Parts of remaining buildings and stairs can still be seen above water, but the best way to see the city is to scuba. Too bad we couldn't afford it. We docked across the way at the island of Simena. There was a castle at the top that we hiked to. We took a wrong turn and ended up at the graveyard of the old village. More stone coffins that protrude from the ground, but they covered the side of the hill and went all the way down to the water, some even in the water. We took pictures, sat in the shade a bit and continued to our dock for the night.
The night activity was Smuggler's Inn. Some guy decided it would be awesome to build a bar in the middle of a remote island with access only by boat and then offer shuttle coats to all the cruise ships to the bar. We went and danced the night away with old America and Aussie songs. The Aussies and the Italians got plastered while we just danced. We came back to the boat around 2:30am and everyone, but us and Andrea decided to go for a "nudy" swim. The jumped in the cold water and started giggling and talking really loud that the next morning Sean was reprimanded by three or so captains from other boats. He didn't care because the other boats knew that this was an area where the backpacker boats docked and therefore they should know that it will be loud. Us and the rest of the passenger got a rude awakening from some crazy guy who decided that we kept him up all night so he was going to jump in the water at 7:30 am and start screaming at us to wake up and join him. Yeah all the drinkers were hung over and we just wanted to sleep. He didn't shut up and we all lumbered onto the deck for breakfast.
We spent the remaining of the morning swimming, talking and packing. We got off the boat and boarded a bus to take us to Olympos. Robby and I had assumed that Olympus was a fairly large town because all the Blue Cruises went and left from there, but it turns out it is a quaint little backpacking village stuffed into the woods. All the stores and Hostels are tree house/cabins surrounded by mountains and trees. We traveled with the Aussies to Bayram's and somehow stayed in a small shanty hut that was the last one up the hill and behind all the other tree houses. Our roommate was Craig while the three other girls shared the cabin below. All three of us climbed a dangerous slope and entered the hut thinking at any moment the crooked wooden building was going to collapse and we'd all tumbled down the hill into the rest of the tree houses and most likely be killed by rolling so many times. Luckily the place held.
We wandered through the small town and realized we were staying at the 2nd most popular place, but one of the shittist in my opinion. At least they gave you free tea and coffee, breakfast and dinner. Breakfast had a variety of choices which made us quite happy since we were sick of Turkish breakfast: hot hard boiled egg, tomatoes, cucumbers, bread, salty cheese and tea. There is only so much of that you can take.
We went down the 500 meter wooden path to the beach and somehow managed to absent-mindedly pass the toll booth. We were hoping to find the Aussies, but the beach turned out to be far bigger then we expected and we found our own spot on the sand near the idiot cliff jumpers. We stayed a bit and headed back to read a bit on the pillow covered decks of the Hostel. Bayram's tree house might suck, but they had a cozy reading, playing games atmosphere where you could take off your shows and lay on a rugged and pillowed platform. We met a nice Aussie couple that filled us in on the latest in the new and kind of made me paranoid.
They told us that 19 idiots decided to bring liquid weapons on board 19 separate flights to the US where they would set them off via cell phones. Luckily they were caught before the planes took off, but now there is a strict band on all carry-ons. You’re not allowed to bring anything on the plane, but your passport and medicine. Yeah, this rule better get amended soon because there is no way I'm sticking my camera and film under the plane. So if anyone hears more on this subject will you please keep me updated? Thanks, I appreciated it. Hopefully the scare will blow over soon.
We found the Aussies sometime later and learned how to play Uker, which is a great game and if anyone wants to play I'd be more than happy to teach you. After 1 am Robby and I decided to be losers and good to bed while the Aussies opted for dancing at the Orange Night Club. We were rudely awoken by Craig who was too drunk to know that if he kept talking to us at 4 in the morning we didn't want to hear it. Eventually he passed out and we got to wake him up at 9am since check out was at 10 am.
Robby and I had planned to go walking through the ruins, but we spent the majority of the morning playing Uker with the Hung-over people. It was relaxing and fun, so we didn't care too much. After 2m we said we'd meet them at the beach and head down the beach road to the ruins. Remnants of the vast town were scattered throughout the trees, so Robby and I selected a path and went on a lovely hike through the woods. The day was beautiful and we enjoyed the exercise and tranquility that came with hiking. I hadn't realized how much I missed hiking until I came to Olympos. Nice place to stay for a little bit.
We hiked out onto the beach and found the Aussies just as they were preparing to head back. We all were catching the 5 pm bus to Antayla. We walked back, grabbed a bite to eat and smashed into the over crowded bus. After 20 minutes we transferred to a new bus and within 2 hours we were at the main bus station in Antayla awaking our night bus to Cappadocia. Sara and Carrie were coming on the same bus, but Craig and Mel had to stay the night and catch a plane to London in the morning. We said sad goodbyes and headed to the gnome village of Goreme.
Since I've already written a ton and we want to get food, I will write about Cappadocia later. Until then stay safe, don't fly anywhere, and tell me hi once in a while.
The lady that owns Kiwi hostel is a very nice Aussie (yeah, not sure why it's called Kiwi Hostel either) who gave us free breakfast and told us about all the cool things that we could do in Selcuk. We made a plan and set out for Ephesus and Artemis' Temple. 1st stop was to the Archeology museum that had us hanging about for a half hour because they were on lunch break, but turned out to be worth the wait. It was a small museum, but held very beautiful stone reliefs of the Gods and Goddesses. There was a whole room dedicated to the history of the gladiators. It told how they were mostly slaves and captured enemies that fought to the grisly death. Most of the fighters never made it past their 25th birthdays. Sad, but it was at a time where people got off on blood and death.
After the museum we walked along the 1.8 mile tree lined walkway to Ephesus. Along the way we stopped at Artemis' Temple and were very disappointed in one of the 7 Wonders of the World. In the olden days the Temple was a magnificent building of columned courtyards surrounded by 6 small lakes and with the circumference of 3 football fields. In all its glory it was quite an amazing feat to build, but now all that remains are a few piles of columned rubble and one erect column. Some of the lakes are there, but they're muddy and homes to lots of geese. The story goes that a mad lover of Cleopatra got angry and burnt the Temple to the ground. The Greeks really did have quite a temper. Now there is not much to look at for this spectacular monument.
We continued our walk until an empty tour bus stopped and the driver told us to get on. He said that it was a long way to walk and too hot. We gratefully accepted and were at the entrance in no time. We dismissed a ton of hasslers, bought our tickets and a computerized information thing and headed in. For those of you that don't know, Ephesus was a major city and way station for many of the Greek Royal members and the Greek Gods. Like in Karnak, Kings kept adding to the buildings, creating different and bigger complexes.
With a bad map and the trusty audio tour guide we learned about the history of Ephesus and its people. The people under went many changes of laws and governments because they changed ruling parties so any times. Buildings were added and taken down. A grand Library was erected in-between two buildings and so the architect made the higher walls slant inwards to give the Library the appearance of looking mightier than it really was. There were some impressive houses to see, but they cost too much extra so we opted to skip them. We walked the end of the 3km city and then walked the 3km back to the beginning. You weren't allowed to return the audio guide just anywhere. Just where we got them from. It was ok because we had more time to listen to all the background history.
We hopped a bus back to town and pretty much were in bed by 11pm. There is nothing to do in Selcuk during the night unless you are an old man or you go to Attila's - the expensive happening backpackers joint in the area.
The next morning we went to St. John's Church. It is said that when Jesus was about to be crucified, he pulled John away and told him, to look after Mary. So when Jesus was killed, John took Mary and they lived in the huge Church for many years and were happy until someone came and exiled John to an Island. There is the "Home of Mary" near Ephesus and I think that is where Mary went to live after John left. Anyhow, the Church is rather large with a main gate that looks like the entrance to a fortress, large stone wall with turrets. What remains of the buildings inside are several erect archways and columns, a small coliseum, a baptism bath, the treasury (which is some holes in the wall), and pieces of Christian reliefs mixed throughout broken walls and floors.
Above the Church on the hill that looks out over the whole valley is the Castle. I don't know much about it except that it was rather large with a wall surrounding the whole place. Robby and I tried in vain for an hour of fruitless walking to finding the entrance to the Castle only to discover that the entrance was through St. John's Church and that it closed a year ago. Go figure. Well, there is a Castle and there will remain a Castle and hopefully someday I will get to come back and see it.
Since it was really hot and Robby and I hadn't had a true hour of relaxing in the past few days, we headed to the Kiwi pool. Little did we know that the private pool for the Hostel would be a 3km walk along hot asphalt. When we had arrived at Kiwi house they gave us a map, but it was hand drawn and terrible at placing distances. We didn't think it was very far and that's why we never asked for a ride. At least we were nice and sweaty by the time we found the place. The Kiwi pool was hidden in a patch of peach and nectarine groves. The water came directly from a natural spring so was freezingly refreshing. It was us and three other people who enjoyed the serene-like tranquility of the place. No traffic, hardly any people, lush trees everywhere and free fresh fruit. Very nice. We stay for a while and headed back to town for dinner, reading and bed.
The next morning we were up fairly early because we were starting a three day crazed journey of seeing towns for a day and then driving to new towns. We headed to Pamukkale first. Pamukkale is a small ancient village situated on top a mountain ridge overlooking farm land and high peaks across the valley. The best part of the hike up the hill to the ruin city was the calcumite covered rocks. Nature decided there wasn't enough beauty in the world and so it sculpted a whole hillside and beyond with white, snow-like rocks that dripped over bushes or formed into large pools that natural spring water poured into.
My first introduction to Pamukkale was being yelled at by a "lifeguard/security guard" because I had ventured up a few some hills to take a picture of a particular dripping rock and from below a very shrill and annoying whistle starts to go off. I looked around and couldn't see where the noise was originating from through all the happy swimsuit clad people splashing in the pools. I climbed a little high and the whistle didn't shut up. Instinct told me the whistle was directed at me, so I looked around again and this time I saw one very pissed off guy coming towards me, yelling to get down.
I figured, "Well, I’m already up here and I', already in trouble, so I might as well snap my shot." I clicked the shutter and headed to the guard. He pretty much tore my head off because I wasn't allowed to climb the calcumite not on the watered trail (they were trying to preserve the rock)and both Robby and I had our shows on, a huge NO, No. He pointed to a sign a good 10 yards from where I had started climbing and yelled at us some more. When we got close enough to read the sign it said in some really awful English to not climb the rocks. Opps. The sign that said to take your shoes off was turned away from us at the entrance and so we never saw it. We said sorry to the unforgiving guard and continued on our way. We walked up the 1 km calcumite hill admiring the natural beauty of the place and regretting the fact that no one told us to bring a swimsuit. Robby went under one of the waterfalls to get wet.
We eventually reached the museum at the top of the lakes and learned about the Greek Gods and some of the culture that lived in Pamukkale. The museum was housed in the giant bath house of the ancient culture and told the story of the people who lived there. Pamukkale was an epicenter of many people. The town was about 2 times the size of Ephesus with the springs being a major attraction for all. The waters processed healing abilities and so many of the towns folks took baths regularly. A nice idea back then. We wandered along the car road to the columned Temple and then continued on to the numerous grave sites. It seemed that the further we went along the road the less people and pretty soon it was us and bewildered faces from passing cars and tour buses. I guess it was too hot for people to be walking about. We didn't mind because no one got in the way of our shots.
I found the 1km stretch of graveyard to be rather interesting. It looked like Superman had had a really bad day and decided to throw a 100's of stone coffins as a stress reliever. Broken resting places lay littered about the ground. Some sideways, upside down, on top of each other, and crumbling. The insides were all pillages long ago, the bodies missing. It makes you wonder what the world has come too when ancient societies that whole-heartedly believe in an afterlife and in death that they spend their lives preparing for death and in a mere 2000 years their resting places are dug up and looted for the sake of greed. The dead are carelessly thrown to the side, not a thought of remorse among the ones that profit. It makes you wonder if your body will still be lying in its finally resting place in a 1000 years or so or in some random museum for little kids to laugh at.
We managed to walk to the end of the city in search of finding the red calcumite red formations, but we rewarded with a mini-mart/ restaurant that had seen better days. The parking lot and for path to the abandon eatery was covered in weeds and dust. We decided to head back along the cliff edge and admire the valley below. There were many dry calcumite pools spanning across the top of the cliff, but the water had dried up 5 years ago. We climbed a massive hill to look down into the theater and were rewarded with 4 intact statues and a beautiful backstage relief of ancient gods. We couldn't go down the stairs and get a better look because there was a dig in progress. I tried to get Robby to go ask them for a job, but she said, "No," and admired them from afar.
That evening we hopped on two more buses to make it to Koycegiz for the night. We were told by the owner of Kiwi Hostel that Koycegiz was the place to go if you wanted a nice boat ride to relax and not many people because the tourist buses hadn't found the place yet. We checked into one of the nicest Hostels ever and went to sleep in a beautiful wooden dorm room with a slanted ceiling and a view of the lake beyond. In the morning we boarded the day boat cruise that would take us to Turtle Island and mud baths.
Robby and I lucked out and got on a boat with only Turkish people and I think a Croatian family. Since it was not a tourist boat we had an entertainer Turkish man that showed us magic tricks with strings and then dressed up as a female belly dancer and strutted his stuff while amusing us and passing boats. The men on other boats would be really jealous of us because we had a belly dancer, but then they'd realize it was a guy and get embarrassed for drooling.
First stop after sailing through the tall reed water way was Turtle beach. The Turtles come out at night, but during the day everyone lounges around on the beach and takes in the beauty of the water. Robby and I joined the rest of the morons in the water and tried to body surf on the little waves. Both of us ended up with salt water up our noses. Yuck. We stayed at the beach for 3 hours and then headed to a mud bath on the edge of the water. The building looked like a creepy stripped clown tent that houses hot spring baths, but it was $2 USD to cover ourselves in stinky mud, turn to a green cement monster in the sun and then take a dip in the soothing hot water. It was well worth the money.
We went back to the home island, grabbed our stuff and boarded a bus to Fethiye. Someone told us to stay at Ferah hostel, but I think whoever that person was was on crack when they said it was a nice place. Robby and I had to fight with 8 other people for the remaining dorm beds and ended up in a small shack out front in the garden that was used as a TV lounge. There were sheer curtains with a yapping mutt outside and a safety light that flashed on and in our eyes everytime an ant walked by. Needless to say we didn't get much sleep and we paid more than anywhere else we'd been for a whole 9hrs accommodations.
The next day we boarded a large yacht for our splurge trip in Turkey. We were convinced that if you were in Turkey you had to go on a Blue Cruise. Since we went on the felucca we figured that a large, posh boat would be a much better adventure. We and 10 other people were the happy passengers and crew on the boat. Everyone got to buddy up in a room with a queen bed, a small closet, and a bath room with a removable spicket in the sink for a shower. It went about 3 ft, so we opted for swims and the hose on deck for a shower.
Intro to the passengers: Aussie friends, Craig and Melissa (Mel); Aussie friends, Sara and Carrie; The Turk, Yusef; and the Italian Stallions, Andrea (Male), Lorenzo, and Rudy. The crew consisted of Sean (Aussie), 1st mate and cook and Ali (Turk), captain. Everyone was extremely nice, but all the Aussies were party people, the Italian’s were great dancers and the Turks just blended in. Robby and I were part of all the groups, but if we were there we could be invisible if we wanted.
We began the day eating a great lunch prepared by Sean who said that this was only the beginning and the best was yet to come. It was so nice to have a real meal; bread, starch, veggies, and meat. We've been basically getting by on just carbs. Sean was impressed because all the food that we put on the table was devoured. Apparently his last boat didn't eat anything and he was mad. We couldn't get enough.
We sailed to a bay and swam in the clear emerald water for a while. Then we headed to St. Christopher's Island, the home of Santa. Yeah, Santa was a real guy who used to give presents to people and he lived on this island for a brief period of time. We docked for the night, had another swim and laughed at the Italians that arrived late via the ice cream boat. Everyone in Turkey helps each other out.
We all clamored up the steep hillside of St. Christopher's Island to look at the ruin 8 Churches, the remains of the civilization that lived there long ago, and watch the sunset. We climbed back down and spent the rest of the night reading and playing card games. The Aussies played drinking games and sang songs.
We spent the majority of the next day sailing so that we could spend the last day swimming and relaxing. We stopped a few places for a swim and docked for the night at Kas (pronounced Cash). We were allowed to venture through the cute little cobble stone town until dinner time where we came back to enjoy some of the freshly caught fish of the day. I had helped to catch two of them while sailing. We played a few rows of drinking games before heading to a bar and talking into the early morning.
The following day we sailed pass the Sunken City of Kekova while Sean tried to tell us the little information he knew. Large town built on the water, but as nature goes, the waters rose and the town was submerged. Parts of remaining buildings and stairs can still be seen above water, but the best way to see the city is to scuba. Too bad we couldn't afford it. We docked across the way at the island of Simena. There was a castle at the top that we hiked to. We took a wrong turn and ended up at the graveyard of the old village. More stone coffins that protrude from the ground, but they covered the side of the hill and went all the way down to the water, some even in the water. We took pictures, sat in the shade a bit and continued to our dock for the night.
The night activity was Smuggler's Inn. Some guy decided it would be awesome to build a bar in the middle of a remote island with access only by boat and then offer shuttle coats to all the cruise ships to the bar. We went and danced the night away with old America and Aussie songs. The Aussies and the Italians got plastered while we just danced. We came back to the boat around 2:30am and everyone, but us and Andrea decided to go for a "nudy" swim. The jumped in the cold water and started giggling and talking really loud that the next morning Sean was reprimanded by three or so captains from other boats. He didn't care because the other boats knew that this was an area where the backpacker boats docked and therefore they should know that it will be loud. Us and the rest of the passenger got a rude awakening from some crazy guy who decided that we kept him up all night so he was going to jump in the water at 7:30 am and start screaming at us to wake up and join him. Yeah all the drinkers were hung over and we just wanted to sleep. He didn't shut up and we all lumbered onto the deck for breakfast.
We spent the remaining of the morning swimming, talking and packing. We got off the boat and boarded a bus to take us to Olympos. Robby and I had assumed that Olympus was a fairly large town because all the Blue Cruises went and left from there, but it turns out it is a quaint little backpacking village stuffed into the woods. All the stores and Hostels are tree house/cabins surrounded by mountains and trees. We traveled with the Aussies to Bayram's and somehow stayed in a small shanty hut that was the last one up the hill and behind all the other tree houses. Our roommate was Craig while the three other girls shared the cabin below. All three of us climbed a dangerous slope and entered the hut thinking at any moment the crooked wooden building was going to collapse and we'd all tumbled down the hill into the rest of the tree houses and most likely be killed by rolling so many times. Luckily the place held.
We wandered through the small town and realized we were staying at the 2nd most popular place, but one of the shittist in my opinion. At least they gave you free tea and coffee, breakfast and dinner. Breakfast had a variety of choices which made us quite happy since we were sick of Turkish breakfast: hot hard boiled egg, tomatoes, cucumbers, bread, salty cheese and tea. There is only so much of that you can take.
We went down the 500 meter wooden path to the beach and somehow managed to absent-mindedly pass the toll booth. We were hoping to find the Aussies, but the beach turned out to be far bigger then we expected and we found our own spot on the sand near the idiot cliff jumpers. We stayed a bit and headed back to read a bit on the pillow covered decks of the Hostel. Bayram's tree house might suck, but they had a cozy reading, playing games atmosphere where you could take off your shows and lay on a rugged and pillowed platform. We met a nice Aussie couple that filled us in on the latest in the new and kind of made me paranoid.
They told us that 19 idiots decided to bring liquid weapons on board 19 separate flights to the US where they would set them off via cell phones. Luckily they were caught before the planes took off, but now there is a strict band on all carry-ons. You’re not allowed to bring anything on the plane, but your passport and medicine. Yeah, this rule better get amended soon because there is no way I'm sticking my camera and film under the plane. So if anyone hears more on this subject will you please keep me updated? Thanks, I appreciated it. Hopefully the scare will blow over soon.
We found the Aussies sometime later and learned how to play Uker, which is a great game and if anyone wants to play I'd be more than happy to teach you. After 1 am Robby and I decided to be losers and good to bed while the Aussies opted for dancing at the Orange Night Club. We were rudely awoken by Craig who was too drunk to know that if he kept talking to us at 4 in the morning we didn't want to hear it. Eventually he passed out and we got to wake him up at 9am since check out was at 10 am.
Robby and I had planned to go walking through the ruins, but we spent the majority of the morning playing Uker with the Hung-over people. It was relaxing and fun, so we didn't care too much. After 2m we said we'd meet them at the beach and head down the beach road to the ruins. Remnants of the vast town were scattered throughout the trees, so Robby and I selected a path and went on a lovely hike through the woods. The day was beautiful and we enjoyed the exercise and tranquility that came with hiking. I hadn't realized how much I missed hiking until I came to Olympos. Nice place to stay for a little bit.
We hiked out onto the beach and found the Aussies just as they were preparing to head back. We all were catching the 5 pm bus to Antayla. We walked back, grabbed a bite to eat and smashed into the over crowded bus. After 20 minutes we transferred to a new bus and within 2 hours we were at the main bus station in Antayla awaking our night bus to Cappadocia. Sara and Carrie were coming on the same bus, but Craig and Mel had to stay the night and catch a plane to London in the morning. We said sad goodbyes and headed to the gnome village of Goreme.
Since I've already written a ton and we want to get food, I will write about Cappadocia later. Until then stay safe, don't fly anywhere, and tell me hi once in a while.
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