Turkey Tour

İ am currently traveling around Turkey trying to see as much of it as possible before İ have to leave. Below are some pictures of the trip so far.

İ started out staying at my friend Craig's house in Akyaka on the coast. He owns a lovely Ottoman style wood house. Each day İ rode the bike to the beach and bought produce from the open air market across the street. İ finally got my wish of having unpasturized milk. The dead giveaway is that it came in a lightly used water bottle.

Next İ took a 4 hour bus ride south to meet my friend Okan in Korkuteli near Antalya. He met me at the bus depot, and as we were walking to his families' home some people on the street noticed that İ was a foreigner and asked me to beklyorsınız (waıt) for a moment. They picked a bag full of fresh plums from their tree and handed them to me. Turkish hospitality. We stayed with his family and spent two days in Olympos - beautiful ruins by the sea. This is where we found the biggest bug İve ever seen (see picture)and the best breakfast in Turkey complete with tons of home made jams.

We toured Antalya for a day and then headed to Cappadocia, land of fairy chimneys and underground cities, where for eons the people have lived in houses carved from the soft stone and periodically gone into hiding underground in their carved out cities to escape the successive waves of invaders on the Anatolian plains. We rode bikes and İ have to admit İ took a route down a canyon that was a bit more difficult and committing than İ had expected. Upon our exit we came upon a farmer harvesting his apricots who invited us to have some. I helped harvest a few with the stick (note that in the picture I am still a bit shell shocked from the ride - still wearing my helmet and you can see the back of my pants are a bit dirty from sliding down the hill with the bike in front of me).

Next we took an overnight bus up north to Bolu where Okan spent his childhood. İt was by far the worst bus ride İve had in Turkey. We got the ghetto seats on the bus - second to the back. Bouncy and a bit hard on my stomach. Next a couple and their 3 kids squeezed into three seats behind us. The man was quite odiferous and between him, the smoking bus driver, and the bouncing, it was all İ could do not to lose my dinner.

We arrived at 2 a.m. (a few hours earlier than we had expected) and hiked to the hotel where we had reservations the next night. Unfortunately they were full for that night, so we camped out in the corner of the lobby.