27 November 2010

Do you have ID?

We arrived in Konya on Sunday morning. Everything was quiet, almost no one on the streets. We were walking to a spot suitable for further hitchhiking and in the same time Tony was running from one shop to another but he wasn't able find new sleeping bag.







Truck driver who brought us to the city was born in Konya. When we told him we'd just pass the city he become angry. He told us that Konya is like a gem in Turkey. Actually he told us true, modern city with nice architecture and clean! One of the cleanest cities in Turkey that I saw. But our mission was to get to Cappadocia on the same day. So we just skipped Konya.

On our journey in Turkey we didn't use buses or trains at all. It wasn't question of money for us but something more important. We were able to socialized with locals much more deeper and get to know country in such a level which traveling with buses nor trains wouldn't guarantee.
People who took us on the road were always speaking with us, asking questions or showing interesting places. They wanted to show us the best from Turkey.

When we found good spot and started our classic pose immediately the first car stopped. It was an old couple. "Tony's language support" helped them understand us. They were surprised what we are doing here, even a bit angry. Term hitchhiking was unknown for them. Anyway after talks they still weren't sure about us and wanted to see our IDs. It was first time after thousands of hitchhiked kilometres when someone asked me for ID. They took us to Nevşehir, which was more than we expected.

Nevşehir, modern city full of muslim traditions.
































Close to Nevşehir was our awaited Cappadocia. As you know Cappadocia isn't just one city but it's whole area which contains several underground cities.

25 November 2010

How rats ate our delicious clothes

We went on to find some place to sleep in Aksehir. Whole city was so dirty and dusty. Nothing really turistic. We asked some people for hostels but they weren't in mood to respond. So we just walked around and after some time we only found a closed gas station with nice open garden behind. No one was around so we picked it out as our hostel for some hours. It had a nice resting place with armchairs and small table. next to it there was really tempting grass. we decided that it was the best place we'd ever find in the neighbourhood. Just to be sure, Tony asked a guard there if we could stay. Guy hesitated a bit but agreed in the end of conversation. He even let us use some cushions.

It wasn't so cold at the night with sleeping bags.But Tony doesn't have any. So he slept between us. I slept good. We woke up around 6 am and continued to Konya by truck. During the day though, we found out that we got really original souvenirs from Aksehir. Barbara's trousers appeared to have some strange holes that looked eaten rather than torn. After some time Tony also realized that the same thing happened to his jeans. That would explain some paw-like marks on our sleeping bags. It must have been some kind of rat or other rodent. It was strange. nothing happened to our sleeping bags or other stuff, only jeans and trousers were eaten.


We reached Konya by truck in the morning.

10 November 2010

Flat tyre and hitchhiking at night

Tony didn't sleep whole night, he was exploring night life in the city. In the morning we took a shower on the stony beach fortunately without hot sand and decided to continue our journey. Spending time on beach was so refreshing.
We bought some bananas and after fresh breakfast we peeled and ate them. Do you remember old gags from silent movies with banana peel? We did the same :)



We left banana peel on pathway and sit close to it. When
first person came, he stopped, look at the banana peel, then look at us, twisted his head and overpassed banana peel :D After this guy who was in his forties we improved our trap. We put another banana peel next to first one. Then old lady with shopping bags came. And she did the same thing but without twisting her head. We laughed a lot.
Third level was with three banana peels on the pathway so anyone passing through has to step at least on one. They were smart, almost everyone stepped over it. We didn't calculate this possibility. After some gag attempts we put all banana peels to trash and continued to walk next to road.



Thanks to Tony's Turkish language asking for directions was qualitatively higher than with our English.

In some moment we got ride by taxi without paying for it. I love Turkey and people there!  When we were passing through countryside we spotted a lot of animals next to roads. Staring goats are almost everywhere, not speaking about fowls. So waiting for car, I was talking with them but they refused to communicate with me.
Probably they were afraid that I will eat them. Lucky bastards, I wasn't hungry :D.



Heading to Konya, we got few rides, even freshly on small truck which took us to no-name village. As we got thirsty we asked one woman working in the garden for water. She offered us water and when we were filing our bottles she brought us lunch. It was something like soup with fresh yoghurt. In return we left sweets for little girl living there.

After lunch we got great ride on the open back of car. Looking at the changing views around we were smiling at each other and having fun by taking photos. Still smiling and in good mood we said goodbye and later reached Isparta.

We came to another not important village before Konya in the evening. I think that everyone in that village knows that we were trying to hitchhike next to roundabout. Even some teenagers were coming one by one or in small groups to see us, some of them on motorbikes, poorer by bicykles or on foot.


After one hour and tens of watchers random guy tried to help us and took us to the close truck station, actually he send his friend in his car there. Unfortunately they didn't want to take us, because we were too heavy. So his friend took us back to the same place. Guy was surprised, he was waiting with his girlfriend (or whatever was their relationship) for bus. Before her bus came, he left us some fruit and his phone number just in case.

One hour later we got ride with small truck and old guy. He was around 60, smelled like toilet, but it was a ride. Our camera was out of battery and we got suspicions about him.
What would anyone like him do on the road and why should he take us? After some time though, our suspicions have gone. We got a flat tyre on narrow mountain road. It took about 30 mins to change the wheel and we could continue our journey through the dust around. The man left us near the bus station in Aksehir. After checking buses we learned that there's nothing for us there. We had to find a place to sleep till morning, so we walked and checked every place that seemed suitable for us.

01 November 2010

Don't look for sea, go for ocean

We spent whole night in bus from Ankara to Fethiye.
At the beginning it looked like big resort abandoned by tourists and travelers. We slept around two hours at the morning. SunFace Hotel trash bins were first things which were possible to see from bus. Hotel was hidden in small town. It has to be really hard to found this place without guide. It was quite small place with small swimming pool and bar. We were thinking to stay for breakfast but desire to spend time in the sea was much more stronger. After saying goodbye to everyone we were walking to the beach. Later when we asked for direction, we acknowledged that the beach is quite far away.

We had a small break, bought some breakfast and found abandoned hotel. It looked like no one was there for half a year. So when we found good spot on logs of wood we started our breakfast. We were lucky, toiled was closed but water pump was working. Leaving something hidden for dunk beetles we left our hotel and continued by hitchhiking to the Ölüdeniz Beach. Hotels and restaurants next to main road in this touristic place had a lot of English ads like Swimming Poll or Take a way food. Nice to see, they are polyglots.

Not having warm sea in our countries  was main reason why we stayed on the beach whole day. Lazy to do anything, only having fun there. The sea fulfilled our expectations for temperature. Three hours after our arrival some of our friends from Ankara also came. Nothing really adventurous. I was thinking about some climbing, but others weren't in the mood.
In the evening they left us and we came with an idea of staying there for another day. It was too hot to sleep inside and anyway we didn't got couchsurfing host so whole beach was our bed. Before we started to count jumping sheep we got dinner from local market and found a backpack with treasure. Lots of memory cards, weird expensive camera and some clothes. Hmm what to with that. No one around we took a camera and watched pictures. It was from paragliding and we realized that weird camera was for parachute.When were looking at the pictures, owner of the backpack arrived. He wasn't worried about his stuff, he didn't even say thank you or maybe I just don't remember that. In any case he left as fast as he arrived. Basically we slept really good with that feeling we saved lot of money and memories that night.