"Stuff me I'm Turkish"

Several years back while wandering amidst the aisles of some flea market up in San Jose I came across a stall selling, among other things, those goofy little buttons that you see waiters at TGIF's wearıng. And there it was.. right next to the "Kiss me I'm Irish" and "World's Greatest Lover" buttons was one I had never seen before, "Stuff me I'm Turkish" it said. Obviously playing off the well known connection between Thanksgiving, Turkeys and Turkmen. It was bizzare and kinda funny and had I actually known any Turks at the time and had it had been near Thanksgiving I might have bought the button as a holiday gag. As it was I didn't and it wasn't so I moved on and completely forgot about the button....What does this have to do with our travels? Absolutely nothing..except that we are actually in Turkey right now, it's just turned September, and that even though we are surrounded by Turkmen I haven't seen any of these buttons. Life is funny sometimes.

Anyway we glid (glode? glided?) into Turkey a couple of weeks back on a delapidated greek hydrofoil called the Flying Dophin. Imagine the old Flash Gorden rocket ship style..that's what this thing looked like, a big areodynamic tube with stubby wings and skids underneath. After a relatively quick ride from Rhodes we landed in the harbor and after being stuck on the dock (litteraly on a dock..as in a wooden pier about 10 foot wide with water and boats either side of us, strangest customs area yet) for a couple of hours while the immigration guys took off with our passports in a truck, we finally made it into Fethiye. It was a nice beach town and we stayed at a pensione where we ended up meeting a nice Aussie family traveling with their two kids. While in Fethiye we took a day cruise out along the coast for some sun and snorkeling and they joined us. We chatted them up all day and took turns swimming and diving off the boat with the kids. Jason (the dad) and I, feeling somewhat adventurous, took turns swimming under this submerged arch. This was somewhat of a challenge actually as the bottom of the arch was a good 12-15 feet under the surface and because of the high salt content of this part of the Med you had to struggle and kick hard against your own bouyancy to get down and through this thing..once through though you would roll over so that you were facing up and then just float silently up wıth your face inches from this massive underwater rock wall. Fabulous.

After a couple of days in Fethiye we said our goodbyes and headed east towards the old hippie town of Olympos. With about an hour left in the bus ride to Olympos the 8 year girl in the seat in front of us who had been flirting with us for the first half of the ride suddenly spun around and lurched at me (I was in the aisle seat..sitting next to the trashcan). From the green in her face I knew what was up and tried to get out of the way but *blech* she vomitted all over the floor, my seat and on my favorite pants. Immediately her father started to try to wipe my seat and pant leg down while his daughter was falling across other seats continuing to be sick..I had to yell at him that I was fine and to leave me alone and tend to his daughter instead..which he did. The commotion ended after a couple of minutes and they seemed really embareassed. They quickly got off at the next stop. I felt bad.

Olympos is kind of a funny town. Once a hippie paradise known for its quirky tree hut camps it has since become part of the 'back packer route' and has hence become over commercialized and crowded wıth Aussies. Despite this we decided to stay in one of the many tree camps there for a couple of days..although we opted for a bungalo since they were the same price and came with AC and a bug free bed..sort of. To be fair though these 'tree houses' were more like crappy wooden rooms built on 4 foot stilts neatly stacked in rows in a cultivated orange orchard..hardly a Swiss Family Robinson style tree house. Aside from the 'tree huts' and Turks who spoke broken english with Australian accents, Olympos actually had a lot to offer in terms of to-do's. There were 1000 year old ruins which you could 'discover' by hiking back into the woods Indiana Jones style. There was the beach. And then there was the Chimera, a barren hillside where gas naturally leaks out of the rocks in various fissures and vents. Apparently at some undetermined point in the past this thing caught fıre and has been burning ever since..like a natural eternal flame. Ancient greek mariners apparently used this hillside as a natural lighthouse..neat. Spent a couple of days here hiking and swimming and then we noticed it..there are no seashells on the beaches or under the water in Turkey..at least five different days swimming at five different beaches and not a single shell..no one else seemed bothered by this so we didn't worry either..but still..it was a bit weird.

I should digress here and mention that unlike the barren craggy shores of Greece, the coastal terrain of Turkey was strikingly mountainous and wooded. It reminded us of Lake Tahoe or Big Bear Lake a bit...there where these steepish rocky hills loosely covered in grasses, shrubs, pines and oaks that came tumbling abruptly into the aquamarine waters of the eastern Med mixing at the shore in a slurry of gravel and mud. Of all places we've visited so far, Turkey, strangely enough reminded us most of home. So, after a couple of days in Olympos we decided that our 'beachin' days were over and we headed inland towards Capadocia (Kapadokya). On the way we stopped at a town called Konya where the order of the Whirling Dervishes was founded by the Sufi poet Rumi several centuries back (the Dervishes are wandering Sufi monks akin to the Catholic Franciscan order). Konya, which we were going to stay at only to break up the travel between the coast and Kapa turned out to be suprisingly cool. It had some really great mosques from the Seljuk Turks (Seljuk = Alladin, Ali Baba, Sultans, turbans, exotic camel caravans, flying rugs, bejeweled oil lamps, etc.) It also had the Mevlana mosque turned museum that housed the turban topped coffins of many of the great dervish ascetics, including Rumi himself, several ornately gilded korans and other dated texts and a ornamented box purported to contain Muhammed's beard (this is probably true..in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there were several boxes with his beard since, afterall, beards grow back.) A quick aside about traveling Muslim countries.

If you've ever been to an Islamic country you know that they broadcast the call to prayer on the loud speakers 5 times a day, including one at about 4am. Starting with the line 'Allah u Akbar' (God is great) the call is usually sung in melismatic style and can sometimes take several minutes. Depending on the caller/singer these calls can actually be quite beautiful and evocative. Anyway, Konya is a particularly devout town and is covered with mosques..our hotel was within 4 blocks of no less than 6 mosques and every morning at 4am a cacophany of calls would flood in through our window and wake us..it sounded as a chorus of callers were standing at the foot of our bed singing to us..only later after doing some research did we discover that one of the lines of this particular morning call was 'Prayer is better than sleep'.

After another 6 hours on the bus we finally arrived at Kapadokya. If you haven't been then go. The best way to describe Kapadokya is as a mix of Joshua Tree, the Pinnacles and the rock formations in Arizona's Painted Desert. Very cool place. Kapadokya was apparently formed by a near-by volcano that after dropping several tens of meters of ash then dropped a nice hard layer of basalt. Over time most of the area was eroded but in a few places where the basalt was thicker it formed a protective cap over the ash while everything else eroded around it..the net effect was the creation of these bizzare pillars and columns of rock stretching up out of the valley floor. The locals call these fairy chimneys..which is a weird name because what they really look like is giant penises sticking up out of the ground..I guess calling them penis chimneys wouldn't go over so well with the locals.. As it turns out the ash rock is relatively easy to carve into when wet (but dries to a hard surface) and so 1000 years ago early christians in the area seeking to avoid persecution from the Arabs and Ottomans dug extensive cave houses into these rocks..complete churches even, with frescos and pillars. But they didn't stop here, they dug down too..creating massive underground cities 8 levels deep (think ant farm). It gets better, because of the ash the soil is really fertile and centuries of fruit cultivation has caused the entire area to become covered in fruit and grape trees. Here's a list of what we found: apples, pears, grapes, plums, oranges, watermelons, berries, appricots and a couple of other fruits/nuts that didn't seem ripe. Put it all together and you get an edenic, Dr. Seussian version of the 'Flinstones' meets 'Land of the Lost'. Tres cool. We spent 6 wonderful days here. Our days spent hiking amongst the 1000 year cave houses and eating wild fruit 'till we were full, our evenings spent reading our books and relaxing in our cave room while listening to the mosque calls echo through the valley. Met a couple of cool aussies as well, they were on an overland back to Oz..they were heading down through Syria, Iran and into India..I was jealous.

Then it hit, just in time for us to leave on our 12 hour bus ride to Istanbul. The runs. Helen got it first..then me. A day later one of the Oz girls landed something similar only out the top side..and then the Canadian girl caught it.

Loading ourselves up on meds and skipping dinner we made the 12 hr journey to Istanbul. Man what an uncomfortable ride..Helen managed but I didn't sleep a wink. Another child vomited on this bus ride as well. We arrived in Istanbul at 9am three days ago.

Quick note on buses in Turkey..they come in two flavors..the long distance city buses and inter-city domuses (mini buses). The long distance buses are what Turkey has in lieu of cheap domestic air service. They run the buses like planes too with stewards serving drinks and little chocolate cakes and occasionally coming by to offer some orange smelling hand cleaner. The dolmuses are a lot cooler and is an idea that would probably work well in US cities. Basically its a gutted minvan with several rows of bench seats..the fare is the same regardless of how far you go on the bus and they will pick you and drop you off up where ever on their route (i.e. no bus stops) in fact half the time they leave the sliding side door open as people hop on and off. And because they are privately owned like taxis each dolmus is different. Some are boring. Some play loud turkish music. Some are decked out like pimp mobiles with curtains in the windows, colored party lights, fuzzy dice and leapord print steering wheel covers.

Anyway, back to Istanbul where we currently are. It's a great town but it's expensive and quite westernized. Saw the Hagia Sophia, the Grand Bizzare, the Blue Mosque, the Cisterns and Taksim area..and now we're done. Outside of these attractions Istanbul seems more interesting historically than in life. Our hotel had a channel that was playing last season's episodes of american television: Smallville, My Name is Earl, Battlestar Galactica, Prison Break, Ren and Stimpy, etc. One night of this was enough to trigger something in Helen and I... so the next day we ate lunch at McDonalds, had an afternoon coffee at Starbucks, watched the most recent Harry Potter movie and finished it up with a dinner at El Torrito. No joke...all of this in Istanbul..it was brilliant. We feel refreshed now and are ready to move on. Tonight we board another bus to go to Plovdiv Bulgaria..only 7 hours this time..not so bad.
pics to follow.

Helen gone native

more Fairy Chimneys..note the dwellings

more Fairy Chimneys..note the dwellings

more Fairy Chimneys..note the dwellings

Kapadokya valley

someone

Mevlana Mosques in Konya

Istanbul street scene

chickens in Goreme

Goremestreet scene

Ccave Monestary in Goreme

the Hagia Sophia

cavern of lights in the Hagia Sophia Cistern

belly dancer from Turksih night in Goreme

the blue mosque in Istanbul

the chimera

dervish kids

fairy chimneys