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Escaping Yalikavak, Turkey

KENAX
Translation Agency and Outsourcing

"Hetero." He said glumly, looking down disappointedly. They’re rather strict about that here in Turkey, and you can get carted off for indecent public exposure if caught holding hands with the same sex. I guess he felt safer in his karaoke environment and rushed in hope of finding a fresh opportunity. I noticed his pack of cigarettes and asked, "Mind if I bum a cigarette?" "Please don’t say bum." "Or maybe, being the Brit that you are, I should say, ‘May I bum a fag?’" He looked up with almost a snarl, pulled his leg from my bar stool, gave me a light, and the rest of my stay in Yalikavak he seemed to behave like a hurt ex-girlfriend who wasn’t getting it anymore.

But the people there were generally nice, both Turks and Brits, and I was slowly making inroads in their tight community, although my persistently tight budget prevented me from visiting the pub too often, and when I did, I wasn’t really getting into the conversation. The next two months dragged out altering between every second karaoke at one pub and then the other, both with essentially the same crowd. I felt like I was sinking back into the routine I was escaping from in Prague.

Typical rocky and undeveloped coastline. On the other side of the peninsula it was like the moon. Gallery here.

It is the southwest corner of Turkey and gets pretty windy this time of year, so my truck would often be howling and bouncing under a full moon by the open sea, and I’d have to bunji down my solar panels during the day. I even partied with one guy at his recording studio there and who would burn jingles for NBC and other things at 4,000 bucks a song. Otherwise, my stay there wasn’t too eventful - a shortage of cash can hamper things. I was invited to a free Christmas dinner, karaoke and free pool was nice, and New Year’s eve was an absolute blast (the last meant in sarcasm). For those who don’t mind too much information, New Year’s day I didn’t bother driving to town like I originally planned, so I nibbled on the only thing that I could find in the truck, which was long green hot peppers. A whole bag full. Rolled into town around 8pm, bought myself two large 2L beers (my favourite) to line the liver and get a good buzz going, but by the time I cracked open the second beer, the hot peppers completed their cycle and I spent New Years eve lying on my back in bed, slurping my second beer, with my legs propped up and listening to the fireworks go off outside while I lay in agonising pain promising myself to never eat so many hot peppers again. So quite pathetic I must say, but just gave me more to chuckle at.

Some old Kaya tomb thing next to where I was camping above. Looked like a church covered it at one point but which was later bombarded from the nearby shore. Gallery here, including more pics of the area.

Gocek, the first coastal town I saw after leaving Yalikavak and since I started snailing along the coast (gallery of coastal cruise here).

The next day I continued my way eastward, and at one point I saw a glimpse of the ocean, so I did a quick u-turn and checked out the town. It was so beautiful and pleasant that I decided I would snail my way eastward, spending one or two nights in every coastal town I came across. I mean, what’s more important: buying wood quickly, or seeing some beautiful country while traveling? I shouldn’t be rushing, and this is precisely what I wanted to do ever since I planned this trip in the first place. Sure, up to now there was a reason for barrelling from location to another distant location – primarily to meet someone I promised, or to escape the cold front – but now there was no reason to rush and I decided I was going to enjoy the trip like I had originally planned.

For a moment I thought I could combine warm beach with some snowboarding.

Gallery pics of Santa Claus town (Demre) and some cool neighbouring tombs (Myra).

Gallery pics of Kadir's treehouses, a bit of the surrounding area, and the Olympus ruins, not fully explored by me yet.
Right: not a five star hotel, but young spirited backpackers like myself love sleeping in stuff like this.

So I pigged out with him and his friend and stayed there another hour, during which some backpacking stragglers stumbled in for the evening’s meal. In no time I found myself sitting at a table surrounded by English speaking girls from various parts of the globe, and they were talking about some place where fire would come out of the hillside. This intrigued me and I suggested I could offer them a ride, since I had wheels. Well, soon enough, I was acting chauffeur and picked up people from other people’s treehouses, until there was a total of seven of us in the little beast. A full house, if you only include the official seating room (my record so far is 12).

Kadir's main chalet buffet room. There is a main disco bar as well, empty at this time of year.

They rather enjoyed my cheesey music and the scary hair pinned turns, and eventually we made it up to the magic fires. Apparently the locals don’t even know what the source of the fires are, but there we sat around the biggest of them, drinking our hand carted beers and the local Turkish version of oozo and water. One girl gave me a joint’s worth of dope and later in the evening 'tested out my shocks'. Actually, speaking of which, one of the guys with us that night said that April 25^th is THE day. Because that is when all the Australian students get out of school, where this place is famous amoung Ozzies as a summer destination. Maybe that’s why Kadir was touring the US, because the whole village seemed to roll their eyes, gesturing "way too much Ozzies here". But this Ozzie said that, if I were to come here about a week before April 25, scout the hood out and "be the man", every Ozzie chick would say, "My, what a fantastic accent. Can I sit on your face?" So this truly seemed like a little goldmine in my lately uneventful travels.

Fire coming out of the hillside, gallery here.

Eventually I stumbled on one treehouse pension where I could have all I can eat buffet every evening for 7Lira (about 4.5USD), an internet room, free shower and facilities, and an electrical socket to plug my laptop into while I would roast by the fire in their lovely wooden log cabin style common room. Just typing away and doing my work in comfort while, during this offseason, enough backpackers would trickle through that I would have someone to converse with every evening.

But for this, my friends, I guess I’ll have to backtrack a bit. Grab your big cup of coffee and get ready.

While camping at the fisherman's beach who suggested I go to Olympus, saw some rubble on the hillside, so went to check it out. Gallery here.

Back in Croatia, so long ago it seems now, I started getting some work and was downloading some small files and doing a lot of emailing through my mobile/pocketpc. Then the phone bill came at the end of the month, a whopping 200 Euro, and I thought I’d shit in my pants. I couldn’t believe it. I know how large these files are, how large these email messages are, and at the price they quoted per kbyte, this really seemed far fetched.

On the way to Turkey, I approached my translators asking them for tips, and one of them said I had to register my phone at the border. I thought this was retarded and totally ignored it. Made it into Turkey, and because I was no longer in Montenegro, I switch back to my T-Mobile roaming invoice-based sim card, and forked up the cash for the last few months, because the bills seemed reasonable enough while I was not at all using the phone when in Montenegro those two months.

I liked how the local fauna and vegetation would change as I traveled over this big globe. Gallery here.

Once the nipple was almost dry (I was receiving email warnings that my server was about to be cut off), I obtained a Turkish sim card, but the retail office kept trying to explain to me something about registering my phone. I could not imagine how some government could force me to register my phone. I even drove out to an airport, to a custom’s office, where I was supposed to handle it, and they wanted a full 130 Lira tax on my expensive phone, as if I was importing it into their country. Roaming was okay, but if I want to use a Turkish sim card, I’d have to import my own phone. Well, it seemed to work without the registration, so I didn’t stress. However, it stopped working, as they tried to warn me, the third day I was at Kadir’s Treehouses, the golden pot at the long rainbow of my travels.

I liked how, even with modern construction, the Turks would often take the trouble to make designs like this in walls using small rocks.

I looked on the map, saw a big ferry line going to Cyprus, looked on the internet, and indeed the car ferries were allegedly "just past Alanya".

An old American car owned by the local chief of police. The inevitable merging of cultures with globalisation.

But shortly after Alanya, gone was the fancy 4 lane highway, replaced by some old timer snaking up and down the mountains. Maxing out at 30k an hour going uphill, it was a struggle trying to pass those big semis. I often had to squeeze by on the inside stretch as they made it around the long curves. Perhaps a bit dangerous, and they would madly honk their horns, but I’ve learned to drive my bobka like a racing car, as one friend pointed out to me.

On the ferry approaching Cyprus.

The next day I scoured through all my documents and could not find anything, so I set out for the chief of police, as the nice customs people I befriended suggested to me, and found the local police station ("karankol" in Turkish). Well, out of 15 policemen who seemed to quickly accumulate in the room around me, none of them really spoke English, but they were busy phoning around, and it just so happened that some students from a local business school were walking by, and one girl who acts as a tour guide during the summer became my translator.

But one thought did venture into my mind. If it weren’t for my screwed up mobile situation, I would have stayed in Olympus like a happy pumpkin another three months. Although after two months the fine would have been 450 Lira, and they did not even dare mention what would have happened to me if I stayed longer than those two months. So, once again, I had to wonder if the hand of God was in all this. But if so, what’s up with the bad weather that prevented me from leaving the first night, when I would have miraculously showed up my ignorant self at ground zero and perfectly on time? Until I remembered that I was celebrating, as I like to, by having one big 1L beer, passed out to a movie, got lazy, and showed up at the ticket counter around 9:30pm to ask if they changed their mind about the weather, considering the weather had died down. Well, if I hadn’t had that big beer and had actually asked them earlier, I guess it would have worked out perfectly…

Piggie in the elevator going up from the bottom level before getting off the ferry.

So he filled me in on some interesting Cypriote history, and some interesting Cypriote facts. Like for example that my liability insurance will not work there. I check, and sure enough, in typical bureaucratic Czech: "Exception: Insurance coverage provided by this green card issued for Cyprus is restricted to that geographical portion of Cyprus which is under the control of the government of the Republic of Cyprus." It basically said the same thing about Kosovo, not being "under the control of the government of Serbia and Montenegro". And on the back it showed abbreviated letters of all the countries where the green card was valid. Which you’d have to flip over to translate and figure out what countries the abbreviation represented, and deduce that the little green piece of paper basically covered from Iceland, to Ukraine, to Egypt, to Morocco, except for Northern Cyprus and Kosovo. Now why they could not say something simple like this for the laymen person who has to buy this little green piece of paper… well, governments and bureaucracy.

After getting to the top and centre of Cyprus near the capital, I decided I wanted to go back and along the coast. On the way picked up a hitchhiker who got me to take him all the way to his work, an Armenian monastery (right).

Okay, now this was really starting to get intriguing, and it took me a while to get used to. Although I must say it is rather fun, feeling like you’re doing something totally illegal, but it’s okay. Sometimes, after performing some errand or pulling out of some strange winding alley, I find myself on the side of the road I’m used to, only to be reminded when noticing someone heading towards me in my same lane. But I have to chuckle afterwards, after noticing the sheer look of horror on their face, looking up at me from their puney little car.

Back down the mountains from the Armenian monastery.

Not too far from the border, I started to feel snazzy and getting used to this goofy left sided driving. Actually, the guy on the ferry said that the tricky thing about driving a normal vehicle (steering wheel on the left side) in a left handed lane is when trying to pass another vehicle (because it is difficult to check for oncoming traffic). I suggested that my beast was so slow I never find myself in such a precarious situation. To which he replied that one can always find a slower driver. Then I remembered all those semi trucks I struggled to pass through the mountains, and agreed. And soon enough found myself trying to pass the second or third car during my brief career as a left handed driver.

Big church in Gazi Magusa. Cyprus was ruled by various powers/religions over its colourful history, but the Ottomans had a nasty habit of either destroying the religious icons of the west, or "converting" them to their religion, as they did here (gallery).

I was not too far from my destination international border when I came upon an incredibly slow, small, orange little car. It must have been driving a ridiculous 30km an hour. Positively preposterous, as the British would say. I slowed down and spent a good minute or two inching patiently behind him. Until I saw a nice long stretch, no cars coming the opposite direction - an easy opportunity to pass. I assessed the situation, gauged my alternatives, turned on my blinkers, eased on the gas pedal and slowly made my bold yet slow and thought-out pass.

We looked at his right side. His right door heartily bent inward, a big massive black smear from what looks like either my big black tires, my bumper, or some combination, and then some metal strip on his car was dangling outwards. He tested that he could still open and close his door, and his window, scratched his head, checked out my car, and handed me a cigarette. Meanwhile, fears raced through my mind of this new insurance policy, my first "accident" after 20,000 km, and all the paperwork and disadvantage of the language when the police come. But I think he had a bigger disadvantage. He lit my cigarette, saw there was no great noticeable damage to my truck, waved me to go on my way, and staggered back to his little, orange, bent up car.

The Salamis ruins near where I set up camp just north of Gazi Magusa. <add text of Salamis> Chose this area and larger city where I hope to buy wood and stuff and finally complete the truck's interior. Gallery of Salamis ruins here.

Got through the border no problem, things are generally bloody expensive in Greece (so I’m sure I’ll be back in Turkey tomorrow – although gas is a bit cheaper here) and decided this shall be the conclusion of another chapter, my friends.