old stuff... part 2

...And what about our visas? We left our bikes in Ciralı and hitch-hiked back to Kaş. Hitch-hiking works quite well in Turkey and is a nice way to get in contact with local people and to improve our Turkish.  In addition to this, we were given tomatoes and oranges en masse and were invited for lunch (Albert once offered an orange to a Turkish man but he declined the offer, saying that he had around 20 tons at home!) 

Back in Kas, everything went quite smoothly.  At least in reality (there was more trouble in our minds.. all this anticipation, haha. .like most of the trouble in life).  As a matter of fact, things were not only easy but even kind of peaceful: Once in Meis, we walked aroud the picturesque little town, sat in the sun and read our books for 2 hours, hopped on the ferry again and got new visas within 20min.  No additional fees, no extra "but"s..- except that Selo asked us to carry 4 bottles of liquor from the duty-free... but so what?

Kas

Our next destination was Antalya where Albert`s mother and uncle came to visit us from Spain for a few days (which they had spontaneously decided just a few days before... and then noticed that they did not have any passports!) From Antalya, we also took a side trip to Geiykbayiri in Martina`s Jeep, where we stayed for a couple of days, rock-climbing under the sun.. 25 degrees in the middle of February, hell yeah!

On our way from Cirali..

Antalya!

It is healthy, you know.... garlic!

 Sheep cheese in sheep skin.

This here is Damian from Argentina, another bicycle traveler who we met in Cirali.. he makes a living of selling hand-made jewelry in the streets.  Our plan to attract people by having at least two people (us) checking out his artwork with (by the way, real) high interest worked out better than expected.. ha!
























Climbing in Geiykbairi (try to pronounce this name really fast 20 times...)

Damian's second time ever to climb, not bad at all!!

 The best!!!

UPDATE ...oooold stuff!

I wrote this months ago..  it is old, very old, but it is already here so I will just post it (it is not like you would know where we really are anyway, unless we tell you, right?)  ;)



The VISA renewal – ha! What a fuss. Tureky’s law is – let’s say- very flexible. It changes all the time and there seems to be a big confusion about what and when things change.

To make a long story short, we found out that the visa regulations had been changed just 5 days before we wanted to renew ours. According to the new law, it would not be possible for us to renew our visas unless we’d stay out of the country for 3 months, we were told.   What other options did we have than trying anyway?  So we tried.

We arrived to Kaş (“eyebrow”) and were going to take a ferry to a Greek island called Meis (“eye”).  A FERRY -what were we thinking???  Considering that we have not been lucky with the last two ferries we wanted to take.. so there we were again: No ferry.
"...but maybe tomorrow, come back tomorrow!  Visa renewal? Hmmm... Difficult!  With the new law... but let’s see ,let's see, come back tomorrow!"
Next morning: "..wind is too strong...  no ferry. Oh wait, maybe yes.  We'll run the big ferry! But sorry, it will cost you 100 Euros each instead of 25."

Hahaha...!!!

We decided to call Selo instead. Who was Selo? A guy we read about in the internet. Supposedly, he would run a ferry every Friday, however the weather. No official web site. No inofficial one either. Just a tourist who wrote about his experiences with this guy called Selo. We couldn't speak to him when we called his cell phone but according to his nephew there would be "No problem!  Visa?  Ok!"

Promising?  We didn't know.  But we gave it a chance.

We didn’t want to hang around in Kaş just to wait for Friday to come around, epecially because we had heard so many good things about Olympos' which was supposed to be another highlight for us. A laid-back place by the beach with tree-house hostels, this kind of atmosphere. And rocks to climb!

The wind was against us on the 1000m uphill (that felt like 2000). I could barely hold my bike straight, even when I was pushing it up. The rewarding downhill did not come. It was a constant up, down, up, down, up, down until Demre.  Demre, St Nicolaos' hometown -did you know??-a town full of tomato growing greenhouses!

A few days later we finally arrived to Olympos. Full of anticipation.
Mmmm? Olympos, the traveler’s paradise looked like an abandoned neo-hippie afterparty place with -admittedly- a few nice, creative looking tree houses but the rest were copies of copies of copies...and a whole lot of them. So we decided to go to the next town called Ciralı. What we didn’t know was that we had to cross some fenced ancient ruins and a creek in order to get to the beach, push the bikes through the sand and then cross another bigger river with a strong stream... but it was worth all that - Cirali was something like a little oasis: Astonishingly beautiful. A few long-term travellers had put their vans on the beach. They had been there for weeks already, understandably.  We spent a few relaxing days, rock-climbing, reading, gazing into the endless sky and sitting around a fire every night.

A 20min hike up the hills led to Chimaera, one of the earth`s natural wonders: Flammable gas is escaping from some cracks between the rocks and burning - forever.   A magical scenery.

IF YOU WANT TO GO TO CIRALI PLEASE READ THIS TOO


Actaully, peaceful Cirali was not exactly that peaceful when we were there.  The beach is a nestling place for turtles and protected by Green Peace but some investors are trying to built a bar and hotel there.. All the other hostel owners by the beach respect this and have even moved their houses away from the beach several years ago.   When we stayed there, electricity poles were put up on the beach and put down again by the villagers at night several times. 

The villagers were having demonstrations on several days.  We were asked to give interviews in the hope of getting more publicity... 


So whoever happens to go to Cirali PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be aware of the problems there - and if there is a bar on the beach by now, DO NOT GO THERE.

loooong ago...

Yeeehhaaaaa, new country, new people, new culture....new internet access!  I can update the blog, do you believe this???  I have left you somewhere in Turkey around 3 months ago or maybe even more, woooow, and now we are in Bukhara, Uzbekistan!   I have no idea where to start now.. but okay, I have some old stuff and pictures, let me see...


We left Turkey in April or so, traveled through the autonomous region of Kurdistan in North Iraq and finally arrived to Iran, where we have spent the last two and a half months.  (Well functioning) internet was scarce in Eastern Turkey and Kurdistan, and suuuuper slow and sensored in Iran, inclunding our blog.  There were ways to circumvent the filtering system of course, but either the internet got even slower, and slower, and slower or it simpy did not work ; ).  Finally, I started to write things down on paper, intending to post a foto of what I had written.  Ah, yes, devils do exist.  We caught a virus on the memery card of our digicam.  I peacefully gave in, because it is just not worth to be so frustrated about malfunctioning technology, even though I did spend several hours trying to get access to the blog, argh!!!  Ok, enough.


So here we are now!  In a Russian-Asian-Middle Eastern mishmash kind of place.   Locals sometimes say I look like I am from here..  we communicate in a good mix of our leftover Turkish and the still present Tarzan Farsi.  It works quite alright (though by then, they figure that I am Uzbek anymore....pity!).  Even the food is a mishmash of cultures, in my opinion.  You get the same noodle soups here that we call "Udon" in Japan... but in a very greasy broth, and vegetables cut in a way that it seems like a European (maybe Russian) person was trying to cook something that he thinks what Asian food could be like.  We are definitely getting closer to East Asia..  It was in Turkey where coffee was substituted by black tea.  Here in Uzbekistan, many people actually drink green teas.....


But ok, what about our travels, all the past months?? 


Our story of Iran is a long story.. and I will post it another (NEXT??) time (...soon, soon!).  What I can say now is that it was one of the best travel experiences I have ever had, and maybe even the most impactful.  Despite many mixed feelings about the country as a whole (society, people, the government, the law, police, the religion....) and several  "bad" experinces with the police, we enjoyed being in Iran very, very much.  In the same way, and maybe even more, we were absolutely overwhelmed by our experiences in the Kurdish area, starting in Eastern Turkey, Kurdistan in Iraq, until Western Iran.  Kurdish people are maybe the most hospitable people on Earth.  At least it is hard for me to imagine a culture more hospitable than them...

BUT my stomach is growling, I am way too hungry now to continue... I have to leave you here.  I will tell you aaaaalll about this soon......................................... : )