TURKEY (12th March 2004 - 2nd April 2004)

First stage of the trip: three weeks in Turkey!

ISTANBUL

I arrived at Istanbul airport the 12th of March 2004 in the afternoon. After a 20 minutes bus ride I finally got to the Sultanahmet district, which is the 'old town', where most of the turistic sites take place. Just as I got off the bus, with my 25 kg. backpack on my ribs, I realized that I had no idea where I was. I pulled out my Lonely Planet guide and tried to read the map, searching for the Yucelt Interyouth Hostel (I read some nice feedbacks on the net about it and it was conveniently located). Well, after walking for an hour without any sense of direction, one local guy called Engin politely walked me towards the right direction. Turned out that Engin was studing the same uni degree as I had myself, business managment, so we spoke about it for a while. Thanks Engin!

Anyway, so I booked a shared dormroom at the Yucelt Hostel (which was clean enough) and dropped my backpack on the ground with relief. I was totally exhausted and sort of wondering why the hell did this crazy idea of travelling cross my mind.

Barely few minutes later, one of my room mates walked in and we introduced ourselves. His name was John, from Colorado -USA-, and he was spending a short hollidays around Turkey. John was a cool fellow and during the following days we had some nice chats about politics, USA vs. Europe, etc. Anyway, we went out to have supper, and I took my first few pictures of Istanbul's most famous sites: The Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque.

The Blue Mosque at night

The Blue Mosque early in the morning

The Aya Sofia early in the morning

Later on I met my other two room mates, Frances and Laurance. They were from Quebec, the french region of Canada, and they were on a six months trip from Greece and Turkey all the way up across eastern Europe till Russia. Here is a photo with them all:

Left to right: Laurance, Francis and John standing by the Bosphorous shore.

Anyway, on my first day in Istanbul I went to visit the Aya Sofia. This building was actually firstly dedicated as a christian curch in the 6th century by roman emperor Justinian, but when the city fell to the muslisms in the 15th century, it was converted into a mosque right away. The Aya Sofia had been for over a thousand years the largest worshipping building in the christian world untill the St. Peter's cathedral was erected in the Vatican.

The nasty pink-peeling look of the outside does not portray the enormous beauty and size of the inside. Seriously, the inner chamber is as large as a football stadium, and tall as a 8 floors building. Impressive indeed.

Only one drawback: the entrance fee costs 9 euros and there's no discount for students.

Aya Sofia's inside general lookout

Another picture

The next day I wandered around the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul. It's a laberinthisque (spelling?) indoor complex where 4000 thousand small shops cream one after each other selling the most diverse products: carpets, spices, leather jackets, silk blouses, chess boards, etc. Of course, it's been dulled down to catter the tourists, but nontheless a very pleasent place to get lost in while sipping a tea and being allured in by vendors.

One of my main complains about Istanbul (and Turkey as a whole), is that vendors see tourists as nothing but a walking dollar, and they tend to force way too much their sales aproaches. This is an example of a conversation I have had at least a hundred of times in Turkey:

Vendor (as you pass by): Hello my friend! can I ask you a question?
You (stopping your pace): sure, what's up?
Vendor (next to your side): where are you from?
You: Madrid, in Spain.
Vendor (in your home language): ooohhh Espania. Yo tengo amigos en Espania. Me gusta mucho Espania.
You: Thank you, I like Turkey too.
Vendor (showing you the way in): Why dont you step into my -carpet- shop and we have a tea while I show you my excellent hand-made merchanside.
You (as you resume your walking): No thank you, maybe some other time.

And again, and again, and again. Eventually, you simply don't answer back and those smilling faces asking you every 100 meters "Hello my friend! where are you from?". I know it might sound unpolite, but trust me on this one: after you've politely asnwered their sales-orientated questions and declined them down, you simply can't be bothered anymore.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the exotic Grand Bazaar:

The next day John, Francis and Laurance took a cruise along the Bosphorous, the river that cuts across Istanbul and links the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara. It was freaking cold due to the cold river winds. There are three main parts in Istanbul: the asian part east of the Bosphorus, the sultanahmet west of the Bosphorous and south of the Golden Horn (an inland spin-off of the Bosphorous), and the new city district west of the Bosphorous and north of the Golden Horn. Those three districts are linked toghether by huge hanging bridges.

The next day over I visited the Tokpaki Palace, home of the allmighty Ottoman Sultans for centuries from where they'd lead the empire. The most impressive feature of this Palace is the breath taking Harem. Here, 400 concubines (and their 200 black eunuch guards) lived and were educated in different arts. The mother of the Sultan was in charge of this place, and as a matter of fact she was one of the most powerful and influencing persons in the whole empire.

Also remarkable was the so-called Cage. In order to stop the fraticide carnages that were taking place between the sultans and the princes (sultan's brothers) in order to reach the throne, this new building was erected. In here, the princes were locked in for their whole lives. They were granted with their own harem and all the luxuries you can imagine, but they could not ever leave the building. It was, literally, a golden jail. Of course, most of them ended up going nuts and eventually insane. Notorious was the case of one of the princes who, after having been confinemented at the Cage for 22 years, he commanded his 200 concubines to die drown in the Bosphorous. Nice dude indeed.

Again, no discount for students was granted and the whole entrance fees mounted up to an outrageous 20 euros. What the hell is up with that?

Tokpaki Palace gardens

Tokpaki Palace Harem room

Tokpaki Palace pool yard

Tokpaki Palace view over Istanbul

The next day I was kinda intoxicated from such culture intake, so I decided to take it easy and walk around the newer part of Istanbul, which proved quite interesting. In many ways it resembles to many other european cities, despite being a tad messier.

That night, we went to have some tea and smoke the flavoured water pipes, very traditional in all the arab world. After that, Laurance and I went for a few beers at some bar before calling the night.

Here goes some pictures of random sceens in Istanbul:

Istanbul is the city of street cats. Fucktons of them around, all of them well-fed by locals.

The streets of Istanbul.

The Galata Tower

The always busy Bosphorous

Relaxing after a day exploring Istanbul

My last day on Istanbul I met another new friend, Edmundo, from Huesca - Spain. He has been living in Dublin for the last few years but was already considering the possibility of coming back home. I could relate to this guy, having myself spent two years in London and eventually returning to Madrid. We walked around all day long talking about the newly elected spanish president Zapatero, the terrorist bombing attacks in Madrid the previous week, the false London (or Dublin) dream, the millionare jerks that keep on waking up at 7am to go to the office every day, etc. We had a good laugh indeed. Edmundo was to be the only spanish person I'd meet during my three weeks in Turkey, and for some reasson I found myself really eager to speak my own language.

Strange the thing that you feel when you're far away from home, isn't it?

EPHESUS

The 17th of March I arrived to Selcuk after a 12 hours long ass-flattening night bus. The reasson as of why I came here is because of the ancient roman ruins near by: Ephesus

Ephesus had been an extremly wealthy roman city 2000 years ago, funded by one of the generals of Alexander the Great. The city hosted over a quarter of a million population, and the ruins are simply explended.

Also, here in Selcuk lies The Artemis Temple, which was one of the seven wonders of the Ancient World (only the Pyramids still remain from those seven). Unfortunately, a earthquake destroyed and only one single column remains still of what was once the greatest temple on Earth.

The Artemis Temple

Ephesus - The Great Library (Julius Cesar's dad is burried here)

Ephesus - The Teather. While I was sitting there, one Korean woman spontanously got up the stage and started singing the Korean hymn. She had quite a voice, and the whole bunch of turists there bursted into aplause asking her to keep on singing... which she did!

The greek goddess of victory Nike, after which the sport shoes brand might have been named

Seems like romans also needed to shit

More exquisite details of Ephesus

FETHIYE

Yet another 12 hours night bus nightmare, yet another wonderful destination. Fethiye is a small coast town in the mediterranean coast of Turkey. It's beautiful, and even though the turism industry has already put its greedy eyes on this area, it still remains kind of unexploited and free of huge resorty complexes. Probably, it looks like what the spanish's Costa del Sol was alike 20 years ago.

It's peaceful, sunny, cheap, and an awesome destination to relax and spend your vacations. Tons of englishmen have noticed this because it seems they are buying properties like there's no tomorrow all along the coast line. I seriously hope they won't ruin it.

Anyway, here I met Peter from England and Lin from Korea. We were all staying at the Ideal Pension, a hostel up a steepy hill with awesome views all over the bay. We were offered by the hostel staff to join in for some paragliding action (at the price of 75 euros each, of course). But let me tell you this: it was so fucking well worthy. Flying over a beautiful mediterranean bahia 1000 meters of altitud provided me with one of the most breathtaking panoramic views I have seen in my entire existance. Don't believe me? take a look:

Oludeniz beach from 1000 meters altitud. You can even see my foot there as I was flying in an ackward possition!

After that, the three of us visited the ghost town of Kayakoy. Deserted at the beginning of this century because its population was forced by the guvernament to emigrate to Greece, it has remained absolutely unhabited. The nickname of "ghost city" is most accurate, as it does look like the town was struck by a lightning of something, smoking away all life on it.

Ghost town of Kayakoy

Peter and Lin

Another hotspot in the Fethiye whereabouts is The Saklikent Gorge, which is a cannyon cut thru by a river. During the summer time, you can trek up the river shore for 18 kilometers, but unfortunately at this time of the year, the waters are so wild that only the first 200 meters are walkable. Nontheless, extraordinary views are to be found here.

The Saklikent Gorge

I also went to take a hot mud dive in the sulphur emitions at Dalyan. They say it's very good for the skin, but it smells like collflower farts (due to the sulphur). Pretty disgunting stuff.

Fancy a 38 degrees mud bath? Be my guest!

Another reknown characteristic of Fethiye are its Lycian Tombs. The Lycian were the local dominant society around the 4th century before Christ, and their most remarkable feature was their rock-carved tombs: huge ass temple alike tombs carved up high the montains. Incredible what these people were doing 2500 years ago.

Lycian tombs in Fethiye

THE CRUISE

I enjoyed the Lycian coast so much that not only I stayed six days in Fethiye, but I also joined a cruise that would sail for four days from Fethiye to Olympos, all along the coast side. The price was 130 euros for those 4 days, all included. At the beginning I was really concerned about my budget rocketing sky-high with all these extra costs, but eventually I decided that should I run out of money mid-trip, I'd just come back home knowing that I had a hell of a time. So we sailed off. We were a group of 6 passengers: Mark from Canada, Mark from USA, Masaki from Canada (Japanesse breeded), Darren from Canada and his Japanesse wife, and myself of course.

That cruise ended up being the best part of all Turkey. I sure had a blast. Nothing beats swimming and sun bathing during the day, and drinking a bear onboard while chatting during the evening. Or simply playing chess with Mark (Canada), who proved being a serious contender. And, on top of all, the people I cruised with were all fantastic, a fun gang.

The boat

The pristine waters of the Lycian coast

The Lycian coast is formed by hundreds of mini islands mushrooming out along the shore, most of them inhabitated. We hooped from one to another during four excellent days

Some locals and a scenic view

The gang, left to right: Mark (USA), me, Mark (Canada), Darren and wife (I cannot remember her name for the life of me). Masaki had left the cruise two days before, but we'd met him again few days later in Olympos.

OLYMPOS

Fou days later, the boat arrived at Olympos, where we'd spent another two days. Here is Olympos is where the myth of the Chimera was forged due to the underground gas pools leaking out between the rock gaps. This leads to eternal flames as the gas burns up by air-contact, and thus the locals believed a terrible dragon had its dwelings under their very feet.

The eternal flames of Olympos' chimera

Mark and I took quite a nasty trek in Olympos, climbing up a hill with rocks shaped as daggers. The view from up there was fantastic tho:

CAPPADOCIA

Two days later, we took a bus north towards Goreme, a small town in Cappadocia. But firstly let me show you a picture from Antalya, a large city by the mediterranean sea where we stopped for few hours. The sun setting was most beautiful. Antalya looked similar to Malaga in many ways: large, mediterranean to the chore, busy, alive and kicking!

Sunset at Antalya

Cappadocia is a vast area in the middle of the Anatolian Plateau. It's famous because some volcano burped out ages ago splattering the whole regions with ashes and lava, which shapped up into amazing geological forms as they cooled down. They say that few scenes of Star Wars was shot in here, probably the Tatooinee outdoor landscapes.

The cause of it all?

More Cappadocia moonalike landscape pictures

The infamous "Love Valley" and its pennis-shapped 20 meters tall pillars

We also visited the underground city of Derinkuyu. It's a huge defence complex with over 4000 years of history. The locals built it to defend themselves from nomad invaders, and the underground kept growing and growing. Eventually, it had 8 floors one under the other and could host a whole city inside. They have 70 meters deep ventilation tunnels, and of course lots of defence and ambush meanings to defeat possible invaders. Impressive.

The underground town of Derinkuyu

During our staying in Goreme, another fun group gathered up, and we'd usually have dinner toghether at the pension and have a good laugh. Let me introduce you to my friends in Cappadocia:

Left to right: Tamara (Canada), Masaki (Canada/Japan), Lin (Denmark), me and Enne (Denmark). Mark had stayed that day butt-scratching about in the pension.

Anyway, three days later we kissed good bye to each other (special mention to Mark and Masaki, whom I had been travelling with for almost two weeks already), I picked up yet another exhausting night bus and I crossed the southern border towards Syria the 2nd of April 2004, after three great weeks in Turkey.

Stay tunned!

-HECTOR-
Aleppo (Syria). April the 4th, 2004