Ordu ve Trabzon

After some break in travelling it was quite difficult for us to sightsee very intensively. The late wake-up didn,t help too. Since we wanted to spend some time with our hosts during the lunch-time we did not have much time for visiting, but surely we couldn't miss the ride with Terefelik (eng: aerial tramway) which goes to Boztepe. The panorama of Ordu seen from the cabin was worth seeing and dense fog which was covering the hill gave us the atmosphere of savagery and mistery. In the afternoon we caught a ride to Trabzon to meet with our next host.

Way to Ordu

After a few days of neverending eating and resting the time to start the second part of our journey has come. Today our destination was Ordu. As always the biggest challenge was to get out of the city. However  we tried to prepare ourselves for that by using hitchwiki, ın reality we were sent from bus stop to another bust stop before we found some guy who said:

-I will find the dolmus for you.

İnteresting thing that was since the guy sat us in the near cafe shouted to the waiter to have some cay and introduced us as 2 yabancı who go to Ortakoy. Worth mentioning is very specific sense of time which we noticed among people of Turkey. It looks something like that:

-When will the bus come ?

-İt is coming now.

...5minutes later...

-When will the bus come?

-In 2 minutes. Would you like to more cay ?

Sometimes it will never come, but this time we were lucky and soon got on the bus to our destination.

After getting out of Ankara we luckily we got the lift to Çorum with some businessman who was responsible for delivery of asphalt for new turkish roads. (cok yenı yolları burası:)...

 In Çorum we got a lift from nice guy who works in PR agency. He took us to Samsun and had offered a çorba.

 Then we went to Fatsa and Ordu, where we were hosted by Ali and Maaike. We had great vegetarian meal with them. This time we were really lucky as we encountered people who extremely experienced in budget travelling as found out Maaike travelled from the Netherlands to Turkey in just 3 days. Ali has travelled around whole Turkey by hitchhiking.

Iranian style of eating

Georgia, Armenia, Eastern Turkey

Hi Folks!
We have changed our plan about the trip to Eastern Turkey, Georgia and Armenia


Our draft plan for this places is:
Ankara-Ordu-Trabzon-Batumi-Tbilisi-Yerewan-Batumi and later Eastern Turkey


We are looking for a hosts in Georgia and Armenia now. Our dates are not fixed, so our plan can change.


We started from Ankara on 11th April
11.04 Ordu
12.04 Trabzon
13.04 Artvin/Hopa
14.04 Batumi
15.04-18.04 - Tbilisi
19.04-22.04 Yerevan
23.04-01.05 Artvın-Erzurum-Van-Diyarbakır-Mardin-Sanli Urfa-Adana-Ankara




Distance about: 4200km
Duration about: 20 days
Time: 11 April-01 May 2012

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Coming back to Ankara

The 7th of April was the day when we were coming back to Ankara. During this weekend according to our catholic calendar we were celebrating Easter. We wanted to spend this time with our friends from Erasmus. It was quite very long trip - we did about 700km from Kalkan to Ankara. We had 7 very nice drivers. After 10 o'clock we got to Cebeci where beds and warm tea were waiting for us ;-)

It was the end of the first part of our big journey.
Distance: over 2000km

Istanbul-Izmir-Aydin-Bodrum-Mugla-Fethiye-Kalkan-Ankara

Easter breakfast in polish style

We changed our plans and decided to spend few days in Ankara in order to wash our stuff and prepare for longer trip to Georgia, Armenia and Eastern Turkey.

Kas, Kaputas

After having breakfast with blue sea view we went to Kas to visit a town in the daylight and visit very picturesque beach called Kaputas. The weather was so amazing that without thinking I decided to sink in the water. I changed my mind after 20 seconds as the water in April is freezing cold. It's because of the fact that the snow from the mountains melts down and that cold water runs to the sea.. Temp. reached 10-12 Celsius degree.

Great breakfast in terrace with Med sea view - "cok guzel"

Kopek Bayan in Kas

Kas old town

Kaputas Beach

Jagoda ve Kaputas Plaji

In the evening we decided to prepare a dinner for our host. At the same evening we met two friends of Altan - English teachers. One of them proposed us to visit English classes in public school in order to attract pupils to use English more - nice idea, but unfortunately it was our last day there.

Patara Beach

After waking up very late and having nice breakfast with a view on the sea we went to Patara Beach. Patara Beach is the longest beach in Europe, fully sandy and surrounded by wild dunes. On the way to the beach you can also admire Patara ancient ruins.

Beach is great and really worth seeing. Caretta caretta turtles are laying eggs. Behind the dunes area was like semidesert - nice place for bird-watching.

In the evening we spent time with Altan and his friends in Kas. We had marvellous dinner with sea food (calamars, shripms, fish) and raki. Very nice evening.

Patara ruins

Patara amphitheatre

Jagoda

Patara is like semidesert

definitely worth seeing

Balik ve roka ve raki with great host Altan

Oludeniz

After waking up and leaving luggage in Seyrans office in the city center of Fethiye we went to Oludeniz. It was such a great place that we decided to relax and have a rest. We stayed on the beach for few hours just sunbathing. Unfortunately I didn't use sunscreen properly and  my pale, northern skin became red and painful. Probably it will peel off soon...

Altan's business

Dikkat! Kangal var.

In the afternoon our next host picked us up from Fethiye Otogar and we went to Kalkan altogether. Altan lives in Kalkan, but have seedling producing company in Yesilkoy nearby.
After great and delicious meal consisted of 3 kinds of meat we aimed his apartment which astonished us with a huge terrace with a view on the bay. 

Dalyan

Our next stop was Dalyan - small town about which not many tourist actually know. We wouldn't too if our first hosts: Bahriye and Hakan hadn't told us. In fact this little town hides lots of touristic attractions - Lycian tombs, turtles beach, Kaunos ancient ruins. We could enjoy sightseeing without carrying our heavy backpacks since our driver to Dalyan turned out to be a hotel owner and he let us to leave our luggage in his hotel :-)

Jagoda is preparing sign for drivers

Monument of Caretta caretta

Dalyan and Lycian Tombs

Kaunos nearby Dalyan

Place is full of turtles

Kaunos

Lycian Tombs

Dalyan River

Vodafone guys - thanks for a lift!

After leaving Dalyan with Vodafone consultants we went to Fethiye when we met with our host - Seyran. This evening was very relaxing with home-made wine and cheese. Seyran shocked us with his life experience and with his amazing views about the life and chasing the happiness. During that short evening which we spent with him we had a great fun simultaneously with an unforgettable lesson of life. 

Marmaris

In this day we were going from Turgutreis to Marmaris and Mugla. We spent few hours in Marmaris, very nice town, with narrow streets in old town and nice marina. Marmaris altitude is few metres above the sea level, but Mugla (capital of province) is located over 650m. In order to get there you must go up above scenic Gokova town - great views!

Marmaris

Octopus in Marmaris

Add caption

In the evening we met with Berat, student of Mugla University from Istanbul. As Jagoda noticed from the very first moment - he was the guy deeply interested in music. As it turned up later he used to be a vocalist in metal band, but even more - he had an amazing knowledge about religion, mathematics and physics!  Berat is very conscious man with great idea of doing research in science. I wish him good luck in his future plans as he can definitely be called the future of this world.

Bodrum

This day we spent in Bodrum visitng castle with nice underwater archaeology museum. The first thing which you can say about Bodrum is its whiteness. It is because all the houses over there are white. As we found out there's also a regulation that people can't construct houses higher than 2 floors. I think that it makes Bodrum really picturesque and specific.

go there

Bodrum

our host in Turgutreis - Ish

This night we also had some problems with finding a host so we decided to go to Torba in search of better place for sleeping than Gulluk was. Fortunately for Jagoda (as she wasn't excited about the thought of getting cold in some bush for another night in a row) we found a host in the town Turgutreis. After we ate our veg kebab we went to meet the guy who saved us from spending a night on the beach. Name of our host was Ish and we had very interesting conversation with him about the current events.

Antique day

After great breakfast at Dilek's place we headed for some antique sites.

At first we saw Priene, then Milletus, place where famous Thales from Miletus come from.

In the early afternoon we got a lift from American couple and we unexpectedly ended up in Didim, seeing ruins of Temple of Apollo.

lift to Priene

Priene

Chris in Priene

Jagoda in Miletus

Guys from Seattle

Didim and Medusa

We stopped in some place, bought some veg, as usual and decided to prepare another veg kebab for dinner. We sat on some rocks nearby somebody's field. It turned up that the owners of the field saw us preparing ourselves food from their balcony and brought us a tray full of Turkish delicacies. Our stomach didn't have any chance of remaining less than full that evening :-) Didn't we mention that Turkish hospitality is amazing?

Turkish couple offered us a dinner

Milas

We didn't have any host for this night so we found a place on the map that we thought was suitable for sleeping on the beach. This place was Gulluk, small town nearby Bodrum, but after getting there we realized that it wasn't a good option. The town was a small concrete jungle without wild places. After choosing the place on the beach unfortunately some local boozers discovered us and we had to move somewhere else. We found a squat. It seemed to be inhabited that's why we decided to sleep on the roof of this building. We put some papers in the shadow on the roof and hid in our sleeping-bags. 

It wasn't a nice night, because of some disco nearby and cats fighting in the bush, but we survived. At least we gained new experience :-)

our camp

nice view in the morning