The ancient and the extinct

We arrived in Van during the night of the 22nd. Watching the sun go down over Lake Van was breathtaking! The lake is surrounded by extinct volcanos and rolling mountains.

Imagine the deepest blue eyes, with ocassional hints of turquoise and that is what greeted us the next morning when we took a boat across the lake to a small island 3 km off shore. Some background on the lake: It was formed when the volcano (coincidentally named Nemrut Dagi) on the south-west side of the lake blocked its natural outflow following one of it's eruptions. Evaporation controls the water level now, which has created a high mineral concentration and alkalinity. According to Lonely Planet, your clothes will come clean in the lake without soap because of its alkalinity...no, we didn't try it even though we have a huge (and growing) mass of wash rapidly accumulating!

The island looked deserted from shore. It's vegitation mainly consists of corse, brown shrubs and some hardy species of tree. Besides a very uncommunicative German man, we were the only foreigners on the boat over to the island. It turns out that it is a favorite swimming hideout for the Turkish/Kurdish living in the area.

A small tangent: I have so far seen only men enjoying the refreshing, blue waters of Lake Van. There was one enclosed structure created for women to swim from, which prevented anyone from seeing them during their bathing activities. I, therefore have respected this cultural (and religious) difference and, as much as the waters invite one to dive in, I have not. The west (south-west) coast, which has in the last couple of years become a 'hot' bathing spot for Europeans (especially for Germans) does not seem to be bothered by scantilly clad women on the beach, but then again, I don't know how many Turkish women one would find on the beaches there either...

The reason for adventuring to this tiny island was an Armenian church built in 921. it's architecture and outside relief carvings were fantastic. Inside the church, the dome rose high above our heads, the frescoes fading, but, in a last attempt at recognition, still holding tightly onto their blue hues and black outlines. The angles were not always 90 degrees and the lines of the walls seemed to pull ones sight upward...Outside the red stone structure was covered with relief carvings of biblical stories, meanders, animals, grapes, and heads. The graveyard stones covered the grounds surrounding the church, tilting this way and that - random angles created from the constant tectonic activity of the past and the present (earthquakes, wind and water). We both felt a sense of wonder resulting from this impressive small structure and the surroundings of the mountains and the lake spreading out before us.

To complete the journey (having gone into the heart of the lake the day before), the next day we drove around the lake in its entirety, visiting along the way, the volcano responsible for much of this beauty and a graveyard dating back to the 14th century. (Now for the voice of Thomas.) The volcano sounded like a minor site in our guidebook, we had packed a nice picnıc and meant to spend maybe an hour up on the mountain. WERE WE WRONG! The volcano turned out to be a 3000 meter high mountain with a ten-mile crater and was truly breathtaking. Again that same deep blue color in the crater lake plus the lushest green and just 'silence', we had the landscape all to ourselves. The drive was somewhat challenging since some of the road consisted of a simple sand instead of pavement and the road was not flat by any means. I already envisioned Jenifer and myself trying to push our Toyota up a 45 degree hill to get out of the crater. We luckily found an alternate route out which was minimally better (shall we say: who likes the sound of scratching rock under your car?). We then drove through a quaint Kurdish village where Jenifer tried to take a picture of a haystack only to end up with wonderful pictures of a handful of Kurdish girls (we used up our entire stock of pens and pencils which we used as gifts and had to restock later at Migros - Migros is a Swiss version of Woodman's which is conquering Turkey).

Tomorrow we will head north to Mount Ararat trying to find the resting place of Noah's Ark or at least the elephants that escaped from the boat!

g\252le g\252le!!!