In Hot Water Again

This is not snow!
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By Dan

After six nights in Turkey, it felt a little weird to be striking out on our first real foray into Turkey proper. Somehow, a quick run to Fethiye, 3 nights on the gulet, and then the Olympos and Antalya stops had seemed too easy. (OK, maybe the passage of time has dulled the memory of some of our early misadventures!)

We had booked a car for a week, planning to work our way up to Istanbul. I’ll confess to some serious butterflies in my stomach (the size of helicopters) as we took a cab to the Antalya airport on November 1 to pick up the car. Unlike in France, where I could actually read things, and Italy, where I had a good idea, there’s no faking it in Turkey. A sign could say, “Danger! Huge Cliff Around the Corner!” and I’d have no idea. In fact, I’m becoming more and more convinced that it’s kind of crazy to let people drive who don’t know how to read the local language. Add to that the fact that the roads were occasionally in pretty questionable condition. And the fact that you had horse drawn carts and motor scooters which look to have been built by Henry Ford, along with buses stopping at strange times, competing for road space with people who have been watching too much Mario Andretti on TV. Let’s just say that it is a volatile mix.

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The guy who gave us our car hung around to watch us pack it. I don’t think he thought we could do it. It is a really small car. The good news is that we don’t need airbags. We’re so fully loaded that it is as if the airbags have already fully deployed. Small comfort, but we’ll take it.

With the doors and hatchback thoroughly closed, we set out. Antalya is a city of 600,000, so it took a while to find our way out of town. But, the signs were adequate (we can at least read names of a cities), and we got ourselves pointed in the right direction. Our route took us up over some steep mountains, where the exposed granite reminded us of Yosemite. Initial reactions were that Turkey needs to work on the environmental thing in a big way. Cars and buses spewed absolutely awful black fumes, and the side of the road was covered with litter. A shame, because it is lovely country.

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Down out of the mountains, we were in a high valley and felt that we had stepped back a few centuries. Women in elaborate headscarves drove horse-drawn carts piled high with sugarbeets, men headed in or out of mosques, and others watched the few cars go by wearing very nifty galoshes. The leaves on the trees were changing colors, a cool wind was blowing, and we really felt like we were in a very different place. At lunch time, we picked a road side restaurant in a small town, walked in, and started pointing. The old sign language thing does still work. We ended up with a delicious sort of Turkish fajitas. Lamb, tomatoes, and onions were sautéed in small iron skillets cooked in a huge pizza oven, and we ate them with a really good nomadic bread (much like pita) that we have come to love. The cook was as fascinated by us as we were by him, I think, which is always fun.

Pamukkale is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that has, sadly, seen better days. Natural hot springs let out water laden with calcium, which has left deposits as it tumbles down a hillside. The result is a totally white hillside, with lots of little pools. Up until twenty years ago, the water flowed freely, and people could walk around on the hillside enjoying the pools and warm water. Now, however, a bunch of hotels were built on top of the hill and have grabbed much of the water. The experience just isn’t the same without water, and it was all kind of depressing. At least it gave us the basis for a good discussion with the kids on the impact of human development on nature. (They had seen the photos on many tourist posters of Turkey, etc., showing how things were, and so could clearly appreciate what recent human activity had caused.) The only good thing is that at the top of the hill there are very elaborate Roman ruins. The Romans were very into their hot springs, and built all sorts of temples, baths, etc. Since the baths closed 5 minutes after we arrived in the afternoon, Christina and the kids hiked up the hill the next morning to go for a swim. Reports are that it was really amazing to swim in crystal-clear, 93 degree water with all sorts of Roman columns and statues under the water. Grayson wisely took his goggles, and they all could read the inscriptions in Greek or Latin on the columns under the water. Hearst Castle, eat your heart out!

The most exciting event at Pamukkale was watching Abby play Deal or No Deal with a friendly old man who plopped down next to us in the restaurant area of our pension. He explained that he had no wife, no kids, and no grandchildren, and was lonely. He proposed to Abby that she stay in Pamukkale with him. He opened by offering five chocolates and ten ice creams a day, plus a baby camel. Abby politely explained that she preferred to stick with her parents. He upped the bid price, by throwing in daily swims in the Antique Pool, and a horse. Christina and I were quite gratified to see that Abby never wavered, but did wonder what offer would finally have gotten her to accept. We’re also a little worried that she is going to use the old man’s offers as an indication of her market value, and extract all sorts of additional concessions out of us. If you start noticing that Abby is not appearing in our photos anymore, you’ll know that she did extract a better offer from some nice Turkish man. . . .