More of Turkey

So I finished off the last blog by mentioning the wedding...and when we arrived at our campsite in Oludinez it was all hands on deck to get the ball rolling for the celebrations! First thing to do was get the fire burning to get the lamb on the spit roast...so some of us started gathering the wood logs for the fire...which is how I required bruise number two for the day!! I was on top of a huge pile of logs chucking them down to everyone else when the pile shifted a little and in a bid to save myself ending up under a pile of logs a dropped one on my knee!! (Bruise number one was suffered about 3 hours earlier when in my stupidity I walked into the padlock latch when I was getting back on the truck!! So in the space of 3 hours I gave myself 2 whopper bruises...just as the weather got good enough to whip the shorts out of the bottom of the bag!! Brilliant timing!!) Anyway once the logs were all down at the fire it was time then to start decorating the truck. Let me tell you when we park up the truck we tend to gather a crowd anyway....but that day was a different story as we were putting tinsel and streamers and balloons all over the place!!! Once the truck was prettified, myself and Dee hit the lagoon at our campsite! After our hike up the gorge that day and the sweaty work of gathering the fire wood and then decorating the truck we were in need of some refreshment...and instead of heading first for the showers we hit the beautiful cool waters of the lagoon. Once we were refreshed it was then time to finish off the costume making and then start getting everyone into the costumes!! Of course there was also the nail painting and make up to apply to the bridal party...and as the bridal party and mother of the bride and the mad aunt were mostly filled by the guys on the trip me and the girls took a small bit of cruel pleasure in painting on a hideous pink nail varnish and pink lipstick! Once all that was done it was time to kick off the party!!

The wedding was absolutely amazing!! The costumes turned out to be a great laugh and I have to say Big Kev made the best Big Fat Gypsy Wedding style bride ever!!! We went through the nuptials....complete with a kiss and first dance (to you make me feel like a natural woman...Big Kev’s choice of course!!)  and then we headed down to the campfire to tuck into the lamb. I am not a huge fan of lamb as it is but oh my god a freshly cooked full lamb off a spit roast is absolutely amazing!! We also have a very special punch made up....which was blamed the next day for a lot of the sore heads! The next day was mostly a lazy day spent lying on the beach for the first half of the day and then lounging in the bar reading and having a few cocktails! The following day was our boat trip which we were all looking forward to...and for the first hour or so it was great. We had sun beds on the top deck to get ourselves comfy in to soak in the sun...and then the clouds arrived...and then the rain arrived!! So it ended up being a day of lying on the sun beds covered up as much as possible and being as still as possible hoping that the wind would just roll over us!!

It was in Oludinez that I had my first bout of proper homesickness! Every now and then up until then I would get the odd pang of homesickness...usually when I heard a song that reminded me of something back home but this time round it was full blown missing home syndrome!! Took me a couple days to snap out of it but after a few well timed Skype calls and a sunny drive day where I discovered some hidden music on my Ipod I managed to smile (and sing!!) my way out of it! So thanks to the relevant parties for their help in kicking my ass into shape and making me snap out of it!! J

The next day then was a lovely drive to Kas. Once again our campsite was lovely and we had a nice sundeck right on the beach. I didn’t sleep much that night as my tent was pitched on a slight hill...so I woke up on a number of occasions down the bottom of my tent...I would wriggle back up but wake up again not long after that! So at 6.30 the next morning I gave it up as a lost cause, grabbed my sleeping bag and camera and went down to the decking to watch the sun rise....really not a bad day to start a day!! We had a little wander around Kas for lunch but mostly spent the day relaxing...something we have all become very good at during the Turkey leg of the trip!! Kas is a beautiful place...its set up for tourists but unlike Oludinez has not yet lost any of its charm and is still very much a quaint town that hasn’t yet been tainted by neon signs and tacky bars! We ate in a lovely seafood restaurant in the marina...and the woman who owned us gave us a ridiculous amount of free food! That’s actually one thing I’ve noticed about Turkey...they love their bloody bread! As soon as you have ordered food a big basket of bread (sometimes 2 or 3) are popped on the table with all types of tasty things to dip it into! As much as you try not to eat it afraid to ruin the dinner you have just ordered you can’t help but rip off a bit of bread and start tasting the different things! By the time dinner does come half the time you’re so full of bread you can’t actually enjoy it properly! I will be glad when we leave that part of Turkey behind!!

Next day it was on to our second tree house stop in Olympos! We grabbed our stuff off the truck and then made ourselves comfortable on the raised seating (more like lying!!) areas! And the Happy Cappys started to flow!! And flowed until 2am! Was a really fun night just chilling out and nice again to have a bed rather than a tent to go to! Our second day in Olympos we spent exploring the ruins of Olympos for the morning. Yes I know, more ruins! But I have to say I quite enjoyed these ones! Unlike Ephesus they were all over grown and leafy and we got to explore our way through them! I really enjoyed it and also the little hike up to the ruins of the castle! It was totally worth hiking in the heat for the view we got...and also as we got to see how tantalising the sea was. We stayed up there for a little bit and then headed back down to have a dip in the sea. It was amazing! We paddled around for awhile and then headed back to lie out for awhile! The heat was amazing! I finally got the weather that I had been hearing I had been missing back home! We headed back up to the hostel then and settled ourselves in to our seats again for the evening!

Next morning we had a 6am start for a long truck day! I managed to get through 5 and a half movies that day, Zombieland, Resident Evil, Legion, Megamind and Just Go With It and the end of The Lovely Bones (a shite movie!!!). It was a pretty long day on the truck and we had to stop at a Scania garage for about 3 hours to get a bit of work done on the truck! So we all sat in one of their boardrooms for the few hours (movie time!!) snacking on junk food as none of us had been clever enough to grab lunch stuff when we stopped at a supermarket earlier that morning (that’s what a 6am start will do to ya!!). Once our truck was fixed it was back on the road to do the final stretch to the Ilhara Valley where we were camping that night! I managed to get some sleep at this stage but I was slightly disoriented when I woke up and it was dark!! The sky was also beautiful and was lighting up with flashes of lightening...which we were driving towards! When we got closer to where we were camping we had a small town to drive through...and it was a tight squeeze to get the truck through it! I could have hopped onto the roofs of a couple of houses if I had been that way inclined!!! The campsite was very good to us and even though we only arrived there at 9.30 in the evening they started cooking us a lovely dinner so we didn’t have to get the truck kitchen out and start cooking. When we did arrive we had to get the tents up which was amusing anyway as it was pitch black and all we had was the light from our torches. However I turned around at one stage to pick up the mallet to notice a group of Turkish lads standing there, getting a great laugh out of me pitching my tent! Not sure what was quite so amusing...whether it was a girl pitching a tent...or the fact I was in shorts and flip flips at 10 at night when it was getting pretty chilly!! Didn’t sleep much again that night as we had a farm full of animals keeping us awake for the night! There was a gaggle of extremely loud ducks...anda  donkey hanging about somewhere, a couple of cats, the obligatory rooster and hens and then a massive dog scrap in the middle of the night! It was absolutely awful...a gang of dogs attacked another one and I hope I never have to hear that sound again! I would much rather listen to our snorers for the rest of the trip than have to go through that again! We have had quite a bit of amusement out of animals at different campsites! At the place in Oludinez we had a rooster that couldn’t quite grasp the concept of doing his cockadoodledo thing at dawn and we got it several times throughout the night instead...and what made it worse was that this particular rooster sounded slightly asthmatic! Amusing the first couple of times and then just downright annoying when you’re trying to sleep! The bets are on now as to what creature from the animal kingdom is going to be the next to keep us awake at night!!

After our long drive day we were up the next day to go on a hike through the Ilhara Valley. It is absolutely amazing! People literally built their houses in the cliffs! The churches were all at great heights too and we had a bit of fun climbing up to them (we weren’t as stupid as we were in Olympos and wore our walking shoes instead of our flip flops! We just about got away with it in Olympos but the Valley would not have been quite so forgiving!!). When we first arrived at the valley it of course started to rain so we all whipped out the rain jackets and started off at a pace which suggested we just wanted to get to the end and get back on the truck! But when we got to the first detour on the track to the first (of MANY!!) churches we said we’d go up and give it a go...and it was totally worth it!! There was still murals and paintings on the ceilings and walls and we could see where they had the tomb section of the church too. After we climbed around a little and explored we headed back down to the trail and started to enjoy it a little more, detouring up to different ruins and finding huge caves and caverns where people had lived. Truly amazing to think that people actually loved there and functioned out of cave houses!! It was also at the Ihlara Valley that some of our people got lost for the first time! Two of the gang walked a little too far and missed the turn off to where the truck was parked! But thanks to the power of mobile phones and roaming (thank you meteor!!) we managed to get in touch with them and find out that they had doubled back and would be back soon! Of course there was a bit of slagging but we had to take it easy as one of the “misadventurers” had taken a little tumble and the dettol had to be whipped out! Once we were all back together we hit the road once more for our next stop, Goreme. And that is where this blog ends as I can’t tell you much about Goreme at the moment as we have only just arrived!! First impressions though....more cave houses...a lot more of them!! Can’t wait to explore!!

To keep you all updated on the food front...I’m doing really well!! Everyone is encouraging me on my quest to try new things....meaning they don’t let me away with much and I have to try pretty much anything that I’m offered! Really quite enjoying it though...in Kas I tried some of Dee’s calamari...which was actually lovely! In the hostel at Olympos they provided our food and the first night was some lovely rice and pasta dishes with chicken. The second night was a veggy meal...which was yum! There was stuffed peppers, couscous, some kind of roast vegetable dish, fried spinach patties and cheese and pepper pastry rolls! So as you can all see I’m not starving...quite the opposite in fact! So thanks to the people who started me on my try new things kick back home!!!