Traveling Hell

Day: 25

I was rudely awoken as the ferries engines rattled to a stop as we pulled into the port of Chios, Greece, at 5am. I put my contacts in, took a piss, grabbed my bag and headed out with everyone else to the cold, windy, island of Chios for a 3 ½ hour wait until our next ferry would take us into Turkey. Our plan was to try to make it to the area around Antalya, on the Mediterranean coast. Needless to say, when we arrived on Chios nothing was open so the four of us just decided to take a walk and find a great spot to watch the sunrise over the Aegean (at least I think this body of water was still called that). We found a great little jetty with a monument to the Greek soldiers of WWII, and a broad ocean View. George got out his flute and played us some Christmas songs (I have no clue where he came up with idea to play Christmas songs), Lotte climbed onto the rock jetty and tried to meditate, until a wave hit her and she got dripping wet, and I just took pictures of myself, the sunrise, my new friends and everything else around.

We spent about an hour just fooling around until the wind picked up and it was so cold that we just huddled together behind the WWII monument and hid from the cutting ocean winds. It was about 7:30 when we grabbed our things and decided to try to find some food and tea for Maarten (who always seems to be hungry, even more so than myself), and find out where our boat departed from. Before we boarded the boat we had to go through E.U. exit customs, I had to wait in a special line for non-E.U. citizens. The border patrol seemed to be giving everyone the third degree about there purpose in Turkey, how long they had been in they’d been in the E.U. and such. When my turn finally arrived he flipped through my passport looking for my E.U. entry stamp, well it turns out I entered three different E.U. counties (Ireland to change planes, Italy, and Greece) and the only one that gave me a stamp was Ireland which said transit under it. It didn’t suffice. He then got slightly frustrated and asked where I have been, where I am going, to see my ticket stubs, and he finally gave me an exit stamp, but not before admonishing me to make sure I get entry stamps or next time there my be a fine.
Whatever.

Once on the ferry everything about the hour long ride went smoothly and we arrived on the west coast of Turkey just short of 10 am. I now had to go through Turkish customs and get a visa ($20) which actually turned out to be less of a hassle than getting out of the European Union. We exited the ferry station and where in the middle of nowhere. There was a shuttle bus of sorts that was filling up on the curb with a bunch of Greek ravers (gigantic 7-day psy-trance festival in Antalya to celebrate the solar eclipse). We got taken on the price (7 euro), even after a little negotiation from our new tri-lingual (Greek, Turkish, and English) raver friends. Our only other option was to walk the 2 kilometers into town and try to find a bus to Izmir from there. We joined this new group and our small party of 4 going to Antalya became 10. The Greeks where stoked because with ten people we could bargain on the bus price for a group discount. I was stoked because I don’t speak Turkish and they where going to take care of my transportation woes, without too much difficulty for me.

When we arrived in Izmir around noon we found a bus that left in an hour and would have us to Antalya around 7:30 or 8 pm. I had a couple of $0.80 sandwiches from the street vendor outside of the bus station, bought a bottle of water and mentally prepared myself to sit in a bus for another seven hours. The seven hours went by uneventfully, other than a few bathroom breaks and some face painting by Lotte on Jose, one of our new Greek raver friends.

When we finally made it to Antalya it was a little after 8. I knew I had to move on to outside of the city because this eclipse has brought in around 100,000 people to the area and everything I had seen online was booked. George had a friend in town and he headed of to see her and Lotte decided to join the ravers and head to the psy-trance festival. I had booked a small hotel for Maarten and I about 70 kilometers along the coast and although they didn’t answer there phone I thought I’d give it a try and see if we could make it with the shitty directions they had posted online (After the big mountain, we are on the right). My options where limited, but we managed to find a short bus with about 15 seats that was headed in the direction of Olympos, we also managed to find a Japanese guy, Yosh, who also was headed that direction to a hostel which the internet had said was full. The hostel is where I really wanted to stay, but I didn’t know if they were booked and Turkey is extremely dark at night. The bus driver managed to squeeze 22 people into this bus and Marteen even had a Turkish man sleeping on his shoulder for most of the ride. It was classic, just like a movie.

We told the bus driver we needed to go to Olympos, hoping we would see our hotel and we could call for a stop. Horrible idea, we where on a twisting costal road similar to PCH around Big Sur and just as dark in the middle of the night, pitch black. Whenever we passed a sign we could never read it fast enough to find out where we were going. Finally the driver pulled over on the side of the road and said “Olympos treehouse” (I think they were the only two English words he knew), unloaded our stuff on the side of the road, pointed down a small road to the side of the highway, and drove off. I was pretty sure he just assumed we were all staying at the hostel.

Now I hope someone can sympathize, I just got left on the side of a deserted Turkish Highway at 10 pm at night in the pitch black, with Maarten the Dutchman and a Japanese guy who spoke very broken English, and I’m trying to rummage though my pack to find a flashlight before the taillights of the bus leave us in complete darkness. I am slight bit nervous as to how this night might turn out, I think Marteen was more so, and Yosh just started asking us if we had drugs.

“LSD? Pot?”

We started walking in the direction we were pointed and after one kilometer I began to second guess myself, after two kilometers I began to mentally prepare myself to sleep under a tree (which wasn’t really a problem for me, it was warm out), around the 2 ½ kilometer mark we came across a Turkish family an the 12 year old son spoke a small amount of English who told us we had another 10 kilometers to go. Damn. He told us his father would drive us for 20 Lire (about $16), but we managed to bargain him down to 15 Lire, which is still a huge price here in Turkey for a 10 minute ride considering that the 7 hour bus ride I just took cost about the same. But really? What am I going to do? Not spend $3.50 and walk until 1 am after all the ferries and buses I’ve taken over the last 30 hours. This nice man drove us right to the door of the hostel without ever saying a word. It was just before 11pm when we three staggered up to the reception desk to see if they had beds, fully expecting them to be full and for us to have to sleep outside.

Good news! They have an open Treehouse (literally a little shack in a tree, I’ll get pictures tomorrow) that has three beds in it. Sweet! The Aussie at receptions shows us our little hut, tells us to leave our bags and he’ll buy us a beer at the bar and tell us about the place. Things are looking up.

Now comes the moment of truth. It’s Saturday night, I haven’t showered since Thursday afternoon, I slept for a few hours last night on the floor in a ferry, 20 minutes ago I was wandering aimlessly down a completely black Turkish road, I’m exhausted. Now, what would you do? Me too! I spent the next 3 hours getting completely smash with Yosh and all kinds of other people. It was a little bit of a celebration of me conquering one of my most challenging and nerve-racking days of travel. I haven’t seen it yet but supposedly it gorgeous outside here. I can’t wait for tomorrow.