Our first Cyprian hitchhiker

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Our Northern Cyprus Road Trip begins with a trip out to St Hilarion castle and ends with the shiny new 2009 fiesta making funny noises from our off road trip.

Day 1 we decide to explore the east side of north island. We drive visit St Hilarion Castle also known as Richard the Lionheart's castle or Walt Disney Castle. Do you think it compares to the German version in Fussen? I navigated, Ivan (brother) drives and dad sleeps.

The castle is fun to explore and me and my brother take off climbing and investigating.

The castle is thought to be named after a saint who escapes Jerusalem after the Arab conquest and moved to Cyprus, where he lived and died in a cave on top of the mountains. In the 10^th century a church and monastery were added to a site. During the Lusignan period it turned into castle. I think if nothing else this was probably my highlight of our time in Girnea. It was cold and a bit slippy walking around the castle. But the view and construction was spectacular – you could feel the history seeping out of the castles seems.

The next stop is Bellapois Abbey. Bellapois is much harder to find compared to the castle and despite our maps we spend a futile half an hour driving around in circles. With limited success we decide to call it quits, and as the sun begins to set we make our way to Guzelyurt (Morphou).

When we get into town we meet a nice police mana that tells us we have a choice of two hotels in the area. We pull into a petrol station to ask for directions. The man we ask begins to speak in Turkish. We try saying hotel only and showing sleeping signs. The man continues to speak in Turkish, opens our car door and gets into the car. He probably thinks we are a taxi of some sort and proceeds to tell us his story still in turkish. He's very drunk we realise. We continue to drive along the road and realise we are heading away from the main town centre. We turn around and our drunk buddy looks like he is about to get out of the car. He is protesting but unfortunately we don't know where to drop him off and we do need to find a hotel. We pull over so he can step out safely. He is deflated and still protesting and he gets out to step ankle deep into a mini swamp. We apologize but i don't think he understands. We drive off as he walks off along the road into pitch black darkness.

As we drive past the petrol station again some men signal to us presumably to find out what happened to their friend. We signal that he is walking up a couple of km's up the road and get back on the road to find the hotel. We find the first hotel which is expensive and relatively basic looking. We decide to check out the second hotel only to find its also expensive. We try to negotiate a cheaper price and eventually knock the price down by 43%. The owner calls on one of his staff members Kyzl-Gul to see if she can translate. Kyzl-Gul is from Turkmenistan and lucky for us can speak Russian and most Turkic languages. She tells us his lowest price which is still higher then our highest price. We pretend we are about to leave when the owner offers us some snacks - yummy pastries and we sit to talk for a bit with Kyzl-Gul. Before we know it we are staying in the hotel and I'm dreaming up a trip to Turkmenistan.

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