TURKEY- Gallipoli (re-visited), Troy, Ephisus and Pamukkale

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The next stage of our trip was to head off to the middle east we had organised to do an overland trip from Istanbul to Cairo. This trip would take us through Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

Overland trips are basically a heap of people in a big truck the trip drives you to various places and you camp some of the time and stay in hotels and tree houses and all sorts of other weird accomodations as we were later to find out. The tour also saves the hassle of having to apply for visas and meant we were easily able to visit Syria which is hard to get visas for.

We met up with the tour in Istanbul and headed off to visit the Gallipoli penninsula again, it was really good to visit the area without all the crowds from ANZAC day and we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

After visiting Gallipoli we headed to Troy, when you get to Troy there is a giant wooden horse that you can climb all over. However the ruins are pretty underwhelming and a bit confusing but it was quite interesting especially when you read the dates on many of the ruins which are nearly 2000 years old.

After visting Troy we set out to visit the ancient city of Ephesus, the city used to be a major Roman trading port in the Mediteranian sea and was nearly as important as Rome. Time however took its toll and the river which linked Ephesus to the sea silted up and the city was left where it sits now a few kilometres from the sea. It is impossible not to be impressed by the city of Ephesus, the well preserved ruins of the city including the library and theater give you an idea of what life would have been like in roman times.

Next stop was Pamukkale his town recieves thousands of visitors a year who come to bathe in the thermal mineral pools. The site itself was the main roman bath in the empire and the salt formaions formed over the centuries have to be seen to be believed.

After this we headed down along the coast of Turkey and visited Olu Dinez this is a british seaside resort town. This is the paragliding centre of the universe!!!! Triona decided to give it a go. The paragliding itself was a rather peaceful exhilerating experience. The scariest parts were running off the edge of a cliff and the drive up the mountain (as the driver was clearly a nut case and we were driving next to sheer drops).

Now we are continuing along the Turkish coastline towards Syria.

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Photos

Turkish oil wrestling
mmmmmmmmmm
This is a traditional sport within Turkey. They wrestle for around 1/2 an hour.

Troy
A replica of the wooden horse that was used in the downfall of Troy.

Ephesus
The library of Ephesus

Pamukkale
Translated this area is called the "giant cotton ball". When there you can see why

Pamukkale
Triona at Pamukkale

Paragliding
This photo was taken as I was preparing myself to run off a cliff

Olu Deniz
This photo was taken as I flew over Olu Deniz whilst paragliding

Comments

[Liz Williams]

dead giveaway
I would think the windows in the side of the woodern horse and the little house on it's back may have alerted the greeks that this was no ordinary horse, but I guess not. (it did say replica didn't it?)