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We left Goreme at about 9:00 for our first day of solo riding with the Turkish capital of Ankara as our destination.
The ride itself was pretty unremarkable, a few stretches of scenery, but mostly farmland. We crossed a few patches of rain about half way through, but it did not last more than 10 minutes in total.
At one point, being low on fuel, we ventured into a village in search of a service station. At one quasi deserted intersection, I asked the only man in sight if he knew where we could find fuel. I accomplished by pointing at my bike’s tank and saying ''benzene'', the Turkish word for fuel. The man pointed to our right, showed 2 fingers and said ''kilometre''. We thanked him and I proceeded to make the right turn. After a few seconds I noticed Erin was not following, so decided to turn back and found 8 men, who had seemingly appeared from nowhere, helping Erin pick up her bike. Apparently, she had lost her footing and gently tumbled to the ground.
This was apparently a big deal in the village, as the men now stood around discussing how they could have
Restaurant
Waiters and patrons Erin worked her charms on... they bought us ice creambetter picked up the bike or something to that effect. Our Turkish still needs some improvement.
In all fairness to Erin, I also dropped my bike, back on the first day in Osmaniye. After the 12 hours ride, my legs were just jell-o and the bike went down while parking it at the police house.
We finally arrived in Ankara, a city of about 8 million, just after 1600. The deeper we got into the city, the more congested it got. We pulled into a gas station to use the phone and called our host Deniz. She spoke to the attendant who said his friend would lead us to Deniz' place.
We followed his car through traffic until he gestured that we had arrived. When we didn’t locate the street name anywhere, we asked for directions - or rather pointed at the address on a piece of paper. We got some instructions from a few men on the street that were ether wrong or misunderstood by us.
By now traffic was in chaotic state the likes of which no one reading this blog can even imagine in their worst nightmares: lanes ceased to exist, 6 or
7 lanes formed on streets built for 3, cars lane shared with bakes, bakes lane split, every lane became a turning lane, all this to a never-ending cacophony of blaring horns...
In the midsts of this, hordes of traffic police standing everywhere, seemingly powerless to make anything better. We stopped at one of the groups and got directions. We told them what we did for a living and traded shoulder flashes. We also got a map. We also got lost again. We now thought we were in the right area, as Deniz had told us that she lived near the Canadian embassy and we had seen a bunch of embassies. Finally, almost 3 hours after getting into the city, we admitted that we had been beaten and called Deniz again. She sent out a search party in the form of her boyfriend Emre who lead us on his motorcycle. By then it was getting dark and traffic was starting to then out, although not by much.
At Deniz' we were treated to supper and beer. We stayed up and chatted and found 2 really friendly and generous people. We had resolved that we would leave later in the
morning and opted to get a good night sleep as it had been a trying day. Emre insisted that he would lead us back out of the city after breakfast, so that we could set out for Izmit, a suburb of Istanbul.
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