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Published: July 21st 2006
Ah, I see from Rob's previous blog that I have been implicated as a partner in crime for the tardiness of our travel updates ("we" blew it??). To be fair, it hasn't always been due to someone procrastinating. 8 months sounds like a lot of time to be taking off but we are constantly amazed at how little time we have left at the end of the day for reading and writing when there are so many kilometres to be spanned, places to visit, people to see.........I can't explain. Internet availability and connections have also been patchy. I'm currently on a terminal in Kyrgyzstan (yay we made the border crossing with minimal fuss and in record time!) where I have been told the connection is "dial-up and Sputnik" so it's not exactly the fastest line nor by far the slowest we have encountered.
Our entry into Antakya in Turkey was somewhat chaotic as we ended up, as Rob described in his last blog, in the company of a busload of tea and napkin smugglers (things are cheaper in Syria, hence the many Turkish "tourists" on our bus). Trust us to pick the lemon! Antakya was the first Turkish city on
our itinerary and the first thing we noticed was how less conservatively dressed the people were; women with the hejab were definitely in the minority and there were more than a few bare arms and bum-hugging jeans on display. The social patterns had also changed - men and women mingled freely and there were no more 'women and family areas' for us to be assigned to in the restaurants and teashops - which was kind of nice after spending the last 4 months being the invisible woman.
Looking at the modern city of Antakya it is difficult to imagine that this is/was the holy city of Antioch. The Antioch where the first gentile christians came to be. The Antioch of the holy relics much sought after by Masters Simpson, Mathieson, McConkey, Murray, Scott and the rest their 'Dungeons and Dragons' cronies (I'm sorry guys but the holy sword of Antioch +5 points was nowhere to be found). There is nothing to hint at its ancient past - all the Byzantine Roman structures long returned to the ground in earthquakes - and most of the modern structures are non-descript low level high rise buildings. We visited the cave church of
St Peter's where he supposedly led his flock in worship. There isn't much to it these days - the colourful frescoes and decorations which adorned the walls have long faded - but the significance of it remains for the many Christians pilgrims who continue to come here by the busloads.
We had carefully planned to fit the cave church and the Antakya mosaics museum into our morning before catching a bus to Tarsus that afternoon. Antakya is not on many tourist itineraries but for the people in the know (not us) this small city has a collection of byzantine mosaicz widely regarded as being one of the best in the world. Alas, we were to remain unenlightened as the museum decided to take lunch a half hour earlier than their published times. We ended up spending the hour having lunch and watching frogs battling their way upstream in the murky Orontes river.
From one biblical city we went to another: Tarsus. We spent two nights in Tarsus with Rob's former art teacher from his school in Kaeo. Wayne Barnett, his wife Clare and their two boys, Daniel and Nathan, have been living in Tarsus for the last two
years where Wayne has been teaching at the American College, and they had kindly extended us an invitation to stay with them. It was quite an occasion - Rob and Wayne had not seen each other since Rob left school - I was expecting Wayne to be about 108 (!) but really, he was only a youthful forty-something. We had a pleasant two days in Tarsus catching up with Wayne and Clare, lounging around, and doing the necessary, i.e. Rob getting a haircut at the gentlemen's barber in town. Thanks for the use of your toyroom, Daniel and Nathan!
Goreme in the Cappadocia region was our next destination. We'd heard so much about the area before we left on this trip but I think words fail to express the extent of the beauty and the surrealness of this place. Hence the many pictures we have uploaded here.
It is truly one of the most special places on earth. We arrived in freezing minus 2 deg weather thinking we would have a lousy time but the next few days proved to be fantastically clear and sunny as you can see from our pictures. We also stayed in a fairy
chimney (a room hollowed out of cone-shaped rock) but found the experience alltogether a bit underwhelming. Cold and clammy in wintertime/early spring (particularly when your hotel is stingy with the heating like ours was) and I can't imagine it will be much better in summertime. Actually it might be better in summer as the dark and cool will be blessed relief in their very hot summers.
The UNESCO site of Byzantine cave churches was 150m down the road from us and was well-worth the entrance price. Many of the frescoes are amazingly vibrant and well-preserved apart from some medieval religious vandalism in the form of eye-gouging of the portraits.
A tip for those of you thinking of heading this way some time soon - don't bother with the guided walks offered by the many hotels. We found out (too late) that we would have been much better off obtaining a free map from the bookshop in town, or from the cafe run by a Turkish-English husband and wife, and going it ourselves. The paths are quite clearly marked and completely safe to walk particularly if there are more than one of you. Our "guide" turned out to be
our hotel receptionist who knew nothing about the area; his fav response to any question was unfailingly " I don't know" and the one time he thought he knew something he tried to tell us the farmers were cultivating tomato plants when they were clearly putting in grapevines. He clearly hated walking, resented being sent along to babysit us, and was utterly bored towards the end of it. We ended up skipping out the Rose Valley as he clearly wanted to go home, so, we ended up heading back into town with our walking mates, an Israeli couple who had just met each other less than a month ago! (trust me to get the goss!)
Another cool activity to do in the Cappadocian region is a visit to one of the many underground cities. We went to the one in Derinkuyu which is the largest of several discovered so far. These amazing tunnel structures which wind down to more than 8 levels are complete cities with schools, churches, kitchens, wine press and cellars, living spaces etc. and could accomodate up to 20,000 people when they were fleeing invading armies. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you anymore about them as we
had to fire our "guide" early into our tour . He, alas, turned out to be a bit of a lemon. We should have suspected that something was amiss when he told us that his guiding rate was "five-ty" liras. I think the clue to getting a proper guide is to look out for the official guiding badge which should be hanging from your man's neck at all times. What were we thinking???
We left Goreme thinking this would be a fantastic place to return to in warmer weather. Definitely.
From Goreme we hurried along to Istanbul where we thought we had a date with the Iranian Consulate for Rob's visa. This date turned out to be a very costly two week exercise in dealing with pointless bureacracy and bureacrats. Getting visas outside of your country of residence is always tricky at the best of times but we thought we had it in the bag since we'd put all the right processes in place - or so we thought. We had paid an agency handsomely to obtain a letter of invitation and was advised that all we needed to do was to turn up with the letter's reference
number to get the visa.
So, we turned up in our finest; me in my very modest Islamic outfit complete with headscarf and Rob in his cleanest shirt. We shouldn't have bothered.
First, they said they couldn't just go on a number (as Tehran had the original letter of invitation) and that they needed to hear from Tehran that it was OK (lies); then they said Rob had missed the 3 month deadline (damned lies); and then it was the Iranian new year and they couldn't do anything as offices were closed in Iran; and then it was a holiday for the staff in Istanbul as it was a Turkish holiday and they couldn't do anything tomorrow...ladida and on it went. Let's just say we were quite intimately acquainted with a certain Mr B at the Iranian consulate in Istanbul by the end of our time there.
The silver lining of this story is that there are far worse places to be stuck in than Istanbul. I was expecting it to be not unlike some of the Middle Eastern cities we had been through; higgledy piggledy planning and somewhat chaotic traffic. There is a bit of that
but in the main, it is a beautiful Ottoman city with a very European feel to it. There is incredible awe-inspiring architecture, interesting street scenes, and the Bosphorus is possibly one of the most spectacular waterways I have ever experienced. We spent many hours walking along it, exploring the suburbs with their many beautiful waterfront houses and cafes.
The highlights in Istanbul for us are the Topkapi Palace and the Bosphorus cruise (take the government ferry which costs something like 7.5 lira as opposed to the private one which costs double that). The former has some really eye-popping treasures - emeralds the size of duck eggs, thrones studded with diamonds and rubies, a huge collection of Ming bowls and platters. In a perverse kind of way, it was just as well the Gallipoli campaign failed; we would be viewing the Ottoman treasures in the V&A or the British Museum, as the Greeks and Chinese have found out.
I've put up lots of pictures of Istanbul to tempt those of you thinking about heading this way. As far as great cities go Istanbul is definitely a 'premier league' city.
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