Snowboarding

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About 75km east of Goreme is the 3900m volcanic Mt Erciyes. It has a small ski resort on it and the Lonely Planet had some directions on how to get there. The Dutch guys got there a day before us and said there weren't any hostels to stay at near the slopes so we opted to stay in Kayseri - a huge industrial town about 15km away. There weren't any hostels either but we eventually found a cheap hotel after a Turkish guy stopped and in German explain how to get there. They all confuse right and left, pointing the opposite direction to what they are saying! After getting to the hotel we all planned to get a early night, but the heating kept on coming on and switching off, resulting in us either boiling or freezing. Next door was a mosque and at 4am they had the loudest call to prayer I've heard so far in Turkey. No-one ended up sleeping well and by the morning three of us had colds (Mel, Ryan and I). After the usual Turkish breakfast of eggs, cucumber, tomatoes, cheese, olives, tea and mounds of bread, we set off for the bus station. The bus was luckily easy to find. We had to suffer some annoying Turkish teenages trying to speak to us but all they could say was "my name is" - glad to see their English is inspired by Eminem! We got off at the resort to find no-one spoke English and after finding a place to leave our packs, we set out about trying to hire stuff. After much pointing, everyone had some cool eighties ski outfits and a random selection of boards. Most of the resort was closed so we were limited to three runs. The chair lift took ages to get to the top because lots of people were getting on, going to the top, wandering around and then coming back down again with skiing. So they had to keep on slowing it for them to get on and off. Mel had never seen snow before and mucked around learning to snowboard on the bottom of the main slope. In true Turkish style, every time Mel fell over about 5 people would run over and try to help pick her up. It was very amusing. Two of the runs were really boring flat runs and another hilly one was more challenging. After four runs, the wind had blown up and all the snow had been blown off the runs, leaving a really icy base layer. We decided to call it a day and go home early - which was probably best as three of us were feeling pretty sick. Once back in Kaysari we went looking for a pharmacy and got directed to this street near the hospital by some guy who had lived in Australia and could speak reasonable English. All of the pharmacies in this town are next to each other - about 30 within two blocks. It was weird. After some pointing and random words thrown in I got some Strepsil, but gave up on trying to get cough medicine as all the ingredients are in Turkish. The four of us then caught the night bus to Antalya on the coast. Going to take it easy for a few days and recover.

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Comments

[deleted_14176]

Mucking around!
Hey i was trying very hard to snowbaord thanks very much! just cause i was crap doenst mean i wasnt trying! haha Mellie