Olympos

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Thursday August 17, 2006 - After a full night on the bus with very minimal sleep, I was pretty cranky upon getting to Antalya, the place where we had to change to a smaller minibus to get to Olympos. Then we had to change to even another smaller minibus to go the last bit of the way. This added another hour and a half or so to the journey. Finally we arrived and got off at the first possible hostel - Kadir's. It is famous for its treehouses, which is where we planned to sleep. It is also furthest from the beach but they have free shuttle service every hour. When we arrived the rooms were full from the night before, as we arrived before check out. They offered us breakfast (breakfast and dinner are both included in the room rates) while we waited. We ate and then took a walk where we checked out rates and rooms in other places. We ended up choosing a dıfferent place altogether, more of a simple cabin than a treehouse, as I was uninspired by the treehouses we were seeing. And we got a room at the place closest to the beach and cheaper than Kadir's. Our place had more Turkish guests than backpackers and was therefore more quiet and relaxed. Perfect.

Once we got our things and checked in we got in our beds and fell asleep. I think we slept until 5pm or so, and then got up and read our books in the cozy public places they had for their guests. It was extremely hot and humid there and it was hard to do anything but sleep or read, if that. The room didn't even have a fan so we slept (day and night) with the door propped open to the outside. At 8pm they announced dinner which was bufet style and quite nice. We ate a bunch, read some more, I wrote in my journal, and then we talked philosophy and religion. Well, Maurits did most of the talking and I did most of the listening. He is, after all, studying philosophy and theology. Quite a good conversation actually. Finally it was late and we called it a night.

Friday - We both got up a bit late and had breakfast. Then we did some laundry, which was way overdue from all the sweating and smelling we were doing. We were seriously gross. Hung up the laundry, took a shower, and spent the day sitting around reading and chatting. Got some peaches and a bag of chips for lunch and drank lots of cold water. Took a second cold shower and got the laundry down just as the wind really started to kick up. I even had toı pick up some of the laundry from the ground that had already fallen down due to the wind. We had planned to go to the beach later in the afternoon when it would be cooler, but then the wind started and was followed by a thunderstorm. I hadn't seen rain since June so that was a nice change of pace. Read some more even and then had another good dinner and more philosophical talk. Maurits can be very quiet and a good listener, but when he gets started on topics that interest him, he is a powerhouse of thought and conversation. Fun. Got to bed early as we were getting up at 6:30am to catch the first bus out of town the next day.

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