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Published: October 2nd 2004
Finally made it to Ayvalik. (I don't have my card reader with me so the pictures will be uploaded asynchronously).
The road here was interesting. I took a minibus from Bergama to Chandarli (a small vacation town on the coast, slightly south and west of Bergama), checked out the Genoese fortress there, and got many giggles from a group of 4-5 teenage girls. I swear, if I could only get 1/10th of the attention from chicks within my age bracket... I decided to walk to
Dikili (which didn't look too far on the map), taking the coastal route, convinvced that I could switch to hitchiking or paid transportation at any time.
I camped out on a beach backed by an army of vacationers' villas. The place must have been teeming with people in season, but now it was deserted. School has started, and no-one apart from myself and a handful of retirees were around. As a result I had the whole place to myself. There was a changing room and even a bathroom near the premises.. in fact everything one could ask for, except for running fresh water (and decent shade, that is). The moon was full and lit
Looking towards Chandarli
A beach -- one among thousands on the Aegean coast.up the place like a streetlight, which (along with the cold) was a minor annoyance when trying to sleep. I found myself falling into the sweetest sleep shortly after the sun rose. Luckily I had some bread and cheese as well as some dried figs, peanuts and raisins with me, so I was able to stay for two days and relax. One occasionally needs such escapades to regain composure. I literally saw no-one for those two days except for the kind retirees whose house I went to to fill up my water bottle, the fisherfolk who occasionally fished offshore from
my beach, and one old man who tanned for half an hour once.
This morning I ran out of food and decided to head out. As luck would have it, this road wasn't really well-used, and the minibuses took another (shorter) route. So I did some uphill walking in the heat of the day, trying to hitch with the occasional vehicle that passed by.
A kid gave me a ride on his wimpy
Mopet motorbike; I hadn't asked. He was real friendly, said admiring things about my mode of traveling and offered me food (I wasn't hungry). He
Geese at Bademli
I thought this flock of geese was picturesque... wasn't going the whole way, but apart from the slight discomfort and the fear of getting in a wreck, the experience was very pleasant. He was from the east (Igdir), and said he never left a traveler by the side of the road. In general I tend to find eastern (Kurdish) folk very friendly.
After that (again without asking) a family picked me up and I sat in the back of their covered pickup with the two kids (girl:12, boy:9), telling them about my "adventures". They too weren't going the whole way; they were headed to a picnic spot 3-4km from a village from which I could catch a minibus to
Dikili. The guy was so nice he went out of his way to take me to the village, and then asked me if I'd like to picnic with them, and then asked me if I had enough money for the minibus.
Just meeting these nice people was definitely worth whatever discomfort I may have endured while walking in between rides. Too bad nice people seem few and far in between (hence the infrequent rides).
Dikili didn't seem too impressive (and its massive coastline didn't seem swim-able), so I caught the first bus out to Ayvalik, and settled down in a hostel highly recommended by LP. I'll have more on Ayvalik later.
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anonymous
non-member comment
Whose beach? Our Beach! yazisini (sen ve benden baska) kimsenin anladigini sanmiyorum, boyle inside joke lari yazip durma cizerim bi tarafini