May 29, 2013

Distance: 33.6 miles    Climbing: 1358.3 ft

We woke up late today despite being a little pooled at the end of the tent due to our campsite’s incline. We fried some potatoes and made some eggs we had picked up the day before. After breakfast we packed up pretty quick and got on the road. The highway veered away from the coast here, and despite some creative routing attempts it looked like we were going to be funneled into the town Biga whether we wanted to or not.

As we cruised in we saw a sign for a “Kipa” which appeared to be a big supermarket. We parked our bikes outside, but as I was heading towards the door I noticed steady stream of people walking up the street carrying large plastic bags filled with vegetables and roller suitcase looking things. I realized that it was Wednesday, which is one of the market days in Turkey. I walked upstream of the grocery toting folks and stepped into a massive warehouse, with scores of people selling produce and clothing. It had some similarities to the large covered markets I’d wandered though in Asia, but the most remarkable thing here was that the floors were spotless! No river of blood, fish gut water and who knows what else to wade through! Although the stalls were packed with vegetables like eggplant, potatoes, cucumbers, peppers, olives, onions, garlic and fruits like cherries, tomatoes, strawberries, peaches  and apricots, the place was neat and clean. I stocked up on fruits and vegetables, olives and some cheese, both peynir and some stuff that was like mozzarella string cheese, very fresh but salty and full tasting.

Staples are very cheap in Turkey. A loaf of very good bread similar to a baguette costs a Lira, which is around $0.55. Fruits are generally around $1-2 a pound, vegetables around $1, though potatoes are more like $0.20 a pound. Cheese runs from 10 to 20 Lira a kilogram which works out to $2.50-$5 or so a pound. The more expensive cheeses have more complex flavors almost like a subtle blue cheese, but they are all soft, kind of like Greek Feta. Olives, we haven’t quite figured out- there are tons of options and big ranges in prices, all still dirt cheap, around $1-5 a pound. We usually stick to the big pitted green ones, although the black shriveled ones with the pits in have a wild flavor that has hints of alcohol, so maybe they are partially fermented?

After my shopping spree we had a leisurely lunch of bread, cheese, tomato and olive oil sitting on the fence of a mosque. Lots of people seemed interested in us, and a few tried to chat, but the language barrier once again limited the depth of the conversation to where we were from and where we were going. Refueled, we headed west, and back towards the coast.

Attempting to stage a photo

It was HOT. We really need to start getting up earlier and get miles in so we can just rest from 1-4 PM or so. We passed by one end of a traffic police speed trap in a construction zone and when I got to the top of the next hill I stopped in the shade of a lone tree next to the other end of the speed trap: two bored looking officers sitting on a bench next to their car. While I waited for Jenny, they motioned that I should come over and take a break. When Jenny reached us, she was really ready for a break so we sat in the shade eating white berries out of the tree. They ended up knowing enough English for us to hold a decent conversation and we received a detailed Turkish language lesson, which turned out to be pretty useful. Over the 45 minutes or so we sat chatting, they had to stop and pull over some speeding truckers, which involved the younger officer standing in the middle of the highway waving the offender onto the shoulder. The driver would get out and walk back to the cops who would then write him a ticket. After they were done, the older officer showed us his book of tickets saying, “80 limit, 82 OK, 83 problem” he shook his head and pointed to the fine on the ticket: 166 Turkish Lira, which is over $90, “expensive problem”. They took a few pictures with us and then we got up to ride. As we parted with the older office said to us, as if it were a very important piece of information “we are the best police officers in Turkey”, I responded “Number one police officers” which they seemed to like the fit of and got a huge kick out of as they repeated it.

#1 police in Turkey

On we rode. We were feeling pretty good despite the heat and not riding for almost 2 months, but we were still adjusting to our new riding style. In Asia we always had a daily destination, a town or city we thought we could get to and find a place to stay. From now on it will be kind of the opposite, where we seek out the areas between the towns and cities where we can either find a campground or a free place to pitch our tent.

We didn’t really have a destination in mind today and when we saw a small cleared area next to a creek along the road we u-turned to check it out. At first, we thought there had been a wedding recently, stacks of plastic chairs and tables were scattered around the shaded clearing. I spotted a farmer and asked him if we could put up our tent in the clearing. He quickly understood what I was pantomiming and showed us a nice spot next to a table and pointed out where there was some water. As we were setting up the tent a bunch of local people in a tractor came by to pick up some of the chairs, the leader of the group came over for a chat, which as usual, didn’t amount to much, but we were able to understand that the celebration had been for a funeral, not a wedding as he made gestures to the cemetery across the street, while profusely gesturing it was OK that we were camping there. They packed up and left us to ourselves.

Hungry sheep

Rainbow beetle

Caterpillar

A little after dark as we were watching Gallipoli on the laptop, two boys on bicycles rode up. One of the primary objectives when searching for a campsite is to find one where the local youth will not find you, as we have found they can range from annoyingly inquisitive, to hostile and unpredictable. These boys were about 10 years old and ran through the English questions they knew. They rode their bikes around and came back to chat some more. We said, “Ok we’re going to sleep now” and they looked surprised and said apologetically, “Oh, ok, sleep!” and politely “Good night!” before riding off. We felt bad for having been so presumptive about the kids here- in our experience they have been as rambunctiously curious as in other countries, but very well mannered.

May 28, 2013

Biking Distance: 30 miles      Climbing: 1958.7 feet

With fairly expensive ferry tickets in hand, we were motivated to finally escape the gravitational draw to hang out a few more days in Istanbul. It wasn’t a particularly cheap place to while away time, at least by our standards, but it was a calm, beautiful city with lots of nice people and interesting things to do. We were sad to leave, but excited to see more of the country.

At 5 am, we hopped on our loaded bikes for the first time since we took off from Weishan to Dali what seemed like an eternity ago. It felt good to be back to riding, and we cruised quietly along the coastal contour of the European side of the Bosporus to the ferry terminal.

The day before we spied a McDonalds at the ferry complex so we were both dreaming of greasy hash browns and egg sandwich things on our ride over. We are both big time breakfast people and the prospect of a cheap greasy carboload to fuel our riding later in the day was tantalizing. When we drew up to the entrance and saw chairs stacked on the tables and the lights out, I went into a quiet and irrational tirade about the poor work ethic of Turkish McDonald’s workers, and slunk into a low mental place. The only other option was Café Nero, which looked a bit swank for our grubby selves. It was pricey, a small Americano was 3 euros, and small meant that the barista dumped the second half of the shot down the sink and filled the cup to the brim with water. Stunned, and with even lower morale I feebly coughed up what in Asia was half of our entire daily food budget for two coffee flavored waters and a small round pretzel looking thing that was not a pretzel. I thus declared this the “worst coffee of the entire trip”, Nescafe made with fishy tasting water included.

Boarding the ferry

We were loaded up on the ferry without much trouble, taped the brake levers down so the bikes wouldn’t roll and fall over during the ride then headed up to the passenger deck. It was the nicest ferry either of us had ever been on, with assigned padded seats at small communal tables, a really nice and expensive cafeteria, flat screen TVs playing things we couldn’t understand. We snoozed for most of the 2 hours to Bandirma. We expected that the terminal on the other side would be in a city and we could grab breakfast, but we were actually just in a very small town north of the main city center. We popped into a grocer for some water, pasta, tomatoes and to the bakery next store for a loaf of bread. As we were loading our food up, the young man working at the bakery beckoned for me to come back over and he handed me two pastries which were like scones with raisins in them. Breakfast problem solved!

We started riding through the back roads of the town, but they eventually devolved into gravel which was a pain to ride on, so we steered onto the main highway. The traffic was surprising light, but there was a ton of honking. This time it wasn’t annoying though, it was all the truckers in the other lane trying to get our attention so we could return their waves. We were in good spirits and banged out a few miles but it was really hot and we were not used to cycling in the heat, so we decided to take a break. We set up our hammock on two shrubs overhanging the drainage ditch on the side of the road and took turns in it while reading in the slight shade of the two shrubberies.

Practically empty road

Hammock time

After our siesta we rode along for a little while longer until Jenny’s bike started making a really awful clicking noise. Upon closer inspection we realized that at the end of each of our chains we had lost the disc-shaped roller pieces that sit inside the chain links and allow the chain to roll smoothly over the cogs on our gears. They probably accidentally fell out when we were cleaning them in China. What should have been a simple fix ended up taking a while as it was really hot and we were out in the open and our chain tool isn’t the best. Then a guy on a motorbike stopped by to help (he was a farmer and the way he handled the chain indicated he actually knew what he was doing), but we kept dropping the tiny pieces in the dirt on the shoulder and we were foolishly trying to do this without unloading the bike. Finally, we got it back together. We repeated the process, although somewhat abbreviated the second time around, on my bike then headed off with slightly too short chains, oh well.

Helping hand

We started scoping out a place to camp and ended up in a small village on the coast. It had a nice beach that would have worked, but it was out in the open and a small group of kids were following us around on their bikes. Upon further inspection, we saw a bloated beached dolphin on the shore of our maybe campsite and decided it was an omen that we should keep searching. We put our faith in the GPS and meandered through a tangle of irrigation roads along what appeared to be wet rice fields which we thought was odd.

Rice fields

As we were about to pop back on the highway I saw a small overgrown side road and followed it down to the river bank. There was a small flat clearing where an old pumphouse had once stood. It was also overgrown with stinging nettles and these white cottony tufts which induced sneezing. It was not ideal, but it was out of sight, flattish and well those are the two best adjectives I can think of. After a maniacal revenge attack on the stinging nettles we had a nice spot to cook and sleep. We whipped up some pasta with tomatoes and cheese and passed out as it got dark.

May 22 – 27, 2013

Our plane landed in Istanbul around midnight. We found our way to the visa stall purchased a stamp without even a glance at our passports and headed into the labyrinth of people waiting to get stamped through customs. Next, we headed to the baggage carousel to wait for our giant boxes. As the crowd slowly trickled away, we got a little worried when nothing arrived for us. Chandler went off and talked to the baggage people and found out that our boxes were still in Paris. The baggage contractor would deliver them to our hostel when they got in the next night.

This was actually a small blessing, instead of searching for a taxi big enough to handle our bike boxes (the taxis were all tiny) we jumped on the cheap shuttle bus with one of our panniers each as our hand baggage.

The bus dropped us off around 1 am at the bustling Taksim Square, (sound familiar?) and from there walked a few blocks to our hostel. Luckily, they were cool with us arriving so late at night. We were shown to a room with 4 bunk beds, given beds and immediately went to sleep. Chandler woke me up the next morning with just enough time to scramble up to the terrace for the free breakfast. Breakfast included a slice of cheese, a few tomatoes and cucumbers, an assortment of olives, a hard-boiled egg and baguette slices. This was served every morning and we didn’t get the slightest bit tired of it.

We actually discovered we were in another food heaven. Now that we are in Europe, our budget doesn’t cover dining out, so we are cooking for ourselves. Our meals have consisted of mainly pastas with tomatoes, garlic, olives and soft Turkish cheese, called peynir. We are going to have no problem eating well while in the Mediterranean.

Our first day was spent wandering around with Jimmy, an Australian 737 pilot we met at the hostel. We walked to the Grand Bazaar and then tried to find the Cistern before running into another cyclist. K-Pete cycled from Germany and was doing a pass through Turkey before heading to Greece and back up to Germany in the next few days. Our larger group went to lunch, so the boys could get some kebap sandwiches and I had a potato cheese bread thing. Next we headed to the Blue Mosque. This was the first mosque we had entered and the entire building was incredible. Stained glass, patterned tiles and big vaulted ceilings, this was definitely a place to inspire worship.

Lovely lanterns

Blue Mosque

Stained glass

Tiled ceilings

The next day we spent waiting around the hostel for our bike boxes to be delivered. We found out through a series of confusing messages from our hostel owner that they had been held up in customs for some reason, so we had to go get them. In the morning, Chandler took the metro to the airport, and had to change lines twice so it ended up being almost the same price as the direct shuttle bus. He was let back into the secure side and then dealt with the paperwork required to release the bikes. Next, they sent him to customs to sort out the problem, they motioned for him to put the boxes through the X-ray which he did and they waved him on. The baggage guy pointed to the exit, but Chan was a little ticked off that he had to come all the way back out to the airport for apparently no reason and now they wanted him to take the bags himself, which would involve hiring a large taxi. After a few back and fourths, and a supervisor later, they finally agreed to deliver the bags to the hostel as they had said they would the night before.

We got the bikes to the hostel and spent the remainder of the day reassembling them, going on a test ride through town and getting replacement parts. On our ride home we saw a large group of protestors in Taksim Square, but we couldn’t understand what their signs said and wandered back to the hostel.

Once business was taken care of, we were able to focus on possible routes and more sightseeing. We decided on spending one more day in town then jumping on the morning ferry to Bandirma, across the Marmara Sea. While we were working there was some shouting on the streets and then a bang. Our eyes started to water a little bit and there was a chemically smell in the air. The hostel manager came in and closed all the windows. I looked out the window and saw a man walk out of his shop and quickly put his hands to his eyes. Apparently, the police were dispersing some protestors with teargas in our area. I asked the manager what they were protesting and he replied “who knows this time!”

We didn’t really think much of it and took the afternoon to explore the Basilica Cistern, trying to mail a package home, getting free samples of tasty cheese and walking narrow streets as we looked for the ferry. Chandler had read that the cistern was a civil engineer’s dream, and although it was a pretty cool example of some very old civil works, most of the emphasis was on the beauty of the lit columns above the shallow water and some carved Medusa heads, with basically nothing describing how the cistern was used from a functional standpoint. It wasn’t really disappointing, but it wasn’t my engineer’s dream.

Galata Tower

Inside the cistern

Medusa doing a headstand

We spent our last night socializing at the hostel and packing up the last of our things. We had a 5am alarm set to ensure we had enough time to get breakfast and to ride to the ferry on time.