KUSADASI TO DENIZLI The alarm went again at 6:30 and we showered then packed up our gear and departed. I managed to haggle the room rated down to 40,000TL with the bleary-eyed clerk and he hailed us a taxi. It cost 5,600TL to get out to the bus station and we paid 13,000TL each (£3) for our tickets to Denizli, the nearest town to Pamukkale. 

The bus, which left at 8:15am, was large and comfy and after we had got going a man came around with scented water for everyone to freshen up with. As soon as we left the coast the landscape changed to rugged, scrubby hills deeply scarred by gullies and cliffs. Much of the lower slopes were cultivated with crops of wheat and barley while further up, rows of olive trees followed the contours.

Once we had crossed The first range of hills we descended into a fertile and intensively farmed valley. Some of the paddocks were being tilled by large groups of people which probably indicated co-op farms. Some of the land was irrigated by elevated concrete channels but most of them were dry.  As we moved further inland the strip of fertile land on the valley floors grew narrower and by the time we reached Denizli at around 11:45am, the country was dry and windswept although we had still passed through large acreages of crops.

As soon as we got off the bus we were besieged with offers of trips to Pamukkale¹ several given in appalling Aussie accents!²  We ignored them all and walked out of the bus terminal but one guy persisted and gave us some good reasons not to stay in Pamukkale but to stay in Denizli instead. So we agreed on a price of 20,000TL and I checked at the tourist office where I was told that camping at Pamukkale would cost 15 to 20,000 as well.

Pension Denizli³ was in a quiet little backstreet right next to a mosque. The owner, Suleyman, was determined to get across to us that we shouldn’t worry about being ripped off in Turkey and went out of his way to make us welcome. After we had settled into our room we decided to walk into town for a look at the Bazaar. It was a 20-minute walk into town and we spent an hour or so going to a few banks trying to get money on my Visa card to buy a leather jacket at some stage. The only bank that would do it couldn’t get through to Istanbul to check so no luck there.

The bazaar was quite big but not very interesting so we trudged back to the pension, stopping on the way to the ripped off over some food and drink and tea but it was only ￡1 involved so no worries.

In the evening after tea, we sat and talked with a group of Australians who were also staying in the Pension.

¹The white mineral terraces of Pamukkale were the reason that we had come to Denizli. Our plan was to camp at Pamukkale but that turned out to not be an option.

²A common ruse employed by salesmen all over Turkey was to adopt the accent of the country that they assumed you came from based on hearing you speak. Most of them knew the name of at least one city in various countries and would claim to have friends/relatives in “Melabourne”, ”Auckaland”, ”Seedanee” or wherever.

³The word “pension” is pronounced “pen-see-onee” and refers to a small accommodation house.

The alarm went off at 6:00am but we decided to stay for another day to let Linda recover from the stomach bug rather than travel to Pamukkale which was our original plan. So we just dozed the morning and most of the afternoon away. About 3pm I went out for a walk up the hill and around some of the narrow streets where the locals live. I had a wander through the bazaar and ate a kebab sitting on a wall outside a mosque.

Back at the hotel, I had a shower and we talked for a while then I went out to a little sidewalk café full of locals and sat drinking apple tea while writing up this story. By the time I had drunk 2 glasses of tea, it was after 9:00 and sunset was well underway so I walked down to the harbour and sat on the rocks amongst the locals who were there fishing. Out on the nearby wharf a ferry was setting sail for Rhodes, accompanied by a pilot boat. As the sun dipped into the haze I walked back to the hotel.

TÜRKIYE I woke up at 6:00 as the ferry docked at Samos Island, the closest Greek island to Turkey. Outside, the sun was blazing down and the architecture of the buildings nestled in the pine-clad hills had changed from the rounded, white-washed Greek style to sturdier, larger structures with red-tiled roofs.

An unexpected bonus onboard was free hot showers which we availed ourselves to while the ferry made the last 1½ hour journey to Kusadasi.  Once we had docked we had a 2-hour wait aboard the ferry to have our passports stamped then we disembarked and after spending some time in an information office we set off to find a hotel. We changed £20 at a rate of 4,372.59 TURKISH LIRA which gave us 87,000TL then after about 20 minutes of looking we found a cheap hotel for 25,000TL (about  £5).

After we had settled in we went out and had some lunch then wandered around the town which is an obvious tourist trap. We went into a leather shop and had a cup of apple tea with the salesmen while they tried their hardest to sell me a leather jacket then talked for a while with a carpet salesman. We ended up sitting out on the breakwater and it was such a hot day we decided to go to the beach. We walked back to the hotel and got our swimming gear and caught a Dolmus (shared taxi) out to “Ladies Beach” for a fare of 750TL or about 50p.

The beach was crammed with German tourists looking like beached whales washed up by the murky water. We found a spot on the sand and took turns swimming in the choppy water which was full of sand and weed but was beautifully warm. We spent an hour and a half there then caught a Dolmus back into town. We changed another £80 for 349,000TL then went back to the hotel for a shower. After relaxing for an hour or so we went across the road for a slap-up meal which cost us 50,000TL, about £12.

Later that night though, Linda came down with a bad attack of the shits and spewing so perhaps something in that meal wasn’t so good after all!  

GREECE TO TURKEY We spent about two hours after we got up repacking our gear and breaking camp then walked up to Marpissa where we sat in the howling wind for an hour while we waited for the bus.

Once we had made the trip over the hill to Parikia we dropped our packs off at a left luggage place then took our passports around to the ferry office and left them there¹. With the whole day to fill in, we went from bar to bar and from shady spot to shady spot. Several ferries came and went, depositing loads of fresh-faced tourists and taking away loads of frazzled ones.

We had tea at a beach-side restaurant and watched our last Greek sunset fade into the Aegean to be replaced by a shimmering first quarter moon. As darkness fell we collected our packs and walked down to the ferry terminal and sat on the dock waiting for our departure time to roll around.

The ferry Ariadne arrived at eleven o’clock and we boarded along with quite a crowd of others, mainly Aussies, a group of them very pissed and making complete fools of themselves. We went straight to the “O” Class lounge and stretched out on the floor to get some sleep. 

¹The passports needed to be held by Immigration until we went to board our ferry to Turkey.

Part of a letter we wrote home from the ferry to Turkey. The line about the company “going under”  referred to the failed New Zealand company Ariadne, chaired by a smirking wide-boy called Bruce Judge. Having been one of the overvalued companies leading the mid-8os share boom, it had crashed spectacularly in 1987, taking with it the life’s savings of many people. 

It was a beautiful hot day and we were on the beach by 10:30. Linda had a swim then settled down to sunbathe. I decided to go for a walk out around the rocky headland leading away to the right around to Logan’s Beach where the Germans would already be basking in naked droves.

About ⅔ of the way around I came across a couple of farmers washing their sheep in a rock pool. They didn’t seem too pleased that I was watching them but nevertheless, I approached them and offered them a cigarette¹ and we got talking. It took a bit of trial and error but eventually, I was able to explain to them that I was also a shepherd and that I came from New Zealand. I drew a map in my diary to show the location of New Zealand compared to Greece (they were convinced that NZ was in Australia). In exchange for the packet of smokes, they agreed to let me take a few photographs of their sheep – their flock numbered 250 – and the washing operation which was done to clean the sheep’s wool and to eradicate ticks.

The map I drew in my diary that day to show the farmers where New Zealand was.

Back around at the beach we swam and sunbathed then made our way up to camp at around 4:30. Once again we headed to the Flotilla Club in the evening.  
¹We always carried a pack of cigarettes with us in Greece and Turkey as they were a sure way to break the ice with locals.