You Won't Be Seeing Us For Awhile...: July 2012

Such a long time it’s been since Chris and Lauren have been properly settled in a single location! What a writer’s conundrum it has been for me to determine the nature of writing I should do during a time that has consisted largely of sleeping on boat floors, haggling with ever-changing money preferences, and a disturbingly persistent stomachache (thanks, Albania) that has reduced me to the hunger-strike diet I followed during my experimental Zen years in college*. In the end, I have found it generally more considerate to have spared you from my attitude and hunger-induced cynicism of our past few days (in Albania) in favor of our present glee. Perhaps you don’t follow? In short, we’ve had a rougher ten days than we expected and the scary paragraphs (about Albania) in my journal are not worthy of the public eye, so I have been temporarily absent to spare you from some darker days and save up the good stuff until now.

*I still study Zen…Zen Shorts by Jon J Muth and Salinger’s Seymour Stories Zen, not the self-deprecating Eastern Religions 101 Zen that only college kids can love. Life is better now.

So, from the shore of an ancient milky green river in Dalyan, Turkey, let’s start fresh. With a real meal in my belly and the prospect of getting up close and personal with rehabilitated sea turtles looming near (more on that soon), I am finally back to being the spokesperson for Tiny Spiritualist Lady Backpackers everywhere.

Note – To those of you who are thinking of asking Chris to elaborate on my outlook (in Albania), he will tell the truth and is therefore forbidden to speak on the subject. Sorry, Chris.

Now, Tiny Spiritualist Lady Backpackers ready? Go!

So…Dalyan, Turkey. For you geography buffs (i.e. my dad), Dalyan is nowhere near Tirana, Albania, where I last left you. Since we’ve all visited together, Chris and I have gone from Saranda, Albania to Athens, Greece to Santorini to Rhodes to Marmaris, Turkey to Dalyan (today!). See why I hesitated to write? Each post would have about six sentences, all of which basically read, “Stomach still hurts from (Albanian) food; bus/ferry/burro still moving; death imminent.”

Not interesting.

Don’t confuse my tone, though. I know some of you have noted Santorini, Greece on my list and you are right – I do deserve to be kicked if I am to suggest that the Greek Isles would not be worth the trouble. I am not (and they so are). It’s just that I had to eat (in Albania) before arriving in Greece and I am still reeling with the naked injustice of that.

Consequently, I am skipping Albania altogether and picking up the trail at the Albania-Greece border. Would you perhaps like to stay there for three hours? This can be easily arranged. Simply hop a bus from the coastal town of Saranda, where, on your way out of town, you will witness a fistfight between several men and several police officers that falls just short of a minor street riot. With this sunny image in mind, you will then travel two and a half hours to traverse the thirty miles to the Greek border, where the bus will stop, turn off the engine, and wait. People will begin to trickle off the bus. Soon, the bus is empty and you’re watching streets dogs pee on the tires. There are four buses in front of you in line. They are all doing the same. After two hours, the driver will come back (he disappeared upon arrival) and herd you into a line by some building doors. You will never enter. After thirty minutes, you will be herded back to the bus, where a line will form in front of a newly manned booth. Your American passports will be readily stamped and handed back; you will then wait in Greece, while two feet away in Albania, much yelling will take place with anybody with an Albanian passport. Old church ladies are the one exception and will come to stand next to you in Greece, where they will pat your arms and hair and woo you with incomprehensible Greek and Albanian conversation. The yelling will eventually stop and you reenter the bus to Greece, expecting a quick jaunt to Ionnia (Yawn-yuh), a mere twenty miles from the border. After two hours pass without incident, you will grow suspicious and ask the bus manager the time left to Yawn-yuh, at which point it will be revealed that the bus driver failed to make the stop hours back and you must now stay on the bus another six hours until morning dawns…on Athens. You will have no food and no euros, only (dirty) Albanian money that Greeks resolutely look down upon. You are soundly f-worded.

If you haven’t caught on by now, the “you” in my story is actually Chris and me.

And soundly f-worded we were.

At seven the next morning, we pulled up in Athens without a semblance of a plan. Our guidebook fell open on the dirty concrete to the page on Santorini at the same time as the arrival of a pushy cabbie. Suddenly, we were whipping at terrifying speeds through scooter-covered Athens on our way to the ferry port with Pushy Cabbie insisting that we will make the 7:30 ferry to Santorini (leaving in five minutes) if we “tak tak tak tak”.

We watched the 7:30 ferry pull away from the now deserted harbor. I sat on the bags and Chris went to find tickets for the next boat; a vendor selling circle-shaped bread frisbees thought I was homeless and gave me a free bag of his wares.

For my shrewd counters, this is the second time I’ve been mistaken for a bag lady.

Chris was quite amused when he returned. Now at 24 hours without sleep or food, I did not share his mirth. Hours and hours later, Chris had juggled several of the free bread frisbess and I had fed the rest to a friendly mutt. We finally got on the massive ship to Santorini at 3:30, successfully grossed out the clean, outrageously wealthy passengers, and fell asleep in our sleeping bags on the deck, the special place on a cruise ship where the ruffians are contained and viewed from portholes like zoo animals.

In the middle of the night, we docked at Santorini and luckily caught the shuttle bus to our intended campground in Thira. There, we remained unconscious in our tent until the sun tried to kill us and we finally woke up to the reality of accidentally winding up on the most favored and revered island of Greece.

How ‘bout them olives?

We stayed an outstanding four nights, splitting our evening merriments between Thira and Oia (Ee-yuh). I have eaten more feta, tomato, and cucumber than I care to remark here. The cities are just as picturesque as all the cruise offerings suggest, and Chris had a bit of a photographer’s field day, as you can see. It was, of course, delightful to watch the plodding burros haul gaudy tourists up from the deep azure bowl of the caldera harbor up to the cities, and we made a great game of spotting the dogs and cats that made resting places out of the tiered roofs of the clifftop houses. There is no other way to explain the architecture than to say that one person’s roof is merely a foot down from any given footpath (perfect for all manner of hoodrat house hopping stuff).

We were sad to have to go on to Rhodes (our newly elected destination), as we had befriended a troop of unusually friendly kittens that lived on our campground. Several times a day, we would go to the lockers, where the kitties were centrally located, and fawn over them. Our favorite was the runt of the litter, a tiny black cat with the coordination of a leaf blowing in the wind. We named him Gizmo and marveled at the outsized personality that such a small, silly body could contain. If we were not continuing our trip, I would be home right now teaching the dogs how to be gentle to their new cat brother. Many sighs.

And a street dog I liked, for good measure.

Our boat to Rhodes was an overnight endeavor that left at the convenient hour of one in the morning. In a twist of political whimsy, our Santorini campground had been audited that morning by the newly formed, bribery-proof tax system. It was later explained to us by a worker that the “tax man” now had to be somebody that no one knew from the area, whereas before, the “tax man” was just somebody from around town that could be bought off with friendship and cash. So now things were “pesty” and no longer “easy”, like they “should be”.

No illusions about the Greek financial crisis…

After the audit, our camp host was in a rotten mood and cancelled our prearranged 12:20 am shuttle, making us leave at 11:00 pm. I now know that I can actually sleep on a parking lot with moving cars, as long as I am in front of the orange don’t-hit-me barriers. When we finally climbed on the ferry at 1:30 am, it no longer mattered what happened to us and we put our sleeping bags in some nook right by the door to the bar, which slammed open and shut throughout the night, once to let in a massive white wolf dog that stuffed his head under my feet into my sleeping bag to say hello. This is how I knew it was morning. Chris had already left for coffee and when he returned, he had that glimmery look of barely contained I-Have-An-Idea in his eye, which immediately told me that I would not be resting long (i.e. at all) in Rhodes.

I was right. Over my cup of unusually good Early Gray (Go, Tetleys!), it was revealed to me that if we were really brave and tough, we could go all the way to Kas (Cash), Turkey on another boat! Hooray! Off we trotted to the next harbor over, using twelve meter thick Medieval city walls to guide us.

Of course, we soon discovered that we indeed could not take a ferry to Kas (ferry being our preferred mode of travel due to my developing extreme car sickness in my twenties). Not to be deterred from getting as far east in Europe as possible without entering a country that ends in –stan (sorry, everyone), Chris agreed to a roundtrip ticket with an undeclared return date to Marmaris, Turkey.

Again, this is why we don’t make plans. Chris is like a non-specific Google search. I say, “Let’s go to Rhodes.” Chris says, “Did you mean ‘Let’s go to Turkey’?” And because I’m good with any article that may prove more interesting than what I had originally wanted, having forgotten what that was anyway, I always click yes.

I am the enabler to Chris’ pop ups.

With a day to kill in Rhodes before our unforeseen excursion east, we strolled about Europe’s oldest inhabited Medieval city. For as well known as it is, the town was relatively tranquil and we were able to enjoy our time without getting accosted by the scraping brims of the infamous Massive Sunhat Craze.

If I may delve momentarily into questions of couture – no matter how sexy you are, you still look like a crazy grandma that names her tomato plants when you wear a Massive Sunhat. Maybe a sexy grandma that makes me feel self-conscious about my backpacker clothes, but a grandma nonetheless. Wear sunscreen and quit scraping the side of my head when you shove by me trying to get a picture of yourself holding enslaved macaws that are sequestered in the main square to attract tourists to a restaurant.

Also, let the macaws go home to Copan Ruinas, where they belong. They’re not waiters. They’re birds.

Our eventual boat ride to Marmaris was hot, but uneventful, and Turkish passport control was shockingly mellow and efficient (take a hint, Albania), though we did have to pay 30 euros for being from America. Small price, I’m guessing…

Our first big culture shock came when a group of taxi drivers politely acknowledged knowing of the pension we had in mind and then one man softly requesting, “May I take you there?” and actually waiting for our answer. Anywhere else in Europe, the bags would have already been snatched from us and stuffed in the trunk while the cabbie yelled, “You get in!” without giving us a price. (In Central America, we’d be walking.) When we calmly arrived at the hotel, the driver checked to make sure we could stay and then asked if we wanted his card. It was so bizarre. Thinking he was an anomaly, we were floored when we were treated exactly the same by every other person we have dealt with in Turkey. It’s just as ridiculously polite and hospitable as I have (thankfully) heard the US being described by backpackers from other lands (though I have my doubts). It feels like home.

Also, a word to all you lady backpackers out there – We all know there are places on the planet where it’s tough to be a lady (Albania). I’m thinking of the time in Copan Ruinas, Honduras, when a tuk tuk driver almost crashed his silly vehicle because he was staring at my legs (my polar white tree trunk legs!). As an increasingly Muslim nation, Turkey is being billed as a country where long skirts and sunglasses are a must if you don’t want to get stoned. In Anatolia (by Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran), this is relatively true and given its proximity to the parenthetical countries, you may consider hanging tight on that area until things settle. However, I have not altered my dress at all thus far and have not had a single awkward hey-girl-hey moment, unlike some other places (Albania) we’ve been. Coastal western Turkey is really a marvel and we definitely should put aside some cultural notions that are still rather pervasive about this country. (I also saw more hijabs and heard more amazing muezzins in Montenegro and Albania than in Turkey, ever the lesson on preconceived notions.)

From Marmaris, where we got to eat at a real live McDonald’s until Chris caused a minor crisis (see below), we bussed to Dalyan, a town on the river Dalyan that plays humble host to an astounding group of Lycian rock tombs that hover above the water. (It is here that I would like to wag my finger at the young man in the Jason Mraz hat that neglected to mention this most significant of details about Dalyan in our Lonely Planet Europe. For shame.)

Our tent is pitched now at a campground directly on the river and we have full view across to the tombs themselves. Thanks to the Central American-ness of Turkey, we can afford to take some excursions and have set off to Itzuzu Beach to see the sea turtle nesting grounds, have a swim in the Mediterranean, boat the river looking for turtles, and muck it up at a stinky mud bath/hot springs. (For the sake of your burning computer eyes, I will come back with snapshots and words on this later, perhaps in verse, which is much more appropriate for secret sea turtle sightings.) If there is time, we may even see a turtle rehabilitation center. Nothing worse than a turtle on crack.

You Won't Be Seeing Us For Awhile...

Thursday, July 12, 2012

East Beast