BikeHike Turkish Delight, Day to Day by Mike Oswald

Mike Oswald is one of our dedicated BikeHike Adventurers who always writes great trip journals on his adventures. Since we're offering a discount on our September Turkish Delight we want to give you the insiders story, so please enjoy Mike's trip journal. We shared his Costa Rica journal in an earlier blog entry.



Turkey:
Much More Than Carpets, Mosques, Muslims, Cucumbers, and Tomatoes!!

In July of 2007 I set out on my second BikeHike Adventure (www.bikehike.com). This time I was headed to the magical land of Turkey. When I left, I had extremely limited notions as to what I was going to get myself in to. Now, just days after the trip, I look back and I can't help but think about the Turkey being 98% Muslim, mosques on every corner, cucumbers and tomatoes for every meal, Urgup = Ice Cream. My first thoughts, would lead you to believe that it fits the simple, minimal infrastructure, conservative Muslim, Middle Eastern stereotypes that the media has ingrained in our minds. But, the reality is that Turkey is one of the most geographically and culturally diverse countries that I've ever been to. Turkey's history stretches back nearly 4000 years to the Hittites. The Byzantine and Ottoman Empires emerged out of Turkey and the history of these empires can be seen simply by walking through the numerous ruins scattered across Turkey. Culturally Turkey is unique due to the Eastern and Western traditions adopted by containing a border between Europe and Asia within the country’s border.

Turkey is an absolutely amazing place to travel (adventure styling or for the extreme history buffs), and I wish that I would have had more time to see a little more of what Turkey has to offer. However we did get a lot done in two weeks time. I went from having knives thrown at a wooden block placed squarely on my crotch to Scuba diving around a replica of the oldest shipwreck known to man.....come on and have a look at these events and everything that happened in between.

What happens in Turkey stays in Turkey??- Istanbul on my own 7/14 to 7/15
If anyone knows my friends and I, you'd know that Ben Willis coined the phrase "what happens in Vegas, goes directly to the internet!" I signed up for a two week BikeHike adventure, but I chose to come two nights early simply to get acclimated to Istanbul, and to wander around a bit on my own.

I arrived in Istanbul around noon on a Saturday, caught a lift to my hotel, and then I went around the old town, checked out some mosques got made fun of by some local Turks for writing in a diary, and I capped the night with of with dinner and some local entertainment (folk dancers, belly dancers, and a singer).

The next day I took a "Two Continents" tour, which was supposed to be myself, a few other tourists, a guide, and a driver, but it turned out to be just myself, the guide, and the driver. It was pretty awesome, they tailored the trip to me, so we got to go up to a beach on the Black Sea, and we did spend a lot more time in a van then I would have expected but they were pretty entertaining Turks. The trip ended with dumping me off at a carpet shop where they tried to swindle me in to a carpet purchase.

Let's get our BikeHike on: Here's the cast of Characters:
Here's the Group (more or less, we had too many guides for me to keep track of, so I'm going to have to leave them out (except Deniz):

Trish: Owner of BikeHike, lover of cats

Marc and Beth - Respectively bread-maker and bread-spender, not afraid to get a serious rub-down from small Turkish men

Jerry and Eileen - Engineers in the middle of a long distance relationship (Sacramento and Bagdhad)

Kristan - Does stuff that I don't understand with money

Peter - Probably could have diagnosed my recent broken ankle

Pelin - Our Turkish trip coordinator, and requester of "more air-conditioning please!"

Me - I'm Mike

Touring Istanbul with a retired Belly Dancer - Istanbul - 7/16 to 7/17
Snow Flower (a retired Belly Dancer) took us around the town. We walked through the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, the Underground Cistern, the Grand Bazaar, and the Spice Bazaar.

That night we had dinner at a restaurant that overlooked the Bosphorus straight and we met a friend of Trish's whom's name she thought was the Turkish word for hello.

The markets were a bit ridiculous. There were 1000's of shops but none of them had anything other than leather goods, carpets, silver or gold trinkets, touristy junk, jookahs, or t-shirts. I don't know why they needed so many stores to sell all the same stuff, but I guess it keeps people busy.

Everyone's "Crazy" in Mustafapasha (at least everyone named Mehmet) - Cappadocia Day 1 - 7/18

Even though Istanbul was an amazing city, and by far the most friendly and welcoming large (population > 10M) city that I've ever been to, I think most of us were ready to get a little more adventure in our life.

To do so, we hopped aboard Turkish Airlines and went to the region of Turkey called Cappadocia. Here we would mountain bike where one week earlier the European World Championships were held, Hot Air Balloon above one of the most geographically unique area in the entire world, ride horses for hours across the Turkish country side, and most importantly, find some amazingly delicious ice cream.



I honestly thought I would be dancing with a 68 year old man well before this - Cappadocia Day 2 - 7/19
The fun continues. Mustafapasha's Greek Hotel is an absolute gem. The food is amazing, everyone is friendly, they've got a ridiculously playful little white kitty, and then they made every effort to immerse us in their culture.



I have a hunch that I am mixing and matching days, but I really don't want to spend the time looking at people's clothes or the date/time of my pictures to figure it out........

Anyway, today we road our bikes all day. We stopped to eat lunch in the middle of a valley filled with fairy chimneys (the large natural penis looking things), and then it was back to the hotel for dinner and entertainment.

.........and then I discovered Turkish Ice Cream - Cappadocia Day 3 - 7/20
Now this is one thing I most definitely didn't know. Turkey has some amazing ice cream. In my opinion, ice cream is one of those things that you would categorize with sex and pizza, so even though all ice cream is good, this was exceptionally good ice cream. It was convenient that I was going through some extremely active days because I was on an ice cream binge. We're talking, putting down several rounds of ice cream a day and as many as 9-12 small scoops of multi-flavored ice cream per serving.

I don't think I would go back to Turkey for the rugs or the food, but for the ice cream, I would definitely have to think about it.

Now for this day, we went to an open air museum, toured a carpet factory, met an amazing little man that would get as many as 3 miles of silk out of one silk worm cocoon, and we did some more biking. The trip, definitely seemed to be building as each successive day was better than the last. That's saying something too, because the first day was pretty darn good.

........it's on - Urgup = Ice Cream - Cappadocia Day 4 - 7/21
I would have been a happy man if I spent all day, every day in this little open air restaurant that had the world's greatest ice cream........but, instead today we took a few horses out for a stroll. This was pretty spectacular, our horses were spirited but opedient, and my little guy just had to be in the front of the pack so it was extra fun for me. Afterwards we went to a pottery shop and Trish had arranged that each of us got a BikeHike bowl!! Thanks Trish, I haven't used it yet, mainly because I eat ice cream straight from the container. That's how you do it when you're a bachelor.

Up, up, and Away - Cappadocia Day 5 - 7/22
Our last full day in Cappadocia was a big one. We took to the air in a hot air balloon and then everyone whose butt could bare it after the pony rides hopped on our mountain bikes for one last ride.

I'll let the pictures do the talking for this. Enjoy.

A long drive and some Dervishes - Cappadocia to Antalya - 7/23 to 7/24
After 5 of the most amazing days of my life it was time to head for the Mediteranean Coastline. On our way we stopped to look at a fiery mountain (literally, it was all metamorphic rock that gives off CO2 gas that is constantly on fire), the home of the whirling dirvishes, and an old hotel.

In Antalya we hopped a late night cruise, drove to Aspendos and Thermosses, and then we headed up the coastline to Kas.

The four S's: Sea Kayak, Scuba/Snorkel, circumsision parties, and Sweating - Kas - 7/25 to 7/27
To my friends and I the four S's are something completely different but in Kas it went a little something like this:

Sea Kayak - couldn't beat it. Every day was over 100 degrees and it felt great to be out in the mediteranean paddling around the Sea looking at sunken cities, or taking snorkel pit-stops to look at what's going on beneath the surface.

Scuba - It was my first time actually scuba diving and it turned out I was a little bit of an Oxygen guzzler, but other than that things went well. We dove down to a replica of the oldest shipwreck known to man: a Bronze age ship nearly 3500 years old. There wasn't a whole lot of sea life but the ship was really cool.

Our stay in Kas was capped with a Circumcision party. Nope, not a member of the group, but as we were walking back to our hotel we all caught a glimpse of the celebration.

Goodbye to the sea and goodbye to the group - Kas to Istanbul via Antalya - 7/28 to 7/29
We left Kas early this morning. We drove to Antalya to fly back to Istanbul for our last night of fun (as a group) in Turkey.

We taxi'd to a restaurant and this little Turk selling devil ears didn't seem to be getting too many customers so Kristan and I helped the kid out and bought a set for everyone at our table.

I'm really in a hurry to finish this, so I'm going to leave it as is. It was a trip filled with great people, delicious food, beautiful geography, culturly diverse, and adventure abounds.....

Animals of Turkey
The one thing I found strange about the Turkey is that there wasn't much wildlife. It's not like I was expecting there to be wild turkeys running around everywhere (alright I was), but I figured there would be some weird things that I would only see in the zoo back home. Alas, this is what I saw.

Sweet Home Wisconsin!!
Sure I missed my friends and my family, and it's really nice to be back in the land of beer, cheese, and bratwursts, but all I have to say is GO CHECK OUT TURKEY FOR YOURSELF!! You won't regret it. I learned that I was as good as Turkish before I even left, as every day at lunch I would eat cucumber and tomato, I guess some things were meant to be.