turkey!

oday we woke up at 5:30 to a call to prayer gone wrong! It kept making feedback screeches and then would cut out, and then the imams voice would start again. I couldn’t help but laugh...but it was quite an annoying way to wake up.

We grabbed breakfast at the bakery, some cheese bread thing, and then grabbed a taxi to the bus station. Turkey is definitely going to take some getting used to because we had to pay 12.50 for a trip to the bus station, and in Amman that would have cost us 3.00 aussie dollars. But food is relatively cheap here When we got to the bus station we tried to find a bus directly to Goreme in Cappodocia, but none went there direct, so we caught a JET bus for 7 hours to a town called Aksaray, which was an hour away from Goreme. When we got to the outskirts of Aksaray the bus stopped at a rest station and we got a bit worried because normally when buses stop, they stop at a bus station, so we tried asking if we were going to be going to the bus station, or if the bus was just going to continue onto Ankara. Well... Let’s just say Turkey is not a country that you can get by in easily with no language skills. We were lucky that another man walking past overheard us and came up saying in English “I think I can help you”.

So it turns out that the bus wasn’t going to go to the bus station but they arranged a Servees to take us there instead. So we got in the servees and didn’t really know what was happening. He rambled something off in Turkish and the only words we recognised were ‘Bus’ and ‘Goreme’. So that was fine until he drove straight past the otogar (bus station). And we’re like “we wanna go there”... And he rambled off again...and we didn’t understand...again... But we knew he could understand a little Arabic, so we just spoke in Arabic to him. Anyway, so he took us to some bus company office, but they didn’t have a direct bus to Goreme, only to a nearby town, and we didn’t wanna stuff around and be waiting for buses in the dark, so we said to our servees driver “no, take us to the otogar!” But he wouldn’t listen and tried spinning some bull dust story that the otogar closed at 4pm and continued to take us somewhere else. By this stage we were pretty pissed off ‘coz we were in some strange town with a taxi driver who was more concerned about getting a commission than getting us to Goreme. At the second place he took us to Jo lost it at him and in really forceful, slow arabic, shouted... “NURIIDO AN NATHABA ILA OTOGAR” which means ‘We. Want. To Go to. The. Otogar!!” and he let off what must of been a few swear words in turkish and finally drove us there. We were then worried what he was going to charge us, because he’d been driving us around for half an hour! But he charged us nothing, so that was good.

At the otogar we found a direct bus at 6:30pm to Goreme, accept coz the guy knew it was the only bus he charged us a mint, and even the student line and the begging didn’t help us. Not to worry, because we finally got here and the hostel picked us up from the bus station. The place we’re staying in tonight is soooo cool. It’s in caves kinda like cooper peedy and its sooooo beautiful. We have only seen the surroundings at night, but we can’t wait to see everything tomorrow morning! The hostel does food here too, which was great coz we were starving when we arrived. So we all got a lovely home cooked stirfry and it was so yummy! And this place has internet access thank goodness coz I don’t have a phone and I hadn’t been able to contact home for 2 days.

So tomorrow we might do a tour around the place on foot. Maybe by bus... You can do balloon flights over Cappodocia, but its like 140 euros... So not gonna happen...

Oh yeah we drove through snow today on the way here!!!! It was so awesome. My first time seeing snow... Yeah I know, call me a hillbilly from sunny Australia, but it was soooo coool. I took lots of photos!


Well I’m off to bed... It’s amazing how tired you get from sitting on a bus for 9 hours all day!

Love carly