7

Day 7 of my 2011 Memories Puzzle Christmas Countdown! This picture was taken at Pamukkale in Turkey. We walked up the natural terraces to the ancient city of Hierapolis in the late afternoon and explored until the sun came down. It was beautiful but also a bit sad that the natural terraces can't be enjoyed like they used to. But sometimes the best memories are the less than perfect ones, so I thought I'd share this story that I wrote for our travel blog, about the next day, when we bussed from Pamukkale to Olympos.

Though we had planned to spend two days in Pamukkale, Matt and I quickly realised there wasn’t much to do there and even less to eat. So we dragged ourselves out of bed yesterday morning for our second consecutive day of bussing about and caught the only direct bus to Olympos, although I’m not sure that direct is the right way to describe it.

Our bus was a little bigger than a mini bus with probably double the seats and triple the number of people crammed in. Luckily we had a seat ticket, but since Matt barely fit and I generously shared my leg room we were both in for a long and uncomfortable ride. After a few hours of driving around, during which time we crammed the bus full of everyone we could find at the side of the road, we stopped for what we though was a quick break.

We had planned to stay on the bus but the attendant came and indicated for us to get off. We did, and the bus started to drive away with our bags still stowed away on it! Not knowing what was going on we tried to flag the bus down before it left and we saw the driver give us a nice wave goodbye in the side mirror. As the bus rolled away we tried to tell another bus attendant who pointed at his tea and seemed not to be worried. Knowing that our valuables were safely with us, we sat down to wait and eat some cookies in the bus station of a small Turkish town. About ten minutes later our bus came back! We don’t know where they went, but we reboarded and even got out seats back.

Having already spent three hours on the bus we were not excited when it became apparent we had to spend another four winding through the mountains. We passed fields of melting snow and the ocean we were headed towards was no where in sight. At one point we were stopped by the military. They took the IDs of our fellow passengers but didn’t take our Canadian passports. After they had, we presume, checked them all we were able to continue on, and finally after seven hours of driving we found the ocean. But we weren’t there yet. This time we were instructed to change busses for Olympos. We boarded a mini-bus which took it’s time leaving town as it recruited more passengers and then drove us back into the hills and finally to the Olympus mini-bus station. Since the station is up the hill and another winding road from Olympos itself we waited about an hour for a dolmish (mini-bus style shuttle taxi) and had a Gözleme (like a Turkish crepe) filled with spinach and cheese.

When we finally arrived at Saban Pension (excellent by the way) in Olympos we were happy to find it was somewhat occupied. Since it is winter we had already been told a couple of times there would be nothing to do here and the town (which mainly consists of treehouse-style pensions) seemed very quiet. But here we found fellow travellers and despite Matt’s desire to just get here and rest we had just enough time to drop our bags and have a bite to eat before joining them on the 7 km walk to (plus 7 km back) the Chimera.

The Chimera is a mysterious collection of methane gas flames coming out of the rocks on a nearby hill. We are not really sure what causes them but it has something to do with the gas coming out of cracks in the rocks and reacting with the air, and the result is a collection of natural, continuous-burning campfires – though we didn’t think they’d be good for roasting marshmellows. As interesting as the flames were they couldn’t beat the drama on the rest of the hike. Though most of the walk was along the road we did have to cross a stream and the last km or so was up a steep, rocky hill with a lot of steps.

Unfortunately, on the way up, one of the people we were with stopped for a rest and fell behind a bit and sprained his ankle trying to catch up. Since we were almost at the top we were still able to see the chimera and hang out for a bit. After slowly making our way down again we found out that the drive between Olympos and the town where the chimera is is 22 km via road! We were also told that there were no taxis, “no tourists no taxis”. Matt and I went on ahead and fortunately the injured got a lift from some locals to the stream. After the stream it was just a quick walk down the beach back to Olympos. Or it should have been if we hadn’t met Mr. Duck.

Having been thouroughly distracted on the way there trying to figure out which five countries of the world have english names that when spelled in capital letters have no letters that can be completely closed off ( i.e. P R A D etc), we found ourselves not recognising things on the way back. As we started to wonder if we did indeed walk through a restaurant patio after the beach we were suddenly quacked at by a random duck! At first it was quite funny as it came out of nowhere, but then it kind of came at us. Unfortunately, our aussie friend twisted his ankle again and the duck proceeded to follow/lead/attack us all the way down the beach! At one point as I tried to shoo it away with a stick it suddenly charged at me with wings flapping wildly. It’s actually a bit scary being followed in the dark by a random duck. It followed us all the way down the beach and finally gave up, a little confused, at the spot where we separated from some Turkish guys who helped us find our way. It was found there a short while later by the rest of our group who had left the chimera after us. It followed them to the exit of the beach before it gave up. The lady at our hostel says they go for the toes of people in sandals – apparently Matt and I should have put our shoes back on after wading the stream rather than walking back in our flip-flops. She also told us to go back and get it tonight so that we could have it for lunch tomorrow, but don’t worry we never did.