Turkey
So it's been a while now since my last post and 2 months since I left sunny old England. The road has got better and better and the places I have seen have only increased in beauty.
The last time I posted, Rusty's bike was awaiting a spare part and we were all camped up in Bucarest. Well I decided to set sail and make a break for Istanbul aiming to get through Bulgaria within a day. Barney decided to join me and as Rusty's part was on it's way he would catch up.
Me and Barn's got out of Romania, crossed Bulgaria and got through Turkish customs totalling god know's how many miles in one day. Needless to say when we arrived at a campsite in Edirne, Turkey we were both shattered. The next day we made our way to a contact I had met on the Internet in Istanbul. The Istanbul motorcycle club very kindly put our bikes into its garage for safe keeping and gave us a flat for two night's. By this time Rusty's bike was fixed and he was on his way.
The people we met in Istanbul were very kind which I tend to find unusual in the larger cities. We visited the tourist area one day but didn't stay too long. Neither of us were really into huge crowds of people flocking from one tourist attraction to the next. We decided to walk back to our apartment (a three hour walk through the city) to get a proper feel for the place.
When Rusty finally caught up with us we headed down towards the Turkish coast. But decided to camp at a lake we spotted on my map in an area called Iznik.
We were only supposed to stay one night then we had to make a move as time was drawing on and we had to be in Cyprus by the 31st ready for our friend Russ's wedding. The first night we spoke to a restaurant owner who said we could kip in his olive grove. As we were eating dinner in his restaurant a couple of guys pulled up outside to have a look at my bike. It turned out they had a motorcycle club there in Iznik and invited us for tea by the mariner that night. We went out to meet them and about a dozen blokes pulled up all of varying ages. They all seemed like really nice blokes and Levant, (the only one who could speak English) asked us if in the morning we would like to see some of the sights around Iznik. We kindly took him up on his offer. The next day Levant picked us up and we followed him to his mates place of work, where we all had tea, then he jumped on his bike and we went to another mate's garage where another one jumped on his and this went on and on. We motorcycled all over Iznik, seeing the Roman ruin's, riding up into the mountains and primarily drinking gallon's of tea. We were having a brilliant time and Levant insisted we stayed in Iznik another night. He is the manager of the rowing club down by the lake and said we could pitch our tents right on the lake in his club. The fresh lake water was beautifully warm and the sun was boiling. We rode up and down Iznik with no helmet just flip flops and shorts. Meeting more and more people. All extremely kind. One of them owned a print shop so we all rode over to his where he printed stickers of our names to stick on our bikes and Turkish flags. For dinner they took us all out to a Turkish restaurant with brilliant food and would not let us pay.
Left to right
Crazy FZR guy, Pataya guy, Mesmoot, Mr President, Levant
And the rest of the guy's we met up with later.
That night Mesmoot, decided to bring his accordion over to where we were camping and man can he play. The video's we recorded are brilliant and he was a very funny bloke.
The Iznik guy's were brilliant and we were sorry to leave them all. A truly great bunch of guy's.
Riding through Turkey was fantastic, even when we decided to hit a few motorways the scenery was great. Huge barren mountain's filled the landscape. Below are some pictures of the ride through Turkey.
To cut a very long and slightly mental story very short we rode through Turkey and down to the Southern Turkish coast which we followed all the way to Alanya. It just so happened that I spoke to one random guy on the beach after I had my dinner... he told me that he was studying in Cyprus and I remarked that I was going there the day after tomorrow. He then made a phone call and a few moments later said "nope, all ferries stop now for 6 days for the holiday's, the last one leaves tonight... you havent got long". We all rode like maniac's 153 km, sweeping through the mountain bends at night, many of which did not have barries and the drop was a bit cringy when thinking back over it.
But we made it late at night and arrived in Cyprus.
As for tonight, it is really late and yesterday I had food poising, im not feeling great and still recovering. Tomorrow is Russ's wedding so I have to get some sleep. It is boiling hot in here and the receptionist about 2 meters from me at the hotel im staying at is absoloutly pissed out of his head and I think it's all about to kick off so I will have to repost after the wedding tomorrow.
