Kindness of Strangers

Sunday, August 31, 2008

We have finished posting photos of Turkey! Additions have been made to the Cappadocia, Mediterranean, and Istanbul albums.

We will be posting changes to our itinerary tomorrow. We are scheduled to leave Istanbul for Amman, Jordan, on Tuesday, but don’t as yet have tickets (long story to which we will update you soon). Stay tuned!

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

When we chose to come to Cirali, at the behest of my aerobics teacher from back home, she urged us to stay at Arcadia Holiday House. She couldn’t say enough good things about it: it was reasonably priced, the food was outstanding, and the location and service were perfect. When I inquired about reservations weeks ago, I wasn’t surprised to learn that they were already booked for the entire month of August. However, they recommended a few other properties and, after cross-referencing them with Trip Advisor, I selected one that received rave reviews.

Things were a little strange from the get-go. Emails that I sent posing numerous questions (”Do you have WiFi?” “How do I get there?”) were rarely responded to with the answers I was seeking. Typically, most emails simply read, “See you soon!” While cheery, they didn’t exactly give me the information I needed. None were ever signed.

I can’t say I was entirely surprised when we arrived and the weirdness continued. A man, whom we will call The Great Zanzibar, seemed to be running the show. Maikael picked up this nickname from a coworker of his, who uses Zanzibar to describe anyone of guru-like proportions. This man seemed to fit the bill. With long, flowing hair, luminous blue eyes, and a dopey grin, he was a Zanzibar like I had never seen the likes of. We asked him a few questions and he smiled, responding, in a rather high-pitched and breathy voice, “Okay.” I suspected he was the one who had been responding to my emails all along.

We soon met U., a young man, probably in his early 20s, who seemed to be the jack-of-all trades employee. He was reception, restaurant, and cleaning crew, all rolled in one. Later that day he served us dinner, a strange fusion of Turkish and European cuisine. After dinner the first night, U. complained that he did all the work around here, and that Zanzibar did nothing. Then, he discreetly bragged to Maikael about his apparent conquests with some of the hotel guests.

We took a look around the neighborhood, and soon discovered that the Arcadia was right next door! The properties were so close, in fact, that it was easy to mistake one for the other. On the surface, they seemed nearly identical.

The next morning we sat down to breakfast in the courtyard, which adjoined the beach. The sun was shining. The birds were singing. The flowers were blooming. The chickens were running around beneath our feet. Except for the latter, it was perfect. Our breakfast was served: fresh-squeezed orange juice; small, oval plates bearing fresh cheeses, walnuts, olives, tomatoes, and cucumbers; fresh bread, yogurt, and cereal; and best of all, homemade fruit preserves. Two gleaming dishes, one bearing plums and the other apricots, looking like little plates of jewels.

We were ready to dig into the feast when a bee landed on the apricots. I scrunched up my face and timidly swatted it away. Within 60 seconds there were 10 bees, all alighting on the apricots (they had no interest in the plums). We watched, in horror and fascination, as the bees slowly flapped their syrupy wings, sudden death imminent. Meanwhile, one bee taunted us, swimming back strokes around the honey, while another committed suicide in the sugary depths. Maikael stood up, assuming Bee Patrol, and began flapping his arms wildly, a human windmill. Despite the obviously commotion we were causing, U. was deep in conversation with a pretty girl. We waited for him to notice our bee attack, something out of one of the 1970s insect infestation films with names like “Bees!” and “Ants!” When he finally looked over, Maikael frowned and said, “Too many bees.” U. smiled. “It’s normal!” he said, dismissively, promptly turning back to the pretty girl.

I cast a longing look at the Arcadia, where all of the jams were smartly covered by a mesh basket. Professionally-dressed employees, wearing white linen shorts and tops, scurried about the tables.

For two days U. promised that he would take Maikael to town to use the ATM. On the third day, after U. had said he’d stop by the room when he was ready, Maikael went to find him. “He went to town,” Zanzibar said. When we saw U. later that day, he said he had taken a nap that afternoon. “This would never happen at the Arcadia,” I moaned, not knowing if that was really true or not.

The power went out one night at dinner, and we were plunged into darkness. Next door, a gentle whirring sound begun, as soft lights began to glow. “Of course Arcadia has a generator,” Maikael said.

It’s not to say that the place is bad. The rooms are lovely, the access to the beach is incomparable, and most of the people are really friendly. But the service is incredibly inconsistent. On some mornings we receive eggs with our breakfast; on others it’s never offered. We didn’t learn until day three that we could have complimentary tea or coffee with our breakfast. Some days the jams were covered with plastic wrap, which really helped the bee situation; others were not. Some dinners were excellent; others were cold, as U. sat chatting with a table of friends. Our room wasn’t serviced the first few days (”Maybe they don’t want to disturb people?” we mused), and then it abruptly started one day. U. asked for our room key, and it was returned with a keychain comprised of a fishing lure, which hadn’t been there when we had given it over 30 minutes earlier.

We sat on the beach late one afternoon as the sun dipped behind the mountains. An impeccably-dressed employee approached the beach chairs on the Arcadia side, which were shaded by white, leafy umbrellas. He carefully rotated each chair so that two perfect lines were formed. Then, he turned over each cushion, neatly brushing the sand off each one with a petite broom. I looked around our quadrant. The chairs were lying helter skelter, pierced by sunlight that made its way through the tattered umbrellas. The cushions flapped noisily in the breeze.

Zanzibar came through a few moments later, passively placing rocks on a few select cushions, but leaving the Mariachi beer bottle behind.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

There are a lot of English people staying at our hotel in Cirali. I’m ready for “God Save the Queen” to break out at any moment, and for afternoon tea to be served after a game of croquet on the beach. We have felt a little out of place, apparently the only Americans for miles. But yesterday afternoon, too lovely English ladies, Penny and Carol, sat themselves next to us in one of the shady, cushioned lounge areas that abuts the beach. They asked if we were on holiday from the US, and we explained that we were taking a break from our trip around the world. This, as it always does, led to a long conversation about where we were going, where we had been, and the places they had traveled to. When I mentioned our upcoming trip to Bhutan, Penny’s face lit up. “I met the Prince of Bhutan once!” (He had graduated in her daughter’s class at university.) I took this as a colossal sign that, not only are we on the right track with going to Bhutan, but we needed to join forces with these great women.

As it turned out, we were all planning on hiking to the Chimaera that evening, a sight straight out of Greek mythology, an hour’s walk from Cirali. The Greeks once thought that a monster – part lion, part goat, and part dragon, known as a chimaera — hidden deep in the earth was responsible for the flames. It still burns today, thousands of years later, a series of flames created not by a monster, but by gas seeping from cracks in the earth. This we had to see.

To say it is hot and humid here is a gross understatement. This air is so thick with humidity that you can literally see it, a hazy mist that never quite goes away. If you could wring out the air like a giant towel, a downpour would most certainly ensue. By the time we reached the entrance, our clothes were soaked through. We prepared to begin our final ascent up the hill, when a ticket booth loomed ahead of us. Maikael and I exchanged a shocked look: neither of us had brought money. By now we had told Penny and Carol about our debacle with the ATM, and figured they must be thinking, “What a bunch of morons. They go out of their way to get money, then leave it behind. How will they ever manage to make it around the world?!” Instead, they were exceedingly kind (”It’’s a mistake anyone could make!”) and paid our admission fee.

When we made it to the top, we stopped to take a rest. Our faces were now cascading sweat, a virtual Niagara Falls. Carol produced a cloth (okay, it was a sock, but it was a clean sock) to wipe our faces. Then, she rooted around her bag, fishing out cucumber wipes to “freshen up a bit.” “It’s a bit like having your mothers along, isn’t it?” laughed Penny. I was never so grateful to have two women looking after me.

We meandered around the site, which was strewn with large blocks of stone carved with Greek lettering, a magnificent backdrop to the legend. My only frame of reference for such sites is Flaming Geyser Park in Auburn, Washington, where one, small flame emanates from a cylinder of concrete. As a child it was magical, but this was altogether different. Flames rose from the earth like an organic furnace, making their way over rocky rubble. As dusk turned to nightfall, the flames licked the thick, dark air. Were it not for the tourists with their bright headlamps, it would have been perfect.

Our foursome took a seat on a rocky perch, talking about children, work, travel, and life philosophies. We have begun to notice that we are constantly having intensely deep conversations with almost-strangers. Maybe it’s the fact that we’ll never see each other again. Or maybe it’s because, with all the humdrum details of our life removed, we have the time and space for these sorts of talks.

We made our way back down the hill, leaving Maikael behind to take a few photos. When he didn’t catch up to us, I grew a little worried. “Don’t worry,” Penny and Carol said, “we won’t leave without you.” He emerged from the night a few moments later, a pinpoint of blue light bobbing up and down. Our foursome hiked back to town, the night still exceedingly warm, where I repaid Penny and Carol for the admission fee. “Thanks for being our mums tonight,” I said.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

It’s the dog days of summer. All over the northern hemisphere, the tourist season is winding down, and the start of the school year is just around the corner. But for us, summer is just beginning. When we planned this trip, we intentionally decided to follow the sun for eight months, for better or worse. Summer days that are normally spent sitting in air conditioned office buildings have been replaced by hours of daylight walking. After six weeks, my skin has turned a deep, tawny bronze. The hairs on my arms have been bleached a shocking blond color. I can’t wear my foundation anymore because the color is too pale; I would look ghoulish. I haven’t been this tan since I was a kid.

When I was little, my dad and I would spend nearly every Saturday at Salt Water State Park, a small beach that was near our home in Seattle. I splashed around in the waves for hours, taking breaks for slightly gritty hot dogs lined with entirely too much ketchup and impossibly sticky salt water taffy from the neighboring snack bar. Meanwhile, my dad spent an entire summer pushing mighty boulders from the sea floor to make the swimming more comfortable for me. By the end of summer, the bottom of the beach was a perfectly sandy strip, and I was the color of molasses.

Being at the beach the past five days has brought me back to that time in my life, when summers were pure fun. I had forgotten how much I love swimming in the ocean, the vastness of which scares so many people, but which I find exhilarating. Trade the clear, warm waters of the Mediterranean for the bracing chill of Puget Sound, and I could be eight years-old again.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Is it possible to get too far off the beaten path?

It’s a question I’ve been pondering for the past four days since landing in Cirali. I heard about this tiny beach town in passing from one of my aerobics teachers back home, who spent time here a few years ago on a trip to Turkey. She gushed about how secluded and lovely it was, which was just what we needed six weeks into our odyssey: a vacation from our trip. Five days of relaxing on a beach – not having to make decisions about dining, bus trips, and all the other details of our traveling life – sounded sublime.

A few days before leaving Goreme, I tried to figure out directions to Cirali. The instructions our Lonely Planet guidebook provided were vague at best, so I searched on the hotel’s website, clicked on the little British flag, and was provided a translation in…Turkish. I tried calling the number listed on their website, but the phone rang ad nauseum. Oh well, I thought, how hard could it be?

We boarded an overnight bus for Antalya, where we would transfer to another bus bound for Cirali. The conductor, a young man clad in a tuxedo shirt, polyester pants, and an orange, felt bow tie, was eager to strike up a conversation with us. While we didn’t get very far, we tried to convey that we were going to Cirali. “Cirali?” he asked. He seemed perplexed, conferring with the two men in the seats ahead of us. I pointed to a map of Turkey, creating a black pinpoint with my pen between Olympos and Kermer. “Cirali!” he cried. He pointed towards the floor. “Kermer,” he said, indicating, it seemed, that this bus would terminate there. Although we had purchased a ticket to Antalya, he seemed to be okay with us staying on the bus, which would bring us closer to our final destination. He didn’t appear to be a by-the-book sort of a guy. He routinely crouched down on the stairs, blowing smoke from his cigarette into the air vents, with flagrant disregard to the “No Smoking” signs overhead.

We were deposited at the bus company’s office in Kermer, but weren’t really sure what to do next. A conversation, cobbled together in English and Turkish, ensued between us, the bus driver, the conductors, and any bus personnel that happened to be standing within a 10 foot radius. We learned that a bus, going somewhere we thought we wanted to go, would be arriving somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 60 minutes. “What does it cost?” we asked. The man from the bus company shrugged, tinkering with his cell phone. “It is about the same as the buses that pass on the main highway?” we asked. He shrugged again.

The bus came a few moments later, but not before we shared a philosophical conversation about Islam with the man who passively shrugged, who, for no apparent reason, suddenly took a great interest in us.

We boarded the bus, passing along our written directions to anyone who cared to read them, hoping someone might know where we should get off. Every time we board a bus we have no idea where we’re going or where we should get off; we consider it a miracle every time we reach our final destination. After thirty minutes, the bus halted to a stop, and the conductor cried, “Cirali,” motioning for us to get off. We are always the only ones getting off at a given stop, which only furthers our sense of unknowing.

We crossed the road, where a dolmus, Turkey’s famous minibuses that cart passengers short distances, stood at the ready. A crowd of women slumped in the shade, the late morning heat and humidity already bearing down hard. The dolmus driver cradled a custard- and evergreen-speckled melon in his arm, delivering it to the rustic lean-to to cut it open, then passed wedges of the melon to the wilting passengers.

After the melon had been polished off, we wedged ourselves into the van and trundled down the hill, seven kilometers to the town center. Everyone except us exited. We proceeded to the end of the street, where the dolmus delivered us to our hotel. We were then guided to the farthest patch of bungalows, set in the middle of a grove of lime and pomegranate trees.

We had little cash and learned that there was no ATM machine in town. Later that night, as we ate dinner by the light of a kerosene lantern at the fringes of the beach, we heard the call to prayer drift over the rugged mountains that crashed into the sea and the starry canopy above. It hit us: the town had a mosque but no ATM machine. A few days later, Maikael went in search of cash, returning 3 hours later and 19 lira poorer, having had to take a dolmus, bus, and walk 2 kilometers to find an ATM in the next town over.

Was coming all this way worth it? Had we gone too far off the beaten path?

As difficult as it is to get here, the beaches are still teeming with European visitors, their white, fleshy bodies splayed out on cushioned beach chairs. A few meters down the beach, women wearing long pants, shirts, and headscarves bob jovially in the waves. Depending on which way I turn my head, I am either in the middle of nowhere or somewhere – but where? The tropical plants constantly belie the feeling that I am in Turkey. So do all the Europeans.

It’s hard to know whether I’m really off the beaten path or not, but what does it matter? Despite the fact that it is the height of tourist season, I can still enjoy a quiet day at the beach. I rarely hear a peep from my fellow sunbathers, who are scattered sparsely over the sandy terrain. I can swim in the clear bathwater of the Mediterranean and feel like the last person on the planet. The nights are perfectly silent. I have read two books in four days. It’s hard to complain.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

For the past six months, I’ve been harboring a secret obsession: to travel to Bhutan. I even wrote a post about it a few months ago. This all began when I read Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss, in which I learned that Bhutan – a country I had never even heard of before – was profiled as one of the world’s happiest places. Rather than measuring its success as a nation by Gross Domestic Product, as most countries do, Bhutan instated a sweeping social policy to measure their worth by Gross National Happiness.

I’m not sure what exactly captivates me about Bhutan, but I have a few theories. The first is that Bhutan is one of the least-visited places on the planet. It wasn’t even open for tourism until the 1970s, and still today receives less than 10,000 visitors a year. I am quickly discovering that getting off the beaten path is a difficult thing to do, and that the world is becoming a highly homogeneous place. Bhutan was the last country in the world to receive television, a little over 15 years ago, but today I can access WiFi in a cave in rural Turkey! The opportunity to take in one the planet’s last frontiers is mesmerizing.

But there are other reasons, more deeper and compelling, that draw me towards Bhutan. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I have been on a lifelong quest for happiness. It is an elusive thing for me, a mirage in the landscape of my life. Just when I think I’ve found it – making huge sweeping motions with my arms to hug it close – I find it’s retreated further into the distance. There is a sense that being able to observe one of the happiest places on a earth – a place that most people couldn’t locate on a map — might unlock some secret answer to my life that has been waiting for me. This might sound like a silly and naïve reason to travel thousands of miles to a place that I know virtually nothing about, but I can’t get Bhutan out of my mind.

We began discussing our trip to India, and what we would like to do there. One day, I found myself saying out loud, “I just want to go to Bhutan.” There is only one airline that serves Bhutan, and Delhi just happens to be one of handful of cities that services the only airport in the country. The biggest barrier is cost: in order to keep tourism to a minimum, the national government charges a flat rate of $200 per day per visitor to visit the country. The upside is that this fee includes a private guide for the duration of your stay (visitor are not allowed to tour on their own), all transportation, accommodations, food – basically, everything. A visit to the country must be contracted through a governmentally-approved travel agency, who will even process your visa for you.

It’s an expensive endeavor, about $4,000 total for two persons for one week. But the more we investigated what initially looked to be a harebrained scheme, the more we started to see that this idea might actually be feasible. With Italy out of the picture, a very expensive country, we’ve freed up some funds. It’s low season, so a trip can be booked on the fly. We are already going to Delhi. The weather is perfect in September. Rates are rising next year. Every other tour guide is named Karma. Bhutan is calling me.

We’ve decided to take the plunge, which is the scariest and most spontaneous thing that I’ve ever done in my entire life. We leave September 12, where a guide from Blue Poppy Tours will meet us at the airport for what promises to be the adventure of a lifetime. If you want to help us make this dream a reality, you can make a donation – no matter how small – to the Bhutan Trip “Donate” PayPal link (safe and secure, although you must have a PayPal account set-up) on our website. In return, we promise to share with you as much as we can about what can only be one of the most special and unique places in the world. If you can’t, then take a seat as a virtual stowaway as we take an upclose and personal look at Bhutan in just a few short weeks!