Mayan Prophecy Countdown

It was a late start today, but fiddled with the bike until I could get going. I needed a hand to get the bike out of the courtyard, a very tight squeeze 🙂 I was also getting a bit mentally stressed because I have been thinking about the visas I need to enter Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and China. Those are the basic three I need to be able to continue my trip and I have timing issues. I need to apply for them, but to do that I need to apply online for a Letter of Invitation, just like the Russian one. Once I have the LOI, I need to deliver that and my passport at each embassy/consulate in turn and wait for it to be processed. This may take a week at a time. So, I am going to have to get some internet to do the applications very soon. But, it also means being back in the EU, because without my passport, I can not cross borders. It puts a bit of a damper on the overall trip, but it needs to be done, I just need to work out how!!! Anyway, back to the here and now, the future will sort itself out!

Here is a typical breakfast as eaten in this region.

In there we have a basic flat bread, torn off and wrapped around the other bits, which include, tomato, cucumber, white cheese with tang, chilli pepper and olives(which I don’t like) and a bunch of leaves, and black tea. Now, the leaves taste very familiar but for the life of me I cannot work out what they are, I guess I will ruminate on this and hopefully the name will pop out sometime. Anyway, thanks Hasan for looking after me, great to meet you 🙂 (BTW – the Vegemite jar was left by a previous Aussie biker)

Once out on the road, the first part was basic flat and boring and as I had given the highways a miss and wanted to make some distance due to my late start, I nearly ran out of fuel. The back roads are still full of servos, but most are closed down and abandoned, some are open but only serve diesel and some other fuel which is not petrol, maybe two stroke, not sure. Anyway, after attempting 3 places I finally found some benzine and fueled up 🙂

Then some more riding through the valleys and mountains until I found a small village where I stopped for yet another red light. There was a small stall next to me with a chap sitting there, when I mentioned food, he waved me over, so I had some shish kebabs and salad for lunch, quite nice too 🙂

I had been trying to make a small village called Kas(say Cash) which was on the other side of some major cities. This now seemed impossible because of the traffic, and the traffic lights and each major city was big, they average at 50,000 people and it takes time to get through them all. In the end, I decided I would head for the other side of Adana and then around 5pm or so, look for a place to stay, hopefully with internet. This looked to be going to be impossible to do as Adana was 10,000,000 people and I missed a turn and had to back track or get sucked into the middle, it was bad enough as it is! Then of course it started to rain, so I needed to stop and don the wets, which are good when it is raining, but when it stops, it gets mighty hot and sticky. None of the ring roads are really ring roads in these towns that I can see, at some stage there is a red light, and traffic crossing the main highway. Anyway, after getting though and down near the coast I decided to pull the pin at a small village called Tasucu. I located a small hotel with secure parking and internet, that is all I require and called it a day 🙂

After a shish grill down at a local place and a beer, I headed back and started working on where I needed to be and when, it was hard work, I thought this was a holiday? Wrong, it is an adventure, so this is normal 🙂 I caught up on about a hundred emails and facebook comments and uploaded some photos ready for another post and called it a night.

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After a good nights sleep and a basic but filling breakfast, I headed off west, hoping to get to the town of Kas today maybe 🙂 I am glad I made the decision to stay where I did last night, because as soon as I left on this hazy overcast day, I hit coastal twisties, up and down and around, brilliant stuff and I was fresh not tired 🙂

This continued all morning, there were some old castles around, but mainly lots of work for the bike. I had a rest break on top of a scenic layby about half way to Antalya, then just after I started again, I spotted a couple of beemers. I stopped and met an Aussie couple from Golbourne who were here with a tour company, rented the bikes and guide and were on an extended trip east then back west again.

We had tea and a chat, one interesting thing, according to them, there was no way I was going to enter Gallipoli on Anzac Day, they tried, so lucky for me I missed it. It seems, the whole peninsular is blocked off for the ceremony and so my new goal of seeing it at a later date is a better one in the end 🙂 After I left them, I hit the mountains again and fog, or low cloud more like it, it made for some interesting times, as well as goats and some nice views 🙂 All in all a great mornings ride 🙂

I had a look for a Geocache along the way, I have been meaning to do this for a while, but it takes a long time to get anywhere, so I have been ignoring it. But this one was just 6km off the track and I went up the mountain for it.

Now, I never found it, the clue was it will be between two large rocks, under the smaller one, look at the above photo, the rocks covered an area of a large yard and was full of rubbish. After a fruitless half an hour I gave up and headed to the metropolis of Antalya. I was starving and did not want to get into a big town looking for food, but the highway here was bordered by a tall concrete curb, so unless you turned off at one of the red lights and took the parallel service road, you could see and smell the food, but there was no way of reaching it! In the end though I just stopped at a grocer and found they did toasted sangers as well, that was a bonus, but I also grabbed some snack food in case I get stuck again 🙂 I did get stuck in town, another missed turnoff 😦 I have to keep my eyes on the drivers around me or they will have me off the bike, so sometimes I miss the turning on the GPS or am in the wrong lane. This is the only time I wish I had sound from the GPS into my helmet, or maybe I will by a waterproof speaker, that may be the way to go, as I have an external speaker plug on the GPS mount and I usually turn my music off when in city traffic anyway.

As you can see it was a traffic jam nightmare and took ages to get through, then on top of that on the other side it started to rain again. But, not long after, although the rain was heavy it stopped but I kept the gear on for a while. I was starting to get tired and decided to look for a hotel so I could do some visa stuff, when I spotted another beemer, so I pulled in for a chat with Chengiz and his wife who are from Alana and were heading to Kas for a ride. They invited me along as their friend ran a hotel and I could get cheap rates, you beauty, I am all for that 🙂 So after a freshly squeezed orange drink, it was full on for the next 80km, through some great twisty roads, up and down the mountains as well 🙂 Hard work sometimes, but fun and this is what I was here for 🙂

It did not take long to rack up the k’s and soon we were taking photos at the scenic view above town, a nice coastal village, full of boaties and diving.

Here is a small video of the ride down and though the small village, very nice 🙂

And the view from my balcony was great, the cost was discounted, but still a bit more than I would normally pay, but bugger it 😉

After walking through town I chose a place to eat, many of them and all catering for tourists, and ate Sea Bass and washed it down with a beer 🙂 After that, I did some Visa research and started on the process. I may be able to work this out a bit better than I originally thought. Originally, I thought I had to go to London and hand my passport over to three embassies at a week each, but now I have looked and can see I can get a different visa from different embassies throughout Europe, I just have to nominate where I will be which is going to be guesswork on my part. My first one will be in Bern, Switzerland, not sure on the next, but will think about it today. Each LOI costs money, and each visa costs money, so I need to get it right 🙂

Cheers for now, heading to Gallipoli Peninsular, but it may take two days, knowing the traffic as I do
TravellingStrom