Mayan Prophecy Countdown

Hah, my friend Al posted a photo on my wall, I liked it so much I will post it here, basically it gives me an ‘out’ if the above Mayan Prophecy  is a fizzer 🙂

I thought it was good for a laugh anyway. It is hard getting an early start like I like here on the coast, it seems everyone wants to sleep in, including the cooks! Breakfast is not served until 8am, but managed to get some more visa info sorted out. For those that are unsure what is going on, I could not get these visas while back home in Oz, the earliest I can apply for a visa is three months prior to entering the country. This makes it difficult and a bit dangerous, because now there are ‘deadlines’. As my entry into Kazakhstan will not be until towards the end of July, the earliest I can apply is the end of May. But, it takes time to get a letter of introduction sorted out from an online business like this one for example(who got me the LOI for Russia and can do the rest) http://www.visatorussia.com/russianvisa.nsf/kazakhstan.html

Anyway, I have applied for the Kaz one, but I just got an email back from this company saying that Aussies may apply direct to the embassy without an LOI, so now I need to call the one I selected in Bern today just to make sure, crazy eh! Anyway, after all this I managed to get on the road by around 9.30, because I caught up with Cengiz and Alanya and we swapped stickers and stories and Facebook contacts etc. This first photo shows the Island of Mace which is Greek and was gifted to them by Turkey.

The next step was fuel, this is becoming the most expensive part of the trip, each tank is costing around 40-50 bucks, so after the hard ride down from Frankfurt I have slowed the pace a tad. I was usually sitting on 110 and getting around the 400km per tank, but having dropped that to 100kmh, I can now get around 480 or so. I don’t really lose that much time because there are bloody red lights everywhere anyway so busting a gut to get to a red light seems like a waste LOL. I had a great ride to start with, more coast line with the road following all the curves, in fact some of it reminded me of the Great Ocean road back home 🙂 I added a couple of different photos, one is of a view showing lots of long white buildings, these are greenhouses, every town is chockablock with them and it seems there is no problem with the water supply either. Then the other photo is the signs that you see as you enter a town and as you exit, the name with the red line through it is the end of the town limit and is at the bottom.

Now, the reason I posted that is the speed limits within this country. Normally it is 90kmh on all main roads(except freeways at 120) but no one does this speed, most are doing heaps more. But, when you enter a town, as indicated by the blue town limit sign, the speed is 50kmh!! Now, when you get towns like above where one finishes and the next one starts, if you did 50, you would never get anywhere, so most people do 100kmh through town(me too occifer). Most towns as you enter have two lanes and the inside lane is for through traffic(my guess as I have never seen a sign to mention this), so I just stay in that lane and barrel on through. It can make for some interesting situations when people change lanes suddenly or do other stupid things.

I find generally that the Turkish drivers although fast and what seems like crazy are like Columbia and the other countries like that, because they grow up doing this, they expect other people to read their minds. Anyway, that is my guess and now I expect them to read my mind, because I filter as much as possible and they seem to let me through, having the lights on helps.

Enough of that, on the road again and I found some nice mountain twisties, this small road bypassed the tunnel system which was a toll, so I saved money and had fun at the same time before stopping for a pizza type meal in a small town.

Now, can you imagine if Dominos started home delivery of these pizzas, they would need pilot escort on the scooters for the wide loads 🙂 Hahaha. I was so hungry I chewed and swallowed the first bit before realising there was a chilli pepper on top, that hurt, ow, I got rid of the rest of them, sneaky things! Then to top it off, I was just about to ride away when the lady came over and asked me to pay, I felt a bit low about that, I had forgot, so I gave her a tip to make me feel better 🙂 The next section was more of the same, some hills some corners and some straights. By late afternoon I had worked out what I wanted to do, which was be within 200km of the ferry at Cannakele, this would give me time in the morning, to get across onto Gallipoli and find Anzac Cove and the memorials, then still have time in the arvo to get through the border into Greece and be finding a place to stay in daylight. So, I cruised and started to look for a place to stay but I missed the ones mentioned by Cengiz, so now I was in thermal resort territory, prices start at $100. I ended up finding a place called Paris Hotel,on the main drag, but it is open 24hours, so a guard would be looking after the bike. The internet was on and they served food(but no beer). I had a dish called Sarma Beyti, this was excellent, garlic spiced mince wrapped in pasta with cheese and sauce. I left the chilli alone and the white stuff had a funny taste, not sure what that was. Had a quiet night, once I had put in some ear plugs to counteract the traffic noise 🙂

That’s it for today, who know whether I will find WiFi in Greece, I am sure to somewhere, but who knows, my SPOT will show you where I am.

Cheers
TravellingStrom