It’s April of 1988 and our travels start out in Istanbul’s Yucelt Hostel with a bang; in fact a bunch of bangs! Unknowingly we have arrived during the Holy fasting Month of Ramadan, a time for devout Muslims when nothing slips past the lips during daylight hours. At an outlandish hour of the morning we’re rudely rousted by drummers taking to the ancient cobbled streets to awaken the faithful to eat before sunrise.
Istanbul is such a badass city that it couldn’t be contained within one continent and straddled the Bosphorus Strait to put down roots in a second! And on our first morning, just because we can, we walk from the shore of Asia over the floating Galata Bridge to the shore of Europe, all while staying within the same city.
The lower level of the bridge hosts petite tea shops, hookah joints, and fish shops that snatch their catch straight from the murky depths below. On the upper level we thread our way through a horde of bodies eluding a tangle of fishing poles, flopping fish, and hawkers flogging eclectic wares ranging from snakes to potato-peelers to underwear! We find Istanbul an enigma of the mysterious, exotic, and unknown.
Beneath a striking skyline of domes and minarets, this former capital of the Ottoman Empire is vividly alive with striking panoramas and scenes from daily Turkish life. Settling into the city’s rhythm, we experience the magnificent architecture of Sancta Sophia and the Blue Mosque; along with Muslims in skull caps, the maze of 4000 shops in the Grand Bazaar, legless beggars dragging themselves about with old shoes over their hands, heavily burdened donkeys, carpet shops offering a toke of hashish from a bubbling hookah pipe or a tiny glass of Turkish tea, horse-drawn carts clopping along cobbled streets, rag-clad shoeshine boys, perfume and postcard panhandlers, exotic spices, photo copied books, broom makers, Asian bucket-flush toilets, mosque’s mournful calls to prayer from centuries-old minarets, weather-beaten fishermen on weather-beaten boats, and a peculiar encounter at a nude Turkish bath constructed out of solid marble during the Ottoman Empire. On this last one, I feel it pertinent to elaborate.
Built by a Sultan in 1741, the awesome Cagaloglu Hamami is a bath house with separate bathing areas for both men and women. Entering the men’s, I am told to remove all my clothes before being shepherded into a cavernous steamy chamber with droplets of condensation dripping from the domed ceiling high above.
Seated on a massive heated slab of marble in nothing but my birthday suit, my aspirations of being rubbed and caressed by some erotically dressed and tawny-skinned beauty are rapidly dashed as a well fleshed out belly enters the spa followed by its owner. Lumbering towards me is a not easily missable Turkish dude known as a ‘Tellac’; a name denoting a person skilled in the combination of washing, massage, and torture.
Garbed merely in a loin cloth and a scowl, he has spectacular ear and nostril hair, and is carpeted in a hairy landscaping worthy of an extra in the Planet of the Apes. Above a couple of chins his overgrown eyebrows are fused together into a huge forehead-dwelling caterpillar that looks down upon a moustache needing the services of a well-sharpened lawnmower. His dearth of curb appeal is equally matched by a dearth of congeniality, and alarmed his mitts may go wandering in the wrong neighbourhood I contemplate escape!
With a gruff demeanor, the Ayatollah of Awkward begins a dry massage with an abrasive mitt to exfoliate my skin from head to toe. Next, he flails at me while squeezing a large soapy sponge spewing suds everywhere including my eyes. With brute force he then attacks my muscles attempting to dislocate various body parts, and follows up with a full body slapping all in the name of well-being. With gentility clearly not his strong suit I try not to scream, knowing the sound will echo along the arched recesses of this ancient edifice.
After what feels like just slightly less time than it took to build Angkor Wat, the Turkish Sasquatch douses me with a pail of warm water, and likely perplexed by multisyllabic words, exclaims ‘Feeneeesh’! Like a crippled insect I crawl my way back to where my clothes are hiding, sincerely hoping Christine’s experience has been nowhere near as traumatic as my own. Good old Istanbul is a city that truly awakens the senses!
After our compelling six day stint passes in a blink we board a bus many decades on the wrong side of middle-age for a twelve hour stamina test to Turkey’s fairy-tale Cappadocia area. In the magical village of Goreme it feels as if we’ve been transported back a few centuries in time with people using hooved transportation in the form of horse drawn carts or camels.
The area is a geological oddity with phallus shaped rocks called ‘fairy chimneys’ painstakingly carved over centuries by Mother Nature herself. Our lodging here is extraordinary as we are staying in a cave. Yes, a cave! After a couple of days in our rudimentary lodging, we end our time as troglodytes and use the power of our thumb to hitch a lift to the rock-cut settlement of Zelve.
Another day and another bus; which we’re convinced is an acronym for ‘Boring Uncomfortable Stretch’. Thick Turkish cigarette smoke and the shake-out-the-earwax volume of a woeful excuse for music are about as welcome as a scrotal graft. The only tolerable custom is a rag-tag kid shuffling down the aisle every few hours to squirt a bottle of scented lemon oil into out-stretched palms to help refresh lethargic passengers.
On a bus for 12 1/2 hours that feels like 12 ½ days, we arrive in a charmless industrial town called Denizli. The only transport available to reach Pamukkale seems to be an ergonomically incorrect contraption called a ‘dolmus’, which designed for discomfort, is basically sciatica waiting to happen. Uncurling our spines while climbing out of the cramp-creator we have to teach ourselves how to walk all over again!
The name Pamukkale means Cotton Palace, and is derived from a landscape of arctic-white terraced calcite basins and petrified waterfalls. Some 650’ above the plains of Curuksu we savor the unique vistas from an effervescent thermal springs we are sharing with sunken Roman columns. Following an earthquake centuries ago several pillars of the Temple of Apollo toppled into the pool, and the artefacts now lay only a few feet beneath us as we float about in the soothing ‘champagne water’ heated by geothermal activity!
Leaving Pamukkale we head for Turkey’s south coast, and how will we get there? Well, a trio of tedious bus trips of course! Barely tolerating the bastardly busing we make it to the amiable fishing village of Kas, picturesquely hemmed in on three sides by the turquoise sheen of the Mediterranean Sea. After the magnitude of our travels through these parched lands we are euphoric to once again smell and see the sea!
We luckily find a rentable room in a fabulous location, and it matters not that the house is humble or that the owners do not speak English. Putting a little extra oomph in our day, the kind woman makes us Turkish tea on her hot-plate in the morning and serves up a breakfast of an egg, sweet tomatoes, goat’s cheese, and steamy-hot baked bread. Sitting in the sun on a small balcony overlooking the peacock blue waters we are as jolly as a couple of germs in a Jacuzzi!
Yacht hopping to the island of Kekova and then Tersane, we drop anchor in a bay near the remains of an old church with only its heroic stone archway still standing. While wading ashore Christine has the misfortune of stepping on a sea urchin, and returns to the boat to try and dig out the painful spines with a safety pin.
Having read that urine can help reduce the pain, and being a prince among men, I offer to drop trow and pee on her foot. However, ‘she-of-the-spines’ harshly dismisses the offer of my whiz-dom, and falling upon my ears is not the usual language of pristine Christine, but harsh phraseology that would likely leave a longshoreman blushing! But Honey, I’m only trying to help.
Once again pretzeled into a space-starved dolmus causing concerns about an impending spinal deformity, we bid a fond farewell to charming Kas and travel north to Fethiye. Overlooking the town is a vertical mountain cliff with impressive Lycian rock tombs carved into it, and we cautiously scramble up the famous archaeological site to place our hands on history’s stunning Tomb of Amyntas, built in 350 BC.
Again today we are on another beastly bus as a necessary evil to get to Oludeniz. The name translates to ‘Dead Sea’, but unlike its namesake in Israel the sea is not dead at all, it’s simply a peacefully sheltered turquoise lagoon fringed with pine-covered mountains. To reach the beach we snare a ride in an elderly Chevy convertible and drive a completely cratered road that keeps our heads in a constant north-south nod like bobble-head dolls taped to the handle of a jackhammer!
We find lodging in a seaside campground and life feel’s right with the beach in site. Although the superlative setting is a place where we can frugally frolic for a few bucks a day, our bare-bones accommodation does come with a somewhat troubling surplus of local ‘wildlife’.
One morning a humongous insect, only slightly smaller than a pterodactyl, flies into our abode so I grab a book and land a weighty wallop on the intruder. But with survival skills that would make a cockroach proud, the winged warrior gains insect respect by making a complete victory lap of the room before finally relinquishing our air space!
Our sleep is regularly disrupted by the persistent pestering of pipsqueak owls or snarling dogfights, plus we have to defend our food against a naked-tailed vermin known as ‘Rattus Horribilis’. Gnawing on our nerves, the nocturnal visitor is about the size of a dachshund, and when the night is as black as it gets, the patter of his rat feet scurrying across the wooden beam overhead is not exactly an antidote for insomnia!
During our stay tide-side we befriend a German couple who have driven their Volkswagen van all the way from Germany. Sitting around a camp fire together late afternoon, Eva happens to notice through her binoculars a small fire outside what appears to be a cave near the top of a nearby mountain. With gung-ho optimism I suggest to her husband Heiner that tomorrow he and I attempt to satisfy our curiosity.
At the first light of day we begin our leg-quivering climb and eventually find a path leading to the abode of an old woman dressed in rags. We offer a wave but the bespectacled one seems totally flummoxed by our presence as she squints at us through Mr. Magoo-like spectacles lending her the look of a demented owl. In a gesture of friendship I attach a Canadian pin to her tattered rags and my reward is a lovely gummy smile, as years of solitude have apparently reduced her inventory of teeth down to a total of three.
Her primitive dwelling is a dirt floored cave with a few chickens and satanic-faced goats loitering about outside. Though obviously poor with possessions few, her serene and lofty perch provides million lira views of the flawlessly composed countryside and I will always fondly remember my encounter with this lovely old woman in the Turkish mountains.
Research by our German friends reveals the ghost village of Kaya is nearby. Built by Greeks, the once flourishing town of 10,000 is now abandoned in the eerily silent hills surrounding it. The sprawling ruins are rumored to contain a stash of human bones, and by sheer luck we find them inside a stone crypt.
Our last evening in Oludeniz is spent on the unsullied sand beneath a gently swaying Casuarina tree, sharing a bottle of wine and listening with a romantic ear to Chris De Burgh’s ‘Lady in Red’. Our intended stay of a few days has stretched into ten as we’ve absolutely loved sinking our teeth into this true Turkish delight.
We bus to the port town of Marmaris and overnight before bidding farewell to alluring Turkey. After the ferry bumps to a halt on the Greek island of Rhodes we err in accepting a lift from a guy in a van wanting to show us his pension. Sadly it is several miles from town and for our purposes as useless as a chocolate teapot. Saddled with our heavy packs we’re now forced into a long grunt back to town.
Within the walls of ‘Old Town’ we locate an apartment renting a windowless cell accessible only by a ladder. The room’s egregious patchwork of paint has us questioning if somebody with a white cane was responsible for picking out the paint chips. Every-which-way weird, the room is about as subtle as a hand grenade, with the ceiling painted Dracula-red and the walls crow black, plum purple, Smurf-blue, and pond-algae green! Yes, the ultimate Feng Shui fail is definitely a one of a kind, and the kind of which one is definitely enough!
However, we set aside our quibbles due the perfect location and the luxury of our first hot water shower in over a month which makes sluicing away the grime of travel pleasurable for a change. Vrooming about on a rented motorbike to explore the roads of Rhodes we poke around any place of interest including the tiny acropolis town of Lindos before boating to the Greek Island of Santorini,
The picturesque white-washed island is punctuated with blue-domed churches barnacled to sheer cliffs. At the port of Thira we have an option of riding a donkey up 566 stairs cut into the cliff, but to save money we pass on an ass and use our own four feet instead of eight.
Having a bit of a mental lapse when selecting shelter we later learn that in addition to boarding people, the owners also board foghorn-worthy donkeys. Sleep comes in only dribs and drabs with our ears being ass- ailed throughout the night by the donk’s epic nasal honks. Making matters even worse, I’m not exactly hee- hawing over the fact my wallet has gone through a wash and turned the contents into one big soggy mess.
The island is heavily swollen with vacationists and the rankled residents appear to be little more than ambulatory mannequins. After only a few days we’ve lost all willingness to endure the supreme surplus of snobbery on Santorini’s soil, and combined with our braying housemates with the four feet and long ears, the island has bottomed out on our care-meter.
Our bus gingerly descends a serpentine road to the port of Athinos for an overnight ferry to Piraeus. This is followed by a bus to Athens and another to the city of Patras, Still piling on the purgatory; we then endure a 20 hour ferry ride across the Adriatic Sea to Brindisi in Italy. Damn, the punishing travel has now degenerated from a barrel of laughs into one big vat of vomit!
At the port of Brindisi a group of travelers including ourselves are taken to a customs area and lined up along a wall. Our backpacks are placed in the center of the room to be checked out by the ever probing nose of a security dog, but with no dope to tantalize the mongrel’s sensitive snout we are permitted entry.
After a night train to Rome we are approached by an old man touting a room, and trailing along behind him we are pleasantly surprised when taken into an Italian family’s homey apartment to see the extra room they have. The elderly Italian mamma speaks no English at all, but weary to the bone and losing a battle with our eyelids we’re just grateful for a place to slide between the sheets.
After indulging our inner gladiator at the Coliseum we toss a few lira coins in Trevi Fountain then wander into Vatican City where we have a chance encounter with the Pope, who is standing on a balcony giving blessings to the tide of people below. Hmm, never had a papal blessing before – probably won’t help!
For dinner we roam about and collect a bottle of wine and a whole cooked chicken to take back to our room where the owner has thoughtfully left us a box of cherries. We raise a glass to stepping off our frenzied travel treadmill and then keenly dismember and devour the delectable fowl using nothing but our fingers.
Saying arrivederci to ‘pastaville’, Christine and I are off to experience the culture of northern Africa. Scrunched between troubled Libya and Algeria, Tunisia seems to be the safest option, but at the filthy airport in Tunis we are taken aback by the general cheerlessness and already pondering our choice.
Despite an apathetic lack of help we locate a bus bound for town, but as the only infidels aboard we can feel the undisguised scorn radiating from faces looking as friendly as a lynch mob. With standing room only on the tightly packed bus we struggle with our equilibrium management while trying to decipher where we are.
Endeavoring to get off our Canadian politeness is to no avail, so I engage my elbows and knees to help unclog a path to the door. The sullen driver can’t be bothered to come to a full stop, and laden with heavy packs we awkwardly jump off onto a sidewalk landing right beside a huddled group of gibbering Islamic women, who dressed in full on black burqas, look very similar to a stack of collapsed patio umbrellas.
The Arab world of Tunis is headquarters for the PLO, and streets are thick with armed police since Arafat’s second in command Ibu Jihad was assassinated earlier this month. Foraging in the profuse heat for lodging we soon realize there’s likely a better chance of finding Jimmy Hoffa. Tunis seems an edgy city without laughter and one that would undoubtedly present serious challenges for a tourism board!
After probing alley after alley for accommodation we are famished, but regrettably a decent ‘squat and gobble’ here is harder to pick than a broken nose! At a stand-up Muslim eatery with doubtful hygiene we eat some unidentified slop that should have remained in the pot, and swallow a malaria pill for dessert.
After a few days our morale is in a terminal decline with Tunis being a total cesspool, and tired of all the shit, we are ready to give it a flush! Ruefully questioning what possessed us to add this wretchedness to our itinerary we adjust our plans to give Morocco a try. Since it’s unsafe to cross Algeria by land we decide to get a flight, but are despondent to learn this means waiting another five days for the first available plane.
All out of fucks to give about Tunis, we turn our backs on the epidemic of unfriendliness and train to Sidi Biou Said. The pretty cliff top village has an abundance of whitewashed buildings with ornate wrought iron railings and brightly painted blue doorways. By luck we meet two brothers who offer us a room and we enjoy a game of backgammon with them underneath a sprawling 800 year old fig tree.
Sipping a cup of mint tea in a nearby café we are seated a whisper away from Arabs with mini checkered tablecloths draped over their heads smoking from a hookah pipe. Lizards silently scamper about the walls and a Congo drum jam session is underway outside on the street. Children pass by selling ‘nosegay’ made of jasmine buds, and an old woman with years of struggle etched into her face flogs long crusty rolls of still warm bread out of a mangled metal wheelbarrow. The town is a good pit stop, despite the fact that I’m suffering from acute sobriety in this alcohol-prohibited country!
As our flight into Casablanca in Morocco is about to land the pilot abruptly forces the plane’s nose upwards and circles in the sky. The plane bounces down the runway on a second landing attempt and when it stops passengers break into spontaneous applause praising their beloved Allah! Casablanca turns into another joy-stunting affair, as unlike expectations of a romantic Bogart and Bergman movie our wanderings suggest the only parallel is the ample cast of decidedly dodgy Peter Lorre-esque characters lurking about.
During our rigorous hunt for a room in the severe midafternoon sun, Christine sits on a bench with our packs while I continue to search. After roaming street after street and turning corner after corner, I happen to spot Christine several blocks away with three suspect looking characters moving towards her. I’m unsure of their intentions, but as I race back they simply vanish. Gathering up our gear, a still shaken Christine tells me she is so grateful I returned when I did, as she had visions of either a Moroccan mugging or a snatching.
Longing to push on, but ambivalent as to where, we rashly decide to travel to Marrakech, helped to that decision by the fact that it is the destination of the first bus we see! They say spontaneity more often than not makes for the best kind of adventure; well we are about to find out!
Like sharks smelling the scent of blood in the water, hustlers swiftly approach through the darkness as we exit the bus on the outskirts of Marrakech. Luckily we’ve met a girl on the bus who speaks a little English, and she has kindly offered to take us, via a second bus, into the ‘old town’. Given the surrounds we’re hugely relieved to locate lodging directly across from bustling Djemma El Fna Square.
Once the key meeting spot for trans-Siberian caravans trading spices, slaves, and gold; the 1,000 year old square is now a jaw-dropping medieval circus where the bizarre and unfathomable regularly shake hands. It’s absolutely cranking, and we are enthralled with flutes piping, drums pounding, tambourines jangling, snake charmers hypnotizing cobras and vipers, a plier-wielding dentist with a gory array of brown molars, jugglers, kids sniffing glue, impassioned wailing storytellers, shoe-shiners, tattooed Berber sellers, hand-holding men, hash vendors, skulking hustlers, pushcarts stacked with pyramids of oranges, and bread sellers with hennaed hands. Medicine stalls sell spices, gnarled roots, lizards, toads, bird beaks, and porcupine quills; and for a few dirhams flamboyant water carriers wearing dingle-balled hats resembling a lampshade will untether a silver cup from a necklace and pour you a cup of water out of a goat’s stomach.
In the square a pickpocket with felonious fingers deftly unbuttons my pant pocket and has my wallet half way out before I thwart the theft and send him disappearing into the crowd. Behind the square is a Kasbah is a centuries-old labyrinth of twisty alleyways. Scaremongers outside harass us with warnings that without a guide we’ll never find our way out, but dismissing their intimidation as suspected bullshittery we enter the maze on our own.
The disorienting medina is a spider’s web of aggressive merchants all waiting for their flies, and they don’t like to take no for an answer. Grabbed at a stall, I angrily slap away the merchant’s arm which starts a heavy shoving match, but in a blip of lucidity I realize that this is his turf, and I need to dial back the testosterone before things get totally out of hand. With several whiskered jowls spewing venom at us we walk away, going this way and that, and soon find ourselves hopelessly lost as forewarned. Muddling about for what feels like days inside a maze within a labyrinth we eventually chance upon an exit, ever so relieved to once again see the light of day!
Three days later we escape the madness of Marrakesh and travel by bus through the Atlas Mountains. The scenery is bleak and the only signs of life are a few Berber women hauling water in clay urns and storks nesting atop old ruins ravaged by age and blistered by the Saharan sun. The bus driver enthroned behind the steering wheel is clearly not a first-round draft choice, and combining a dangerously heavy foot with an apparent brake phobia, has the bus weaving through the dusty mountain roads at full bore.
There is a chorus of groans from several passengers spewing the contents of their stomachs onto the floor. Trying not to retch from the stench we elevate our feet to evade the puddles of puke sloshing about the isles with each lurch of the bus. Barricading our nostrils in an attempt to prevent our own Technicolor yawn we glumly endure the 200 km regurgitation-fest until arriving at Ouarzazate; a drought-ridden waste of real estate imbedded in the seemingly endless nine million square kilometers of the Sahara Desert.
We’re now in the middle of fricking nowhere, and if fricking nowhere had a capital, it would be fricking Quarzazate! Sand is overrated if there’s not a beach to accompany it, and we’re uneasy with the immenseness of our barren surroundings in the world’s hottest desert. The Saharan Sandmageddon’s name means ‘place without noise’, which tells us the name for ‘place without interest’ was already taken. But wait, let me check my ‘giveashitmeter’. Nope, nothing!
This is turning into a show of the shit variety, and we now have another 24 hour marathon of travel on a succession of wearying buses while backtracking through Marrakech, Casablanca, and Rabat before finally reaching the coastal town of Asilah. Unkinking ourselves as we step off the last bus we give a big Halle-fucking-lujah, and totally agree this seaside town is going to have to suffice as a desperately needed stopover until our sullied spirits have a chance to repair themselves.
Occupying the room abutting ours is an offbeat American hippie couple and their two amusing little pet chameleons. One night while sharing a pipe of Lebanese Hash with them, I collapse in a rip-roaring belly laugh watching the laughable little lizards doing all their lizardy things. One is perched atop the guy’s Rasta hat, and the other clinging to a pair of Valentine-red sunglasses the guy must be wearing on a dare! Nature’s nutty ninjas amazingly cloak themselves to their surroundings, and hilariously swivel their bulging Marty Feldman-like eyeballs about totally independently of each other.
After a much welcomed rest in Asilah we move on to the Morocco’s oldest city; the decaying port town of Tangier. Our expectations are quickly quelled by feral brats tugging at our shirts with one hand and begging for baksheesh with the other. The city has a dangerous feel about it, and with religious differences and trouble slumbering just beneath the surface, the town’s tourism office is not likely to be putting us on a retainer any time soon!
Empty of enthusiasm and tired of seeing travel unravel in unfriendly Islamic countries, it’s time for us to get out from under the veil of Morocco. Beyond a shadow of a doubt we have zero remorse in parting ways with the culture stress of aloof Arabs and their fetish for head-bonking prayer mats, braiding nose hairs, cavorting with camels, playing tonsil-hockey with underage goats, or whatever else fills their dusty days.
My theory is if you ever find yourself traveling in an Islamic country, I strongly advise heeding one of my better travel tips; never find yourself traveling in an Islamic country! Sorry; one man’s opinion. We take another bus back to Casablanca and as a cruel necessity fly back to depressing-as-hell Tunisia for a pre-booked flight home ten days from now. A journey of joy this is not!
Travel now feels more like travail, and with spending another hour in Tunis about as appealing as a turd in a teacup, we look for an elsewhere with ANYTHING not involving a bus. At this point I swear we’d prefer to French-kiss a coiled rattlesnake rather than board another bastardly bus!
We are headed south to the town of Sfax aboard a train when shift suddenly happens! Christine’s backpack accidentally tumbles off an overhead rack and lands atop an Islamic woman’s hijab-covered head. With wildly gesticulating limbs and nastiness emanating from her every pore, the woman dressed in bedsheets sets the train car off in an unrelenting barrage of vilifying Arabic squawk.
We unsuccessfully try to mollify ‘Jihad Jane’ and her belligerent buddies, but it’s like taking a bread knife to a gunfight. Though the backpack bombing was clearly unintentional, the woman’s unrelenting fury has me ruing the fact I don’t have a pork sandwich to dump in her lap and help justify her whine with a little swine!
Trying to see the best of Arab countries definitely requires better vision than either of us have, and with our tolerance decelerating by the minute we ferry out to the Kerkennah Islands in search of solitude. The dead-flat islands formerly functioned as a place of exile for prisoners, and with slightly less than bugger all to do they’re about as lively as a potted shrub. After five empty days as castaways we boat back to the mainland of Tunisia and drain the remainder of our travel time in the coastal town of Hammamet.
Totally fatigued from our arduous journeying, we’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a better chance of us drinking moose drool than participating in any further travels in the Islamic world! During our two months as human tumbleweeds, the winds of travel have blown us through 34 cities; with transport including 10 trips by plane, 9 by boat, 7 by train, 37 by bus, and 17 miscellaneous!
Canada is now like a dangling carrot and we are the voracious donkeys. After many hours in the sky we are almost levitating with joy to be back with our own tribe, where a friendly customs officer at the airport greets us with our two new favorite words; “Welcome Home”.
Mark Colegrave 1988