Turkey

After convincing Tim to pop into Turkey on his way to Egypt; Sarah, Tim and I made our way to Istanbul and landed two days earlier than everyone else, including Nick. Those two days were filled with walking around the sultanahmet (old city), Bazaar shopping, indulging in the Turkish cuisine and flavoured tea. The girls; Michelle, Katie, Tam, Diana and Monique arrived a few hours before Nick and a great deal of time was spent on the roof top bar of our hostel drinking beers and smoking shisha’s. This is where we met Henry and Piotr joined our gang.

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As a big group we explored Istanbul together and visited some of Turkey’s most famous sites ie, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, Aya Sofia, Istanbul’s contemporary Art Museum and the underground Basilica Cistern. We ended up in Taksim one night and experienced Istanbul’s club scene which was cool.

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From Istanbul we ventured South and caught a flight to Cappadocia. Cappadocia is such an amazingly bizarre and beautiful region due to the volcanic layers and tufa erosion that has taken place over the centuries resulting in a landscape that portrays various unusual shapes and figures formed from rock. The locals call them “fairy chimneys” due to their tuberous house like shape but to us they somewhat resembled male genitalia. Centuries ago Christians found shelter in the fairy chimneys and carved houses out from the rock. Today these caves still exist and it’s quite amazing to see that hotels etc now occupy these dwellings.

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We heard the best way to explore the fairy chimney region was to hire quad bikes to get around the rough terrain and dirt tracks. Of course Nick and Tim went a little crazy and by the end of the four hours the girls looked like they had been swimming in a pool of dirt and dust. Check out the photos no words can really describe how surreal this place actually is.

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Once again we indulged in the amazing Turkish cuisine and treated ourselves to a night of food, loads of beverages and traditional skirt dances and belly dances.

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From Cappadocia we boarded an unending overnight bus to Olympus where we stayed in tree houses close to the beach. This was our chance to relax in Turkey and finally get to the sea. The tree houses felt like they were situated in the middle of nowhere, but there was plenty to keep us busy. We did have the most epic day when we hired a boat and a driver for the day and he took us to some beautiful secluded spots, uncharted territory, natural beauties and mountains. We had a very cheeky day filled with booze and excitement. Let’s just say it would have been the best day of Nick and Tim’s life. Most of the photos from this day probably won’t be posted.