14th June 2008
Kristina’s Highway to Hell Tour – Day 4
Another day of frustration. The air con on the bus is still not fixed but I have been told the driver will fix it when we get into Fethiye. We set off and the driver has to get to Saklikent, the guy at Tango’s explains to him how to get there, but the driver leaves him scratching his head and he’s Turkish! He attempts to drive right past the Carpet Weavers Association we are supposed to visit, but I make him turn around and go back. This is quite fun when we get there as the passengers want me to do part of the demonstration and make the knots in the carpet. I’m so bad at it that it makes them laugh. Good. Better they are laughing at me, than pissed at the situation with the driver and the lack or air con.
During the demonstration I manage to inform the office of the missing vouchers, the reaction is not good and I’m told to have another look around, which I do. As we are preparing to leave, the driver holds out the ceramics place business card from the day before and starts pointing at it and jabbering at me in Turkish. You’ve got to be kidding, I thought. ‘No you were supposed to go there yesterday’ I say and walk off. Brett and Rachel were watching and Brett later joked to me that he wished he’d had his camera so he could have captured the look on my face. It’s funny to them and thank God they are so easy going, but at the same time, it’s affecting my performance and is really embarrassing.
I manage to get us to Saklikent Gorge and Brett and Rachel go off hiking and I sit down by the water and try to relax, while waiting for a chewing out phone call from my boss. The phone call is not too bad and we sort the problem out….thank god. Rachel and Brett get back and I have lunch and they have some nice cold Efes. Meanwhile while I have been waiting I have run into Greg and his Mum Geraldine, who were originally Bridget’s passengers and Greg wants to know where the bus is staying tonight. I tell him and he wants to know if we are going out, I say we are and he says might see you there.
We leave to gorge and get into Fethiye and our normal place is being renovated and even though I say ‘Hotel Horizon Yok’ (Not Hotel Horizon in Turkish) he still drives us there. Then asks for directions to V-Go’s Pension gets lost and ends up on the smallest street I’ve ever seen which takes him half an hour to reverse out of! We finally get to V-Go’s and I’m straight in the pool as we are all really hot.
I then spend the rest of the afternoon attempting to get the air con fixed but am given different story after different story. I end up having to call my boss and she attempts to defuse the situation. The driver then drives the bus away leaving me in limbo not knowing what is going on. Meanwhile, Greg has shown up and wants to go out, I desperately need to go shopping for Kerry in Olympos who is really sick, so as he has a car, he offers to drive me into town and help me. We spend ages trying to find cranberry juice, which doesn’t exist here, I’ve now figured….but it gave us a laugh, one I desperately needed. We then ran into Rachel and Brett who were at Barci Bar. Greg and I went back and ditched the car at the hotel and grabbed his Mum and Sean, who is staying in my dorm and went back to the pub.
We had a great time, some of my other passengers had made it to Fethiye and they joined us too. Greg bought me these massive Margarita’s that never seemed to end and I ended up dancing on the bar again and getting another free t-shirt…again. I’ve now decided my goal is to get a free t-shirt out of every bar on every strip we visit in Turkey by the end of the season.
Everyone ends up piking and Greg, Sean and I stay out for a bit. I end up in a fight with the bar next door, who has some kind of agreement with Fez that our passengers are supposed to drink there. I tell the guy to back off and that I can’t force people to go in there and that only two of the people I was with were actually my passengers, the others were all independent travellers. It ended up with ‘If you don’t back off I’ll walk take the two people I’ve brought in here tonight with me and won’t come back!’ Pity as I usually like that bar, but the crowd I was with just wasn’t up for heavy dance music.
We walk back to the hotel, somehow losing Sean in the process, who tells me he hasn’t been this drunk the whole time he has been away, trust me to be a bad influence. I tell him to meet me in Kusadasi in two weeks and I say ‘Boy, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!’ I get back and say goodnight to Greg and go to bed. I wake up in the morning and Sean has made it back….unfortunately for him he is naked in the bunk below me. Nicky, who works there and me are in hysterics as we both get up for work.