18 June 2008
Kristina’s Highway to Hell tour day 6
Today after a good sleep in at Olympos we departed for Egirdir. There’s not really too much on the agenda this day except a lot of driving and another chaotic big city for me to attempt to navigate through. Antalya. Ally had already called ahead to warn me of the major road works going on and put the fear of God into me. The same fear that strikes me every time I hear the word Izmir.
I’m on the road and not 1 hour out of Olimpos when I call in my accommodation for the night to Nic. She says “So is yours the bus that’s having the speedo problem? You’ll have to get it fixed in Antalya” I tell her the speedo is working fine, but no 10 minutes later I get a call saying it’s another speedo that isn’t corresponding with the one I can see. So now not only do I have to navigate through Antalya, but I have to find a place to get the speedo fixed. I find somewhere and am trying to communicate to the driver that he needs to take the passengers to the town centre while the bus gets fixed. I finally get him moving but alas the problem is now fixed, and he is trying to drop us in the centre of town anyway. This bus driver at least is a bit better that the last one and thankfully understands about as much Arabic as I do. I say “Yella! Egirdir!” And he drives on with a confused look on his face.
We drive though Isparta a military city and then onto Egirdir, this driver thinks he knows where he’s going so, I let him take the wrong direction to the hotel. When he comes to a dead end, I give him the “Ready to listen to me look” and he listens to my directions thankfully and we arrive at Lale Pension. We are stuffed full of food, Lale Pension is by far one of the best stops on the circuit, they make the best fish ever! We sit about for a bit and then I decide to take Erin, Karla and Sam, three of my passengers for ice cream, which was really nice at that point. It had been a long day so we all ended up going to bed not long after we got back.
I got up at 6:30am despite out 10am departure time to go for a bike ride. I spent a good hour on the computer talking on msn before anyone was up and then off, I went bike riding around the lake. About halfway around I realised I would be up until at least midnight and realised how crazy I was for being up so early when I had to attend Turkish Night that night. Turkish night is all you can eat and all you can drink and then you usually go out afterwards…Pacha Bar for the win! I got back and then had a great breakfast and headed off to Goreme, Cappadocia.