We packed a lot of favorites into our last day in Istanbul. Our flight didn’t leave until late in the afternoon, so we donned our backpacks (still relatively light) and struck off early and took our local bus to its terminus at Taksim square. We watched an older man feed the pigeons then wandered leisurely down Istiklal street. It was the first really drizzly day we’d had in Istanbul so we pulled my backpack’s handy little jacket over it to protect our precious laptops. Have I mentioned before that I love Istiklal street? Well, I do. We stopped at another candy store for copious samples of Turkish delight and a box of fresh baklava, bought some last minute trinkets and said goodbye to the area. We followed the street to the end near Galata tower where it turns into a narrow cobblestone hill lined with satellite and electronics stores.

I had my heart set on Balik Ekmek (literally Fish Bread, a simple sandwich filled with little fish). We crossed over Galata bridge which was teeming with fishermen pulling my soon-to-be-lunch out of the water, then had a seat at a Balik Ekmek stall and ordered straight from gilded boats tied to the quay. The boats seemed designed to rock dramatically in the waves as cooks danced around frying up little fish on them. The sandwich itself was meh, but the experience was worth it. It was obviously a popular activity with locals, especially groups of middle aged women taking breaks from shopping nearby.

We could see the spice bazaar from our seats, so after some fried honey mini-donuts we tentatively took our huge backpacks into the throng of spice shoppers. We lasted long enough to buy some snacks for the flight then fled to less crowded shopping avenues and checked out the unusual cheeses, fresh fruits (cherries were just coming into season), and nuts. Turkey is the world’s biggest producer of hazelnuts and they don’t let you forget it, they appear everywhere and in everything from Turkish delight and truffles to sugary breakfast spreads in different flavors.

We wandered up streets that sold children’s clothing, sewing notions and fabric towards the Hagia Sophia. There we sat on a wall, ate some roasted chestnuts (sold on practically every street corner in tourist areas, it was my last chance to have some) and admired the ancient city one last time.

We’re in Prague now with our friends from San Francisco. There’s already so much to talk about and so many pictures to post – coming soon!

We awoke on the day of our flight back to Istanbul to find that my phone could no longer connect to the Vodaphone network. There is a cumbersome cellphone registration process here in Turkey, and out of country phones will only work for a few weeks or months before being banned from networks. They say it’s to prevent people from dodging taxes by buying phones online, but I suspect it’s a homeland security thing. At any rate, there went our only connection since the one at our pension was down. We hit up a wifi cafe and scribbled down the address of our next apartment in Istanbul, then traded up our wheels for wings and with a hop, skip and a jump we were back in the big city.

The doorman met us as our taxi pulled up in front of the new apartment on the water near Fatih bridge, but we weren’t sure it was the right place until we looked up and saw the huge deck around the top floor. The building itself is a little worn in and has a rickety old elevator, but our apartment… well the pictures weren’t lying, it definitely could pass as a Bond villain’s hideout. Everything in here is wide, white, and where possible, marble. The living room walls are entirely windows that slide open so that the walls just disappear. It’s surrounded by a deck so impossibly huge you could never use it all, an enormous expanse of white marble above the sight of most of the surrounding streets and houses. The view is spectacular, the only building between us and the water is a beautiful two hundred year old mansion covered with ivy. There are indeed two Jacuzzis; the one outside is probably the coolest bath tub I will ever use. It even has a clothes dryer imported from Germany, something I was starting to think was illegal in Turkey.

There was only one catch… no Internet.

Let me try again with proper emphasis: _NO_INTERNET_!! :(((

We were crestfallen; gone were our plans of meeting up with the Istanbul Game Jammers that night as we couldn’t look up the address, find the route, or contact them. We couldn’t find translations for the router settings. We couldn’t contact the apartment owner or the ISP to ask them to fix it. We couldn’t upload our backlog of pictures and blog posts. We couldn’t order in food. So we did what we could: we panicked.

Colin voted we skip dinner and go to bed, curl up in the fetal position and cry ourselves to sleep. I voted we go out and spare no expense to get back on the sweet teat of the mother web. After some argument, I won. First I begged our nextdoor neighbor for the password to his wifi, but the rich douchebag Brit rejected us. Next I asked at all of the cafes up the street, but they cater to rich douchebags and don’t share their wifi either. Finally we abandoned the confines of our white marble fortress and its stuck up neighborhood, and took a near-eternal bus ride through traffic to the hustle and bustle of Taksim on a Saturday night.

Good old Taksim. We got Colin’s phone online with a new Turkcell sim card and breathed a sigh of relief. We had dinner at one of those overpriced restaurants with four floors of perfect people-watching window seats, then set out to do some souvenir and gift shopping. I discovered a marvelous candy store called Kaska on Istiklal with a dazzling selection of Turkish sweets: baklava, helvasi, marzipan, pistachio Turkish delight and chocolate coated candied chestnuts. Mmmmm… I’m tempted to open just one, and if I don’t mention it here they won’t even know that I ate it instead of bringing it to Czech!

The next day we attended the first Istanbul Game Jam with our Turkish indie game developer friends. They are a cool bunch of guys and we had a lot of fun with them writing two-day (and in our case one-day) games. I’ll let Colin give you the details, but I think they turned out incredibly well and I was energized by getting so much done in just one day.

Monday we spent inside our fortress, and I’m pretty sure Colin didn’t get dressed the entire day – a sure indication of living the good life! I foraged for food up the hill then finally got to work on Rebuilder. When I wasn’t lounging in that jacuzzi on the deck, that is.

Tuesday we both worked on our games and enjoyed our white mansion. We were visited by the young couple (Ayca and Mark) who handle repairs who tried unsuccessfully to get the Internet working. We went for a walk and discovered a cool area around the university up the hill where we ate a pretty close approximation to burgers and delighted the chef by speaking French with him. In the afternoon Colin fell asleep on the couch listening to a Radiolab podcast and I watched the sunset from our beautiful huge windows. I watched someone hang enormous long Turkish flags from the bridge that swayed in the wind way, way overhead.

Yesterday Ayca and Mark visited again and after another long, frustrated phone call to the ISP they finally got the Internet going – woot! We took them out for lunch and checked out their art gallery / book and record store Marquise Dance Hall which they recently moved from Brooklyn to Beyoğlu. Then Colin and I continued downtown for one more tour of the Grand Bazaar. We kept most of our lira in our pockets but saw some very curious old (and/or made to look old) silver and tin objects and ate some tasty street pudding. After another near-eternal bus ride home, we ordered in food and watched the lights go on in the houses across the Bosphorus from our sudsy tub on the deck.

This morning I’m spending some quality time with the Internet and working on my game. So far it promises to be a quiet, contemplative day.

During our stay at the mashed potato mountain (Saklikent Gorge), Colin and I met another Canadian couple with a toddler. They were traveling on the cheap, camping and getting around by dolmuş (private minibuses with crazy drivers). I was impressed that they were traveling not only with a kid, but with all that camping gear and stroller etc. On our way out we gave them a lift to Fethyie via some interesting backroads. Now that we are headed back to Izmir, I’m taking us by some different routes so we can see new things. So far: lots and lots of farms.

After dropping them off we continued to Köyceğiz, a cute little town on the edge of a beautiful big lake and wildlife preserve. On the road in I spied a cute store selling knee-length dresses and sleeveless shirts made in Turkey, things that I had trouble finding in Istanbul given the headscarf/turtleneck/trenchcoat/jeans that most women there wear. I bought a lovely dress for 10 tl which is perfect for the 30+ weather here. Then we walked along the lake with a friendly stray, who showed us a hidden path into a marshy area where it dug around looking for frogs. On the way back we met some uk expats who had just moved to town and were launching a little sail boat, which got me thinking we could spend some time in a little town like this, and got Colin wondering whether the wind was right for kiteboarding.

The next morning we left early to beat the crowds to the main attraction of the area: mudsprings! For 4 tl you can coat yourself in (magical, healing, yadda yadda) mud, hang out and let it dry off while you pose pictures of eachother as swamp monsters, jump in the lake to wash the mud off, then follow it up with a good soak in the (magical, healing, yadda yadda, and very sulfury) hot springs. The nicest pool was a huge marble one with pebble floor, and another pool built into an ancient wall suggested people had been coming to these hot springs for a very, very long time. We had just about the whole place to ourselves, and left right as the first busload of tourists pulled in.

Later that afternoon after several hours of driving through hot valleys and mountain passes filled with gravel trucks, we stopped at Bafa Lake to cool off. It was once part of the Aegean and is still very salty today, filled with clams, muscles, seaweed and presumably crabs (lots of crab traps anyway). And just offshore, an island covered in the ruins of an old fort! We swam out to it then climbed around on the rocks for awhile, discovering several well preserved buildings and a lot of prickly bushes (I forgot my shoes). Colin made it to the top of the tower nonetheless and it made for a good, cooling break.

That night we ended up back in Selçuk where we spent our second night. We are staying in the Barim Pension which I like much better than the Kiwi where we stayed the first time. It is built into a huge old house and decorated all over with wrought iron (made by the owner) and ivy. There is a large peaceful courtyard and (like many high things in Selçuk) the chimney has a stork nest at the top. Our bedroom is decorated with antique furniture and a four poster bed, and is partially open to the outdoors. Lying in bed early this morning I can hear the swallows chirping and the stork making a crazy noise like a distant jackhammer.

We decided to stay in this setting for an extra day and leave early the next morning rather than spend another night in big-city Izmir. That gave us lots of time to check out more ruins right in town, then visit the Ephesus museum where they have some spectacular statues of multi-boobed Artemis and that guy with the big wang, both things that you can buy miniature replicas of (I was tempted!). I also learned that the cherub making out with a woman that I saw a few weeks ago was probably Eros and Phoebe, not just some guy’s weird fantasy. Next we visited the Temple of Artemis, one of the 7 Wonder of the Ancient World… which today is just a big mud pit with a single reconstructed column (and of course a stork nest on top). I am positive we’ve seen some of the missing 180– marble columns in the 7-9th century ruins around here; those guys were not shy about using “recycled” building materials. In the afternoon we went for a long walk on the beach then drove up to “Mary Mania”, the ruins of an old house where people believe (for no logical reason) that the Virgin Mary once lived. A million people make a pilgrimage here every year because some nun once had a vision that Mary lived here. The house has apparently been carbon dated to 400 years after Mary’s time. So… yeah.

Today will be planes, trains and automobiles, although not in that order. I woke up far too early, even beating the 5am call to prayer, and the sun is just now starting to rise. Maybe I’ll see if I can get breakfast before we head off. Most pensions including this one include a free Turkish breakfast of bread, jam, honey, tomato, cucumber, cheese olives and an egg. I’m pretty fond of it, particularly when I discovered you could mix the soft cheese and honey and it tastes just like cheesecake. But Colin has had all the Turkish breakfast he can take and went hungry the last couple days. Hopefully the fruit we bought yesterday will do!

I mention yesterday that I had few hopes for the gorge. I couldn’t find guided tours of it, which suggests that it’s a petty tame stroll. Another problem was, I didn’t want to do it alone. Assuming I found some entertaining bit of gorge and managed to crack my head open I wanted someone around who could go call for help. Sarah was extremely reticent to enter the gorge. She really doesn’t like climbing around on rocks jumping over gaps and swimming through cold rushing water. Which I was my best-case.

Eventually she agreed to wander in with me but only until it got hard. At which point I would attempt to stop and turn around. So off we went first thing after breakfast to treck up the gorge!

We got to the mouth of the mighty crack and were greeted by (surprise surprise) a ticket gate! It costs money even to enter the canyon! Even the canyon costs money! So we paid our 8 lira and wandered in. The canyon is kind of tailor made for hiking up. It is a massive, narrow, fissure and a full river emerges out of it which fills the entrance to the gorge completely. The first 100 meters has walkways built into the gorge wall to get past this point. Once inside the gorge it turns out that the bulk of the water is fed to this point by underground rivers that emerge from the floor and walls of the gorge to rush out the final 100 meters leaving a small managable stream running up the rest of the canyon.

The fork where the rivers meet is really surreal. Water tumbles out of the walls and froths into a single river. We were alone and could marvel at the sight before heading on.

After we crossed the waters and left the joining waters behind we could look up and see the canyon extend hundreds of meters above us. Luckily the sun shone right down into the canyon so as we walked up the pebbly river bed we didn’t even get cold. The canyon was between five and ten meters wide where we were. But even more amazing than the size was the rock. The lowest layer of rock, extending 50 meters above us was solid marble! We were walking through a marble canyon! I couldn’t believe it. The river carved it into wide, undulating, shapes and buffed it smooth. It was like walking in a massive marble sculpture. I couldn’t believe the effect. At one point there was a great slab of it seperate from the main river which wasn’t illuminated by the sun but instead by the rays of light reflecting off the canyon. It looked for all the world Luke it was glowing. Like was 100tons of smooth softly glowing marble.

One unfortunate thing about marble: it is very sculptable. Which means the river had smoothed off all hard edges which means the bouldering was attrocious. No hand holds anywhere, few shallow cracks to work in and even big ledges where tortourously round. I did manage to find a few simple problems so I can now say I’ve bouldered on a marble wall.

So the canyon was amazing if unchallenging. I knew it would eventually get hard because it’s 18k long and after the first 3 or 4 is considered ‘impassable’. Eventually the walls started to close in, the rocks started getting bigger, and the sun started to retreat. This was as far as Sarah went. Luckily for me at this point some locals showed up!

These two brothers in their late teens scampered up behind us and as they passed invited me to join them! Sarah was cool to make the east walk back on her own so off we went! I think their names were Ood and Yasif. But I’m not sure. They didn’t really figure out mine either. We couldn’t understand a word eachother said but it didnt really matter. They knew the river _really_ well. The river itself was incredibly silty so you couldn’t see where you were putting your feet but they knew the shallow paths and it seemed even the position of submerged rocks. We flowed upstream climbing up rocks and through holes between boulders, it was a blast. We soon made it to this waterfall that fell into the gorge from the side (emanating from an underground river). It was sattered and lit by the sun. The drops put on a dazzling display even as the brothers worked assiduously to avoid it. Yassif, the younger brother, especially did not like the cold and had thus far succeeded in not getting wet past his knees.

We scrambled past the waterfall but it wan’t long before we hit a real obstacle. The marble walls closed in to just a meter. Accelerating the river to quite a pace. I was first to attempt it but was flushed right out. The other two chuckled but didn’t attempt it themselves. This was clearly the end of the road. Or was it? I’ve scrambled up a lot of rivers and wasn’t going to give up that easily.

On our right there was a ledge three or four meters up the wall that would let us circumvent the narrow gap. I started looking for holds, and trying out particular tacks. The brother’s saw what I was doing and tried to support my feet and push me up. I fell twice off the overhang to be sybmerged in the freezing river below. Once I got a hand on the top but my weak, pudgy SF body couldn’t get me up the badly sloping mantle. It was Yasif’s turn. He was the smallest and Ood (that can’t be his right name) showed me how they did this in Turkey. Yasif started on the holds I’d found, Ood pushing on his ass the whole way, then, when the going got tricky Yassif stood on his brother’s shoulders, then my shoulders and hand to succesfully top out! Woo! Win one for us! With Yasif up he could offer me his hand so I could finish that brutal mantle. Two of us where up. Now it was just Ood. We couldn’t just haul him up. It was too much and we were too unsteady. Yasif turned his attention to the narrow rush of river, suggesting we form a human chain that Ood could climb up the current.

We put the chain into action. Yasif had ok hand holds and I had pretty lousy ones. My leg was the final rung. Ood pusged himself into the current and managed to grab my foot. It was barely within grasp though and he couldn’t make very good use of it and was pushed back. I searched the rock and found a good solid foothold farther out. I Abandoned Yasif’s hand and, squatting with one foot, managed to get my foot much closer. Yasif excitedly yelled around the rock for Ood to try again. This time he got a great grip on my foot but was still having trouble pulling through the current. Yasif grabbed my hand and we both heaved trying to pull him up. Unfortunately this was all too much for my foothold and I suddenly toppled off my marble perch into the racing water and back to where we started. Blast.

Ood and I were now back where we started and it was agreed that that was it for today. The Gorge had won. We motioned for Yasif to ride the river through to us or leap into it off the ledge but he balked at the very idea of getting wet past his knees. I eventually held up my hands as foot holds and ge akwardly lowered himself down until he was sitting on my shoulders. I started walking away from the rock in the river like I was going to take him down the gorge but then mocked losing my balance and plunged us both into the deep river. Two of us thought that was really funny.

We quickly made our way down the Gorge and soon ran into a group of extremely ungainly tourists being cajoled and coddled up the river bt a couple of local boys acting as guides. We blew by and it felt pretty great to gracefully leap past the camera-strapped sun-burned tour bus set next to a couple of locals. Pretty soon I had to say goodbye to Ood. He was guiding with one of the groups. It was a funny goodbye. We’d all had so much fun but couldn’t express it in words to eachother. There was just alot of smiling and hand shaking before Ood had to tend to a Great bellied Briton and Yasif and I continued on down. We met Sarah soon after. She was enjoying the peace and beauty that was more and more often now being tested by ungainly tour-groups. I introduced her to Yasif and we all three continued out together. When we got to the end there was another fond goodbye to Yasif and the canyon adventure was done. I have to say it was a lot more fun than I had expected! Thanks to a couple of fast new friends it was a blast!

Yesterday we turned around. Patara is to be our southern most point. But it’s beach is impressive enough to warrant such a distinction.

We woke up and enjoyed our breakfast with local tomatoes and local honey. The honey was particularly good. It’s harvested in October from late flowering trees. The trees have little pollen and so the honey has less sugar and more of a rich caramely taste. It was extremely good. From there we had heard of a secret entrance to the beach which didn’t involve paying anyone any money! So we set out to find it.

The town is very small and everywhere we went we passed old hotels that had fallen into dissuse and new hotels being put up. Eventually we made it to the dirt road leading to the beach. Our little Renault handled the road well enough and pretty soon we were at one of the most amazing lookouts I have ever beheld. We were on the edge of a rocky pine forest ascot gave-way to monstrous sand dunes undulating down to the clear azure water. We could see the twenty kilometers of beach stretch across the sea and the ruins of Patara being swallowed by the sand. It is quite a dramatic view.

Running down to the beach was pretty fun too. The soft sand rewarded leaping off drop offs and running full tilt down the dunes. And when we got to the beach it was nearly abandoned. We played in the sea, again doing some body surfing. I think some of the waves were actually big enough to surf with a board this time out. So we played in the surf, then warmed up in the sun to play in the surf some more. In the back of our minds was the trek back to the car.

When we decided to head back we had some route finding to do. The way we came down was totally unsuitable to climb back up. The soft shifting sand would make climbing up a nightmare. We ended up trying to stick to the weedy grasses growing out of the sand in places as well as the gardens of rocks that made up some of the low-points of the dunes. I think it was a 45 minute trek back in the sand under the blazing sun. But a towel around my head and the Mediterranean dripping off our skin made it a pretty painless challenge. When we got beck it was off to Saklikent Gorge to do some canyoning!

Lonely Planet had this blurb about how there was guided canyoning in the gorge and there were fixed ropes and leaping and climbing and all that great stuff. When we got here: not so much. But the gorge is very impressive. The camp is at the bottom of a mountain range which ends here is a sheer cliff climbing 300meters into the air. And like some giant forced one strong axe blow into the cliff the gorge empties its waters onto the plains.

I have never seen a 300 meter gorge so steep. It’s really astounding to look at. I was disappointed that there is no real Canyoning but the camp offered a “sunset tour” to the top of the cliffs. We figured it would be a short drive we could do on our own but elected to spend the 20lira anyway. I guess because we love spending money.

Turns out it was not a short drive; it was a steep, brutal hike! Our 20 lira didn’t buy us a car ride up but a guide for a 2 hour tour of the top of the gorge. It was wonderful!

He immediately set a pretty withering pace but it was the “sunset tour” and we had to get up and back before the sun set. I imagine it’s done at sunset more to avoid the heat than to admire the view. We started on a very badly deteriorated road and walked past some of the best climbing I have ever seen. The faces here are extraordinary. There is evidence of people going up some of the cracks but the faces look untouched. At some point this is going to become an amazing climbing destination. Assuming the Turkish heat and the Turkish cold don’t make climbing unpleasant for 10 months of the year.

We continued up, at the previously mentioned withering pace, to where the road gave way to dirt path and where dirt path gave way to a steep rocky scramble. Here is where I want to mention how incredibly impressed I am with how Sarah handled the hike: she destroyed it! I was seriously flagging. Three years drinking beer and never leaving the city in SF have taken their toll on my fitness. But Sarah was right there keeping pace, cruising up the steep path. So impressive!

Eventually we reached the plateau. It was made up of these crazy rocks. I don’t know what they are but the rain wears them into sharp edges and you can see the rivulets where the water runs off them. I guess the softness of the rock is why the gorge is so steep. It’s quite surreal.

Our guide (I really wish I could remember his name) brought us to more and more impressive vantage points of the gorge, of the valley, of the camp and of the mountains. It was really quite breathtaking. The gorge at the widest point we saw it took a second or two to echo our voices back, which is like 1 or half a k? At the narrowest it was almost instantaneous. The narrowest was right over the camp and the wall was so sheer you could drop a rock 300 meters down into the river below. It was amazing.

The hike down was without incident, we stumbled across some wild goats our guide tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to talk to (he did speak better goat than English). And we also picked some wild Rosemary and other great smelling herbs that were growing wild.

At the bottom we had the restaurant to ourselves for a tasty trout dinner. After that we chatted to the only other people staying here: a couple and their young child from Vancouver. They are going to school in Edinburgh and camping their way across Turkey for a month.

They said the trek up the canyon is pretty cool so maybe there is still hope for that leg of the adventure. We shall see after a shower and some breakfast! Seems like Saklikent Gorge might be worth the trip after all.