Africa so far...

Rwanda

Rwanda surprised me. The country is beautiful - lush and green. The people are amazingly friendly. It gave me a lot to think about. Their history is hard to hear about and it was horrific to think that people my age had been involved in the genocide. You can't go anywhere without seeing memorials or signs about it.

But Rwanda wasn't all about the genocide. I also got to see the famous mountain gorilla of Rwanda. We trekked into the mountains and got to sit with them for over an hour. It was worth every penny.

We also went to a local orphanage and played with the kids there for the morning. So much fun.


Uganda

We didn't see a lot of Uganda. We mainly visited Jinja, the source of the Nile. Most people go there to white water raft. As most of you know, I hate boats so me on a boat, shooting down grade 5 rapids is not for me. Instead, I relaxed, helped paint a local school, relaxed, ate amazing chapattis, relaxed....

Kenya

Now I'm back in Kenya. Tomorrow we are spending the day in Nakuru National Park, where hopefully we'll get to see some rhinos, big cats and flamingos! I'm really excited. We visited Crater Lake earlier in the trip and walked around with zebras, giraffe and antelopes! It was fantastic!

Ok, my internet time is almost done....For now, everything here is great. The people on the truck are friendly and fun. Even the camping has been good so far (even though it's rained EVERYDAY so far!).

I'll post more later,

Love,
Laura

AFRICA!

Hi Everyone,

I've been in Africa for 2.5 weeks now and it's fabulous! I'm travelling around on a big yellow Oasis truck with 14 others (we pick up 9 newbies in 2 days). The internet in Africa tends to be on the slow side so uploading pictures is next to impossible. I've decided to just write updates and then add photos either when I find some fast internet or when I get home. Sorry!

So let's try this again...

love,
Laura

Fethiye and Olympos

After the bus ride from hell, we arrived in Fethiye all hot and sweaty. We went on a quick orientation walk of the harbour and shops. Then a bunch of us quickly grabbed doners for lunch and caught a dolmus to the beach (it was a famous one... but I can't remember the name at the moment). We paid extra to get into the blue lagoon and were surprised to see the beach chairs lined right up to the water's edge. It cost something like $20 to rent a chair so we settled into the pebbles. The water was super salty (this made treading water really easy) but a bit dirty. After suntanning and swimming out to an island, we decided to leave.

We caught another dolmus to Karakoya, an abandoned Greek town. It cost 8TL to walk around the buildings so we just snuck around the outside, snapped pics, chased the goats and played with old, scary farm tools. We checked out a souvenir stand and then caught a domlus back to Fethiye.

The next morning Kenzie, Linnea, Shelly, Shane, Kathy and I woke up really early and hiked up the hill to see some ruins that had been cut into the hillside. They reminded me of a basic Petra and we got some nice views of the city.

On the way back to the hotel we walked through a local fruit and veg market. I was pretty much drooling over everything. We bought some apples for the road. I loved seeing the huge sunflower seed plants. The Turkish countryside is dotted with sunflower fields.

The bus ride to Olympos was 5 hours long but the scenery was beautiful. The area is called the Turquoise Coast for a good reason. The water looked beautiful and we were all wishing the bus would make a stop at one of the many beaches we passed.

In Olympos we stayed in dorms in a hippy-dippy-trippy treehouse type place. I think I would have liked it more if it hadn't been so VERY humid. I mean, it was worse than Japan-humid...worse than Thailand-humid. We were all just oozing sweat from morning until night. The dinner at the hostel was delicious though.

Obviously, most of us headed to the beach in an attempt to cool down. Unfortunately, the beach at Olympos was super dirty. There were cigarette butts everywhere and piles of garbage. After a quick dip, I was ready to go back to the hostel.

That night we piled into a bus and travelled up the mountain to see the Chimaera. This is where the gas mysteriously escapes the earth and spontaeously ignites! I think I had this image in my head of the scene in Princess Bride when they go through the forest with the fire (you know, the scene with the ROUS - rats of unusual size). After climbing up the mountain for about 20 minutes I arrived soaked in sweat to find little fires that look like little more than campfires. Hmmm...I think we were all a little disappointed. But hey, there was a guy there cooking an entire dinner over the fires....

The next day was too hot to do anything. I tried to read, tried to blog but it was just too hot. We caught an overnight bus to Goreme. This bus had air-conditioning and bus cake AND bus ice-cream!!

Pamukkale

Pamukkale is a weird place. A very weird place. It's a small town full of touristy restaurants and hotels and guys telling you if you buy lunch you can swim in their hotel's pool. If you don't look up the street you could miss the reason you're in the town...

The famous calcium falls. I mean, come on these things are weird and so amazingly cool. I had never heard of this place before this trip but I have a feeling they may be on the 'top 100 cool things I saw' of this RTW trip.

I explored the travertines with Linnea and Kenzie, my 'Canadian Girls'. We waited until just before the sun started to set to go up (to avoid the worst of the heat). Just after the ticket booth we were instructed to take off our shoes and walk up the hill barefoot. I expected the ground to feel soft and slimey on my feet but it turned out to be hard and 'grippy' (for the lack of a better word). It was a bizarre sensation.

We started walking up the hill and there were several man-made calcium pools. Here, you could walk/wade into the water. Water was also running down the path, cooling our tired and burned feet.

We fooled around taking lots of photos and eventually made it to the top where there are naturally made calcium pools. You aren't allowed to go into these but the setting sun did make for some lovely pictures.

Interesting info: in the 80's there were actually hotels at the top of the hill and people could swim in the natural pools. But the hotels interfered with the water and started to damage the calcium pools so they were ordered closed and completely removed.

There are some ruins at the top (surprise, surprise) and we took a walk through them and up to the the amphitheater (surprise, surprise). I guess I can imagine that if I stumbled upon these weird naturally formed pools, I'd think that the gods were up to something too.

We ended up running back down to the pools because Linnea really wanted to see them as the sun properly set. I think we missed the 'real' sunset by about a minute but it was still beautiful. We hung out there for a bit and then started our way down the hill. They turn lights on at night, which added a whole other look to the pools.

My thoughts on the calcium falls - so very cool. Turkey you are starting to rock.

Ephesus

Ephesus is an amazing place. According to my trip notes, it is the most preserved and intact ancient Roman city of the Eastern Mediterranean. The library is of significant importance because it was built for Alexandria. I'm not 100% about the details, all I know is it was beautiful.

(The gnome away from home makes his first appearance!)

(Can't take me anywhere without doing a jumping photo)

A group of us decided to do our own tour instead of paying a lot of money for a guide. We got up early (before it got really hot), hired two taxis and headed to the top gate of the ruins. Shane and Kathy had bought a guidebook the day before so Shane could tell us a bit about what we were looking at. I had fun just wandering around, taking photos and people watching (there was one tour group dressed entirely in white polos and beige pants!).

(Squint and you can see the Gnome!)

(The library was very impressive. Of course we had to take silly pictures.)

After the main ruins, we started to walk back to town. Our tour leader, Kara had told us that we would find a laneway near the Cave of the Seven Sleepers. We stopped by there first because the story sounded interesting. Apparently (and don't quote me), they were forced into these caves to avoid being killed due to being Christians. They ended up sleeping for approximately 200 years. When they woke up and found that being Christian was accepted, they promptly died praising God. A little bit depressing, huh? You can't go into the caves anymore because they are falling apart so we just peaked in passed the fence (I couldn't get a good photo)

(Local woman making gozleme, a thin pancake filled with cheese and spinach)

We found a laneway (I'm still not sure if it was the right one) and started walking through the farm fields as per Kara's instructions. We couldn't help ourselves when we noticed the trees were filled with ripe peaches, plums and figs. We got our serving of fruit! Shhhhh....

(I've never seen a pomegranate growing on a tree before!)

We got a bit lost and wandered through the fields for a good hour but finally popped out onto the main street. After grabbing a doner for lunch, we headed back to the hotel to clean up. Some people went to a local beach but I decided to take a nap, cool down and email. For dinner, the group rented a van and we headed into the hill to Sirince. Sirince is a little town perched in the hills of a valley and famous for fruit wine. We started tasting....and then couldn't remember which flavour we liked the best so had to taste them again...and then couldn't decide which flavour to buy so we had to taste them again....

We ate at a little restaurant that had nice views of the sun setting on the village. The food was great and cheap. I had a nice conversation with Shane about books/documentaries about mountain climbing (He was reading Into Thin Air) and Linnea and Kenzie and I shared tastes of our food. Afterwards, we hopped back into the van and headed back to Selcuk and our hotel. Next we were off to Pammukkale!

(Yummy riced stuffed grape leaves)

(Gozleme (Turkish pancake) filled with eggplant = very nice)

Gallipoli & Troy

(bye-bye Istanbul...)

On Sunday we had a 5 hour bus ride from Istanbul to Gallipoli. The bus was really nice (air conditioning, tea and ‘buscake’). One of the young Canadians on the tour had turned 18 the day before and she wasn’t feeling so great due to a late night of partying. She ended up throwing up into her friend’s lululemon bag full of snacks a couple times. I felt badly for her. Turns out, she’s super sweet but I will never look at a lululemon bag the same...

GALLIPOLI

(Lone-Pine Memorial)

We made it to Eceabat and after a meh lunch we got on a small private bus in order to tour the sites of Gallipoli. I really didn’t know much about these sites. The outline says that ‘this site is one of the more brutal campaigns of WW1 and is of major significance to New Zealanders , Australians and the British.’ It sounded quite horrific. If you want to know more, check it out here. A lot of the sites were located on just off the beach and it was so beautiful, it was hard to imagine a war taking place there. The water was calling all of our names.

(Our tour guide explaining about trench warfare)

(Turkish Cemetary)

(Beautiful views. We all wanted to swim)

After touring a lot of sites (I must admit, I’m not a war memorial enthusiast) in the burning sun, we grabbed our bags and hopped on a ferry to Cannakkale. We ate pide (aka pita)(aka Turkish pizza). It was good but not great. We walked to the grocery store and then stopped by the harbour to check out the model of the Trojan horse, which was used in the Brad Pitt movie, Troy (apparently filmed nearby).

(Pide with meat and cheese)

(Brad Pitt was possibly near this model horse. As I've never seen the movie, 'Troy' I just snapped a quick photo)

TROY

(I liked the city's logo)

(If you look really closely, you can see me waving from the window!)

The next day we took a short bus ride to the actual city of Troy. We took cheesy photos of the horse and then had a guided tour of the ruins. We learned about the various layers of towns which were built on top of each other and the importance of Troy’s location. Of course, we also learned a bit about the myths surrounding Troy and the Trojan war.

(Self-taken photo in front of Troy's walls)

(So yummy. I love the eggplant salad near the bottom. And all of the parsley. And the yogurts and dips for your bread....drool)

Another 5 hour bus ride got us to Selcuk. The town is small and beautiful. I really like just walking around it. We had a great bbq at the hotel and will use this town to explore the ruins of Ephesus. On our orientation walk, we saw the old aquaducts and the town's storks that make their nests in them.