Pammukale to Canakale

I wake up early and stuff around trying to fix iCloud. I hate iCloud by the way - just putting it out there. We pack our bags and head outside where the owner of the hotel is unexpectedly waiting for us. "Where are you going?" he asks. We settled the bill the night before, already alerting our hosts to our early departure. We respond to his question, saying that we are trying to catch to bus to Canakkale. He looks at us suspiciously. He says that we are very early, we respond by saying that we don't have tickets, he says tickets take five minutes and that he will drive us. He gets out his phone and calls the bus company (presumably), I look at Willy, not concerned but slightly agitated - why won't he let us leave? One of the hardest things in Turkey for me has been how very friendly and helpful they are. I lack the skills to be able to read any subtext and you are always rather wary of trusting someone that you have just met. Our host gets off the phone and rehashes the previous points that we have already discussed. Eventually he offers to drive us now. It seems to be less of an offer more of a demand, one that we accept graciously as there doesn't seem to be much of a polite alternative. We climb in and I hear the locks click.

Once again I cross my fingers that I haven't just been locked in a car to be driven to a small hut in the desert where my organs will be harvested.

Fortunately, once again we escape with our organs. The young man at the bus company looks at us like we are crazy. We are about thirty minutes early, which he seems to translate into an eternity. We're like, dude, you should see us when we catch planes. We loll about on the red chairs for a while. None of the appropriate eateries are open, so breakfast is not an option. I love breakfasts here and I am now accustomed to eating in the morning so my tummy is pretty angry at me for not feeding it eggs, olives, and cheese.

The minibus pulls up and we clamber into its mostly full depths. We make several stops on the way into Denzili and by the time we get there the van is bursting at the seams. Willy gives up his seat to a young lady and I hope that no elderly, pregnant, or disabled people get on as I have done my fair share of giving up seats on this trip and I really don't want to forfeit my seat this morning. I get to keep my seat and as we pull in to the station the driver makes some aggressive manoeuvre which throws myself and the guy next to me into the backs of the chairs in front of us. Another good display of safe driving.

I meant to say before, seat belts are in a similar category to unicorns, helmets, and recycling here. They are all fictional entities. Seat belts may as well not exist and I have never seen anyone wearing one, even in the few cases where they have been fitted. It's all super safe, I mean, how could that go wrong?

We grab some breakfast (a roll and a can of iced tea) at the station and wait for our bus to pull in. When it does I am disappointed that it's not as flash as our last one. It does have a power socket and USB port though so it's still a million times better than our overnight bus. They bring us a tiny sandwich and a plastic cup of soda too, so it's quite good really. It's already twenty five degrees at eight am when we board. I love aircon! Actually Pammukale was so much better than Antalya temperature wise. It was actually possible to function which was such a relief, I don't know if I could have coped even another day under that thick humidity blanket.

I would like to add that I have now reached the stage where, despite not looking forward to the rapidly approaching end of our holiday, where we will be thrust back into caravan building, home renovating, and wedding planning (not to mention the mild panic that grips me every time I think about whether or not I will have any work to pay for all of the above...), I am really looking forward to eating my own cooking, always having access to a great shower, being able to wash our clothes, and not constantly re packing suitcases or having to find our way around a new city/town/place every 1-3 days. Man that was a long sentence. It's the closest thing to home sickness I have ever experienced, and that first shower, first sleep and first mouthful of cauliflower cheese are all going to be so, so good.

Argh. We do almost seven hours on the bus before we get a toilet stop, and when we do it's literally five minutes and there is nowhere to buy food. We have a few snacks with us, left over from our lunch in Pammukale, olives, cookies, roasted chickpeas, but they were only ever designed to be snacks, not our food for the entire day. The last round of snacks courtesy of the bus company goes around before twelve and by mid afternoon Willy and I are fairly unimpressed. Things are made worse by the twisty roads, curving their way over the hills, and our drivers apparent lack of skill when navigating them (revving up, braking heavily/for no reason, weaving all over the place, and total lack of consistent speed during the straights, OH MY GOD IF YOU CAN'T DO IT PROPERLY, DON'T!)... If either of us was ever going to succumb to car sickness it would be now. Ten hours of this is going to drive us bananas. Seriously considering never setting foot on a bus ever again. We are sitting here tossing up whether or not this is worse than the overnight bus... And it looks like this ride might win, particularly as we are now convinced the driver is either super tired or under the influence and there are still TWO HOURS to go. Deep breaths.

We make it to the Otogar in Canakkale. It's in the middle of nowhere. No one speaks English but we are offered a taxi or the mini van. We get bundled into the mini van before we can really make any sort of decision or buy food. We drive down motorways and squeeze through streets. Neither Willy nor I have any idea where we are headed. Then the wharf comes into view. Oh thank the gods.

Grabbing our pile of belongings (crap is too strong a word) we fall over ourselves in our haste to exit the vehicle.

After a couple of false turns we find our hotel. It's lovely, easily ranks in the top five of the trip. We then head back down the road (100 meters) to the ANZAC travel agency, where we accidentally book two days of day tours. Oops. The first is by land, we do a circuit that takes us the the memorials, battle grounds, etc. The second is by boat, we tour the coast, snorkel a sixty foot wreck, then head to the new simulation centre/museum. I am going to cry so much.

We find a great restaurant for dinner. You know it's good when nothing is in English and you just point randomly at things on the menu. I have no idea what I ate (Willy had a burger) but it was choice. One of the better meals of the trip - especially as we hadn't eaten for most of the day! We finished the day with a walk along the waterfront, then a beer in bed watching Rick and Morty. It was a pretty good end to an interesting day.