De Madrid a Melbourne

We finally got to Australia.
Here are the maps of our two month route!


View Nuestra Ruta in a larger map


View Nuestra Ruta 2 in a larger map

İnstanbul - Part 2

It was fantastic arriving back to our old friend Istanbul - this time with sunshine!

It was a different city! - Loved getting to walk around, explore the many mosques, palaces, museums, bazaars, and enjoy the ferries on the Bosphorus river. Sad to say goodbye to Turkey and Istanbul - just when Cris was going to enter the world backgammon championships.....next time.


 

Fish Sandwich - Our hands stank all day!

Friend from New Zealand - enough food?

These guys can clean your shoes - even if you weren't wearing any!

The height of Turkish Fasion

Cappadocia

WoW!- what an amazing and bizare part of the world! - We arrived at sunrise to 50 or so hot air baloons rising over Goreme and very quickly fell in love with the many valleys that we walked over the next few days.

For us Cappadocia was amazing picnics, bizare landscapes, walks, beers with friends, and once again feeling like we were part of an Indianna Jones movie! Our two days hiking through the Ilhara Valley was a great way to see the area.

They only grow the Pumpkins for the seeds to eat! ( they could make a fortune if they made a good soup!) Local women spent the day seeding them.

The Love Valley ( not sure why they call it that?)

The Ilhara Valley

Antalya

Antalya is a bigger town but very nice, with a beautiful old town and a very cute and lively harbour. We spent a great day from cafe to cafe, playing games, drinking çai and Efes beer, and starting to read our new books from a great old second hand bookstore. The White Garden Pansion was a good surprise!

Olympos

Getting to Olympos is an interesting trip. There is not a direct bus there. Buses leave you in a "bar" on the side of the road (a road with nice scenic views) where you are meant to take the Dolmuş (Turkish minibus). Surprinsingly the system works, and you take the bus with a sign saying OLYMPOS-MAİN ROAD, that takes you down the valley. We stayed at the Bayrams Hostel, composed of bungalows, tree houses and a great common area set in an orange trees garden in the valley, close to the ancient ruins, with dinner included and great ambiance. To get to the beach you had to go throug the ruins of the ancient town, wich could be the setting for any İndiana Jones film. Read books, play backgammon, swim watch the local fauna (crazy turtles fighting) and wait for dinner to be served! We also visited the surprisingly bizzare Chimaera flames at night!

Ruins of Olympos

Eternal Flames of Chimaera - Where the Methane gas seeps out of the earth and ignites!

Demre and Simena

Demre was a larger city that many people seemed to only use as a day trip spot. We enjoyed walking through ruins of Ancient Lycia ( again we had the sites to ourselves) and trying to piece together different stories of Saint Nicholas, Santa Claus and random visits from Saint Luke ( San Lucas) and Saint Paul ( San Pablo).

Church of Saint Nicolas

We also enjoyed an amazing day trip to Ucagiz and Simena ( the area we had hoped to Kayak from Kas) It worked out perfectly for us, getting to explore the Lycian Tombs and managing to find an unoccupied house in a remote cove with beautiful clear Mediterranean waters to swim.

Ucagiz

Simena

Back in Demre, the ruins of Myra were by far the most impressive Lycian tombs we have seen. The roman city that grew around the Lycian site then became an important stop to swap slaves as Luke wrote in the bible. Saint Nicolas was also Bishop of the city for some time and is where the legend of Saint Nicolas began.