I had gotten my climbing head back a little more and led five climbs in total. One was a climb rated 10b.
We had said goodbye to some new climbing friends, Gregor and Martina, from Austria. Here they are pictured below doing our 20th day for us from the balcony of their bungalow at the climbing camp that we all stayed at.
We had successfully hitched a ride down the long canyon road to the outskirts of the main city Antalya with all our bags. Our hitching hosts stopped to pick us up in their 5-seater small SUV even though there were already four individuals in the car -- 2 women from Russia, one of the women's daughter, and a Turkish man. We squished into the backseat by one women and her 5 year old daughter.
There was no universally common language in the car. My and Wilson's Turkish never progressed beyond the words, "Hello" - "Merhaba", "Thank you" - "Teshekur Ederim" and "Please" - "Lutfen" . And for the two women in the car, beyond speaking Russian, only one spoke a little bit of English but was distracted by car sickness. The other woman spoke Turkish. The man appeared to speak only Turkish and of course, the little girl only spoke Russian. Our attempts to piece together a little conversation did not go so well. One notable part of the attempt at conversation was the man doing the old-time American Indian whoop hollering and making a feather behind his head -- this was roughly translated by the Russian woman to mean that I look like an American Indian. After this, the conversation devolved into the two women and one man heatedly discussing something in Russian and Turkish. We were relieved to be let out of the backseat and the cacophony in order to catch a bus the rest of the way into town.
We reached town. We secured food and were delighted that the hot pot vegetarian dish and chicken kebap were delicious, enourmous and, for two of us, only cost 22 Turkish Lira (around $12). We walked through the charming marina, which have the old walls of Anatalya surrounding it. http://wikitravel.org/en/Antalya. We then made our way to the bus station to catch the night bus to Bodrum in order to then catch a ferry to Greece.
I am on the night bus now and it is 5:35 am. I hope that we reach Bodrum soon but when we do, we won't have any Turkish Lira. 90 minutes ago, the bus stopped and I grabbed my wallet to visit the WC / bathroom. In Turkey, you have to usually pay 1 Lira for a WC visit. Here at 4 am, somewhere along the coast of Turkey, it was no different, I paid my 1 Lira, entered the WC, and placed my wallet in my back pocket -- and the rest was history. I heard no noise and sensed that nothing was wrong until I heard the clink of Lira coins along with the flushing of the toilet. I reached for my wallet in my backpocket. I fruitlessly and illogically tried to open the water tank of the toilet. The wallet was gone.
I obtained the wallet at Galata tower in Istanbul. http://www.turkeytravelplanner.com/go/Istanbul/Sights/Beyoglu/GalataTower.html. (You can also see the views from the top in an earlier post by Wilson: http://livingthekoroldream.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-couple-of-days-in-life-istanbul.html) At the tower, I was buying a leather bracelet for 10 Lira when the man in the tower gave me the pretty yellow turkish wallet for free. I really liked the wallet - it was very small, too small to fit my passport, but large enough to fit credit cards and it had a little turkish "evil eye" pendant attached to the zipper. In Turkey, you see the evil eye pendant everywhere -- in stores, restaurants, attached to dog collars, etc.
And the contents of the wallet? Luckily -- no credit cards. Only two types of stuff in it: Lira and the Turkish phrases that I had hesitantly torn out of our Lonely Planet guide to the Middle East. It was the last of our Lira. That Lira should have bought us our last Turkish breakfast and transportation before we boarded the ferry to Greece later today. Earlier, I had forgone buying my favorite Turkish cookies for 2.50 Lira because they were more expensive at the bus terminal. Now, approximately 65 Lira flushed down the toilet -- not too stoked to input the "Flushed down the toilet" entry into our travel budget ledger.
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