Motourama Part 35: Last Days In Turkey

Hello family, friends and followers! This Travel Story is going to be a bit longer than usual, but hopefully all the photos make up for it.

From Sinop on, the road completely changed. What had been a single, narrow road in various states of disrepair was now a super smooth, four lane highway. The romantic allure of the simple road was replaced by boring efficiency. It made it easy to cover large distances again, something we had not done since we arrived in Istanbul six days earlier.

This is the kind of road, that lead from Sinop all the way to Georgia – very smooth and boring.

Wanting to eat our picnic someplace scenic, we chose a side road by random, hoping to find a route to the sea. As luck would have it, we had chosen a road that lead into a peninsula, so the sea was much further away, than we had anticipated. We didn’t want to spend too long driving off our route. Instead, we took the first suitable place to park the bikes, and picnicked there. Not a particularly pretty place, but it made do. With our bellies no longer growling and Denise being in a better mood again, we went on with the day. The road was boringly easy and the weather was fair.

The road that didn’t lead to the sea.

Our picnic spot and relaxing after the food.

That evening, we arrived in Ordu, known for its Boztepe Hill, overlooking the city. It was already dark, so we just went out for a quick stroll through the city to find some food, again. We found it at the waterfront, where most of the buildings were quite recently constructed. There was construction rubble in many streets, and just a couple of streets back from the sea, it was the now familiar view of patchwork houses, where things had been fixed, when money allowed. The contrast between a new front and the old, worn out back was even more noticeable in the dark of the night. The bright floodlights, illuminating the pretty face of the city – like make-up – attempting to hide the blemishes, couldn’t completely drown out the spotlights of the back street lanterns, shining on the piles of rubble and construction mess, enhancing their presence. With our minds satiated by the impressions of the day, we went back to the hotel to sleep.

Our parking spot for the night. Security cameras everywhere to keep an eye on our bikes.

The next morning, after a bit of research and deliberation, we decided to skip Boztepe Hill. There was a low cloud cover, and the view point up on the mountain was hidden in the mist. Any kind of scenery, other than the white of clouds, would be very difficult to experience, and we did not feel like waiting around for the clouds to dissipate. Instead, we set off in the rain to see how far we would get.

A rainy start to the day was brightened up with the gift of a flower from a nice, little girl.

We knew we wanted to see a famous mosque named Ayasofya, which was in Trabzon, so we went looking for that. Just outside of Trabzon, we drove past a large mosque. We made the decision to turn around and go back to have a closer look. It had been recently build, and there was a masonry sitting right next to it, where an elderly man operated a huge saw blade, cutting through massive boulders of granite. Denise went up to the mosque to have a look. While she was admiring the building from the outside, an elderly couple encouraged her to come in with them to have a look around. They showed her where to take the shoes off, how to cover the head, and in which area she could stroll around freely. It turned out this was not the mosque we were looking for, but it made for an interesting view, and we had our breakfast in front of it.

Not the Ayasofya, but impressive nonetheless.

The dome of the mosque from the inside.

Denise putting her boots back on after visiting the mosque.

While Denise was discovering the mosque, Esben observed the process of cutting stone the size of large motorcycles into slabs.

The old man and the stones.

The giant saw blade in action.

The finished cut.

After breakfast, we went into Trabzon city to find the Ayasofya Mosque. After a good 45 minutes of aimless riding, we almost gave up, though. Luckily for us, we came across the tourist information centre, who were kind enough to provide us with a city map and directions.

With the new found navigational aid, we found the mosque easily. It had originally been a christian church with many frescoes – both inside and out – depicting scenes from the bible. This is a bit problematic, if you want to convert it into a mosque, as faces of holy entities are not allowed in Islam. Luckily, the solution was not to destroy the frescoes, but to cover the centre part of the inside of the church in fabric, making a sort of box, from which none of the church interiors were visible to those who use it for prayers. Not an elegant solution, per se, as the atmosphere of the building was completely removed from inside the “box”, but outside the remarkable frescoes were able to display their splendour to visitors.

The gardens of Ayasofya.

The old frescoes at the outside of the mosque.

Showing Jesus’ story in many colourful scenes.

Jesus on the inside ceiling of the mosque.

A wider view of the ceiling.

A view of the frescoes above the fabric box in the centre of the mosque.

As we went back onto Falkor and Phoenix, we agreed that we wanted to look for a place to camp that night. Even though the day had been grey, we had not had too much rain to deter us form the idea. As evening arrived, we had made it to Rize, but had had no luck so far finding a place to pitch our tent for the night. We continued on, hoping for a secluded piece of beach or a clearing in the forest next to the road. By the time the sun had set, we had still not found a spot, and the clouds had opened up while we had been looking. Not happy about the wet roads and the failing light, we agreed to look for a room for the night. Our search took us up into the mountains, where we found a newly constructed hotel next to a river rafting centre. The room was nice, but pricey. We did not care. We were tired and wet, and just wanted to take a warm shower and go to sleep. Too bad that there was no warm water.

The next day, we saw that the road we were on lead up to an old mountain ruin, we had heard about. We were close to the Georgian border, and as long as we made it to Batumi on the other side that day, we could take all the time we wanted to go exploring. Despite the looming clouds, we set off, excited to be exploring again. The road was a welcoming change from the monotonous roads the past couple of days, as it snaked its way up into the mountains.

The welcoming, twisty, narrow mountain roads.

We happened to drive by a small cafe next to an amazing, old stone bridge across a river. We made a quick decision to stop there for breakfast and to let E2-D2 get some fresh air. We asked what dish they would recommend us, and they did not disappoint.

The bridge next to the cafe, that caught our eyes.

We had a large pan of melted cheese in butter with bread on the side in front of us ten minutes later. It was such a tasteful experience, that we didn’t even hear our arteries complain about the cholesterol.

The delicious pot of buttery cheese. A hearty breakfast to start a great day.

All gone! Yum!

After the hearty meal, we spent a good couple of hours playing with our camera gear, before setting off to the mountain ruins again.

Posing on the bridge.

The view of the narrow valley.

Silky smooth water.

A couple of models, don’t you think?

Just look at that manly pose.

“Behind the scenes” of our photo shoot.

The ruins were situated atop a cliff, overlooking the deep valley and the river below. It was a stunning scenery, especially in the gathering clouds, which made the sensation of walking around much more dramatic.

The ruins in the misty montains.

Looking menacing from up close.

The view of the river and the valley.

A glimpse out of the entrance to the main complex.

Adding some colour to the rather grey scenery.

Upside-down.

Who are those two fellow motorcyclists rolling around on a 250cc?

From the top of the walkway around the ruins, we spotted a couple approaching the ruins on a Honda CRF250L, the younger, more modern brother of our Honda NX250. We went down to meet them, and to hear their story. They were a young Turkish couple making a preparation trip. They wanted to do what we are doing; just set off and explore the world from a motorcycle. They had found out, though, that the Honda they were on was not really fit for the task, as the rear sub frame had cracked. They had to have it welded and reinforced, in order to prevent the same thing from happening again. We let them test sit our bikes, and they were quite positively impressed by them. Maybe they join our little club of NX250 owners.

After a warm, traditional tea, we said our farewells and set off for the Georgian border. By now, the accumulating clouds had reached their bursting point, and we were accompanied down the mountain by a steady stream of rain water. The rain subsided as we reached the coast, and the rest of the road to the border was the same drearily, perfect roads.

Rainy-rain, soaking us patiently bit by bit, wet so wet. As the truck line reveals, the border is not far away.

Lets hope the rain can’t cross the border to Georgia and we can leave it behind.

Until next time, take the scenic route!