Figure 8 On A Bike

It was time for us to say goodbye to Peak GuestHouse. We ended up being there for a month! Which was maybe a little too long to stay in a guesthouse. We said goodbye to Aysel and took one last transfer with Ocan to drop off Hong-Yen at the airport. After dropping Hong-Yen off, Ocan pulls into a roundabout to leave the airport area and immediately gets hit by a motorcyclist. This occured across the street from the police station so first responders got to the man quick. The motorcyclist left in an ambulance and we were directed to the police station. Ben and I stayed out of the way while Ocan went in and out of the police station with various papers from the van. Finally, he was released and he drops us off at the bus station. Our vague feelings of unsafety while driving in Türkiye were justified. We bought our bus tickets for Çıralı , a sea side beach town with climbing access. The bus ride was a beautiful ride down the coast. The bus dropped us off on the side of the highwa...

Hello dear Figure 8 Readers! My name is Hong-Yen, and I’ll be this week’s guest blogger. Saturday, Nov 25 Daily journal entry - No sleeping in. Breakfast and second coffee. Shuttle to the airport. What should have been a short flight turned into a long day of delays due to weather. We finally get to the guesthouse at 9PM after a long and somewhat perilous drive in the storm.   Our last second coffee at the airport

Susan in the hospital :( Susan said her back felt better in the morning, so we took both our empty backpacks and a bunch of grocery bags and walked down the hill towards the main road, ready to haul back a big load of supplies. It was too early for us to have breakfast at the guesthouse, but we figured it should be easy enough to find some coffee and food in the city, and caffeine headaches usually don't set in until the afternoon anyway. We weren't sure how we'd pay for the bus with no bus card (maybe our credit card would work?), but that was a future problem. It became a farther future problem when, still walking out of camp, saw the one morning bus cruise down the road beneath us - looks like we're taking the 2 mile to the next bus stop in Akdamlar. We got to the stop and waited around for maybe 40 minutes, unsure if a bus would actually come, when to our relief the TK-21 came rumbling by, did a u-turn, and picked us up, and our Mastercards even worked to pay t...

Views of Antalya and the surrounding peaks from the top of a climb As our plane entered the skies above Türkiye, Susan and I craned our necks to catch glimpses of the mountains that began to appear below. "Wow, look at those peaks." "Is that snow?" "I don't think so, it can't be snow, it's too warm still..." "Then what is it?" "Rock, I guess?" "Really? That can't be rock, there's so much of it." "Maybe it's a mine? I think I see a road leading up there..."