Wednesday, September 16 Erzurum
Overall not a great day. The day began with yet
another three plus hour tortuous drive to the site of the Tortum waterfall which
is third in the world behind Niagara Falls. Just before we arrived I asked
omer how much walking was required to see the falls. He just shrugged so I
knew I was in trouble. In the past he has said things like
"about ten metres" but I have quickly learned to ask "your ten
metres or mine?" When we got there I took a look and almost collapsed
at the hundred or more steps down to the viewpoint. I knew I couldn't do
it so I gave Omer my camera and told him to play tourist (he loves it) and off
he went. Mehmet went about halfway. The
falls are created by surplus water released from a damn. Well, wouldn't you know
it is low water season so there was almost no water being released. Thank
heaven I didn't kill myself trying to make the trek.
We visited a mall where they sold the Oltu
semi-precious stone native to the region and one of
the purest semi-precious stones in the world. Every store in the
mall sold the same things as far as I could see. I can't imagine how they
make any money doing that. I found the stones to be pretty plain and not
much to my liking.
Many and varied landscapes made the trip a little more
interesting as usual but it was still arduous
and exhausting. After leaving the falls we began the daily quest for
somewhere to have lunch. No luck whatsoever so we checked into the hotel
and Omer and Mehmet went in search of food. They brought me a few things
only one of which I was able to eat. I tried everything but only liked a
semi-sweet roll and that did me for dinner and breakfast.
Omer also went out in search of an English language
book for me and returned with a romance western (the only English book they had)
that got me through the evening and early morning when I was unable to connect
to the hotel wireless network. Turns out that my wireless switch had been
turned off in the process of removing the computer from my backpack. Dumb,
I didn't think to check that.
My room here was the worst yet. No air
conditioning and the window opened onto the main street with noise levels at jet
plane takeoff levels constantly until well into the night. Shouting,
sirens, police shouting through their microphones, etc., etc. The
bedspread was full of holes. There was no chair and the lighting was so
bad the only way to read was sitting on the end of the bed.
I was able to get to a pharmacy and picked up the
Turkish equivalent of Immodium that helped a little bit. so the day wasn't a
total loss. lol.
One more day of driving to Trabzon tomorrow...