Sedita 2

and we come to the last part of the Turkish silk road and my way out of Turkey.
From our crossing the Van Lake, the road has transported us more and more back in time, with its impressive christian monasteries, regional castles and caravan rest stops along the silk road... with the Ararat mountain overlooking every step, we say our goodbyes......







Akdamar monastery. A last post of resistance from the christians (armenians) before Islam came to these lands....

up and down the road winds, on the ups, we feel as if looking straight into Ararat; when coming down it's only the tip we get to see as we hang on to our hat not to drop it: 80kph winds help a bit too much on the descend.....

great people I get to meet, and even play photographer for some of their outings :)

Köyceğiz

Chance (if it exists) brings me to Koycegiz at exactly 10:40, right when a group of cyclist were on their way to breakfast...
luck (if there is such a thing) made me take a wrong turn and run into them...
Destiny (the one I make) told me to ask them to join them on their journey

Koycegiz is a sweet water lake with an entrance to the sea so the water is a bit karisik (mixed) as they like to call it ;) 2 mountains choke the lake by the entrance into a narrow stream but the power of the water sips from these arms to make fertile valleys that seem to climb into the mountains themselves

green and blue
A blue that brings all sort of fish and even turtles and the special blue crab...
A green that rejoices on having all different tones of it, and rejoicing on the little snipets of different colour that are its fruit...

Fruit that was to be picked along the way: figs, pomegranates, peaches, pears, apples... I even saw some banana trees! no bananas though :(

A once around the lake:

*West to feast on the fruits there....
*South up the mountain to enjoy the view...
*East, down the mountain and into a mud bath...
* North, into a boat that will make us cross the entrance to the lake and make our way into our camp for the night...

Yet another Turkish beauty

Minchia, fui a Taormina

I cannot even begin to describe the beauty of this place!!! Not even the thousand of millions of tourist that come every second can destroy (or at least not yet, HURRY UP!) the beauty and peace this place has: do believe me, every sight is breathtaking. At a point on my trip, I just sat at a rock at the beach and watched the sun and the moon switch positions around the island, and island of beauty, really, island of beauty. Before I knew it it was 10 at night! Of course I couldnt have left without doing the same in the morning, sooo never hit the sack, went straight from the plaza to the viewpoint and waited there for the sun to rise, incredible views, well worth not sleeping.
Makes me think of the people that live here, how dont they all get up at 0400 and head for the viewpoint. One local came around in the morning, but again, sometimes it takes a foreign eye to really appreciatte the beauty lying next to you. Taormina is carved out of a cliff, literally. The houses are dangling into an abyss, somehow they have managed to make some roads, and people keep on heading for the hills and making yet another feat against physics to keep that house up. The green is still green, as if the woods were in a constant fight with the houses and it is in that battle, in that struggle, that beauty lies. Or is it in the referee, us, the beholder?


And a third contender, the ocean (a she) watches them argue for something she knows its nobody else´s but hers.
Couldnt sincerely describe its beauty, so I put a buttload of pics on flickr....