It happened this way. We were on the telephone, talking as we browsed through a new catalog from Overseas Adventure Travel that we had each received that day.
I reluctantly began flipping toward her page on Antarctica as Suzy started making her way toward the back of the book to Morocco.
We happened to land on the Turkey page at the same time.
“Turkey’s Magical Hideaways” read the headline,”Seventeen days from $3,490.” Four pages of pictures and text followed, showing ancient ruins, spectacular beaches and, finally, the piece de resistance, a photograph of a 66-foot yacht that would be our home for six days.
We picked a date and sent in our deposit.
We had eight months to wait from the time we made our decision to the time we actually left. It was eight months of steadily increasing expectations, and, as we all know, high expectations can often lead to disappointment.
This trip exceeded all those expectations.
From the Turkish bath, to the two-night stay with a mountain family, to the exploration of the fairylike world of Cappadocia, to the final week on board the Barkay II, it lived up to that first, eyecatching “Magical Getaway” headline that had so captured our imagination.
There were 12 of us. My daughter, who is a nurse, and I, and our friend, Carolyn Broquet, a television news producer, were the Chicago contingent.
Then there was Patty, a rancher, and her friend Merlynn, a nurse, from Wyoming. Paul and Jan, a doctor and his wife, from Minneapolis. Sue-Alexis, a pharmaceutical saleswoman from Detroit, and Amy, a lawyer from Denver. Another Susan, a nurse from New York. And finally, Lou-Ellen, assistant to New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani, and her attorney husband, Mel.
And of course, our guide, Cemil Konuralp, who increasingly won our respect and affection with his incredible knowledge and his fierce pride in his country.
We were a diverse group.
Turkish Airlines deposited us in Istanbul around 11 a.m. on a Saturday in mid-September.
Our first group get-together wasn’t scheduled until 6:30 p.m., so as soon as we checked into our hotel, we headed for the Covered Bazaar, the largest bazaar in the Muslim world, with more than 10,000 merchants, all trying to grab your arm and get your business.
Soon we were haggling with Mehmet over Turkish carpets.
You don’t need to know all the bargaining details, or descriptions of the wonderful carpets we ended up with, or how Mehmet fell madly in love with Carolyn and wanted to take her out that night and forever more–but we all ended up happy.
And it was on to the Turkish bath.
The Cagaloglu Hamami, on Yerebatan Caddesi not far from the bazaar, was built more than 300 years ago, and legend has it that Franz Liszt, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Florence Nightingale all partook of its amenities.
We opted for the deluxe treatment at $30 apiece.
After leaving our clothes and valuables (with a bit of trepidation) in little rooms, we went into the bathing room, an enormous, round expanse with marble pillars and a domed ceiling.
A huge, round marble slab, like an altar, was in the middle of the room.
As we waited, nervous and naked, four fat women dressed only in little black bikini panties came into the room and beckoned us to the altar.
They scrubbed us within an inch of our lives. They moved us around like slippery fish on the smooth marble, alternately washing and rinsing.
The final scrub included a whispered, intense request, mostly in sign language, for a good tip once the whole experience was over.
It lasted about an hour. We were raw and clean and exhausted. We tipped them about $3 each, which evidently wasn’t enough because they glowered at us as we left.
Our trip officially began that evening, when we assembled in the lovely courtyard of our hotel, the Ayasofya Pensions, a row of nine renovated Ottoman houses with 61 rooms total. It’s an unbeatable location, right in the heart of the Sultanahmet, the area boasting the must-see historic spots of old Istanbul.
We sat in a circle, told our names and occupations and drank our first Turkish wine. And then it was early to bed.
The next day was our only full day in Istanbul, a city that dates back to 658 B.C.
We had time only for a smattering of highlights–the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sofia, the Hippodrome, the Cisterns and the Palace of Topkapi, all a brief walk from Ayasofya.
By 6 p.m., we were silly with fatigue. There was no time for recovery. Cemil gave us 15 minutes to “rest” before we reassembled for a brisk, 20-minute walk down to the dock where we caught a ferry that took us to dinner in a little seaside spot 90 minutes away.
Our table overlooking the water was quickly filled with dozens of mezes, the Turkish version of appetizers. Perfectly fried squid, yogurt-based dips, various eggplants–and one dish that instantly transported me to culinary heaven, fresh anchovies.
These bore no resemblance to the salty little brown things filled with hairy bones that come in cans. These were plump, sweetly salty, sublime.
Then the main dish–platters of fish, complete with heads and tails–was presented, filleted and served. What kind of fish, we asked? From the water, Cemil said.
We ate more.
That was our first full day.
The ensuing 15 were not as jam-packed.
The trip was really divided into two parts, with the day in Istanbul serving as a preface.
The first part was hiking and traveling by van in Cappadocia and the Taurus Mountains.
The second part was on the yacht, cruising the Mediterranean coast, with frequent stops for hiking to various ruins.
The hikes, which lasted from two to five hours, were always optional. If anyone wanted to stay put and relax, read, swim or just stare into the distance, they were free to do so.
At various times, fatigue or a one-day Turkish version of Montezuma’s Revenge caught up with almost everyone and people did take a day off. There’s nothing like comparing symptoms and medications to bond a group.
The morning after our food feast on the Bosphorus, we flew from Istanbul to Kayseri, a city of about 500,000 in the center of Turkey about 450 miles from Istanbul.
There we boarded an air-conditioned van for the 50-mile trip to Uchisar, our base for the next two days.
Uchisar is deep in the heart of Cappadocia, an area whose topography was created by volcanic eruptions aeons ago. The ash hardened into a soft, porous stone called tufa.
Above ground, this tufa left unearthly looking formations called fairy chimneys that were pocked with doors and windows centuries ago by people who carved dwellings for themselves.
Below ground are entire cities created by early settlers who could thus disappear from the face of the earth when invaders swept across their land.
Lou-Ellen was the first of our group to have the one-day illness.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” she said quietly to her husband, Mel, early the next morning.
“You can not do that here,” he said firmly, taking her arm and leading her away.
We were standing in one of the cave churches in Goreme, an area of Cappadocia that was home to early Christians and orders of monks. The oldest churches, dug into the cliffs, date back to the 7th Century and are decorated with incredible frescoes.
Lou-Ellen went back to the Kaya, our hotel, where she spent the day close to appropriate facilities.
The rest of us were left with our thoughts in these amazing early places of worship. What were these people like, with a faith so strong that they holed up in these caves rather than relinquish their faith and created such magnificent works of art on the rough walls of the tufa?
Those are the sort of thoughts that continuously came to mind as we went through layers and layers of civilizations in our hikes through the ruins of Turkey. It helps put one’s life in perspective.
We next hiked into a tiny village a few miles from Goreme where we were suddenly surrounded by dozens of children who came racing up the narrow dirt road to greet us.
I found the children of Turkey beautiful. Round-faced, with big dark eyes and dark hair, the ones we met radiated an enthusiasm that was infectious.
They wanted to see our cameras, they exclaimed over our daypacks and clapped their hands and tried to sing along when a couple of us launched into a rendition of “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”
Then they escorted us to their school, where we sat at their desks while they showed us their workbooks and jabbered in Turkish. Their teacher and principal told us a little about the school, and then one of the members of our group asked whether the children could sing us their national anthem.
They stood so straight, they sang so proudly. The little boy whose workbook I had been admiring kept glancing downward at me, checking out my expression. It was one of those moments you don’t forget.
The morning after our school visit, we left Cappadocia and headed west for the Taurus Mountains, the range that runs across the south central part of Turkey.
It was dark when we arrived at Urunlu, the small mountain village where we stayed with a family for two nights.
Shefica (a phonetic spelling), her husband and two sons have one of the few houses in town with an indoor bathroom and running cold water (but no hot).
The two-story stone house wasn’t particularly big, and the rooms where we slept were divided by curtains or folding doors. There wasn’t any living room by our definition. The kitchen was a nice size, and had a refrigerator, stove, sink and table.
Shefica was a good cook.
The first night, we ate crosslegged on the roof, enjoying soup, lamb, yogurt, vegetables and melons. Breakfast the next morning was in the courtyard outside the front door. We had a wonderful homemade bread that we ate rolled up like a fat pita, plus olives and yogurt. Dinner the second night was similiar to the first, except it was in the courtyard–Americans can sit crosslegged for just so long.
They spoke no English, and we spoke no Turkish, but we communicated.
At one point, I pointed to Shefica’s two sons, and then pointed to Suzy and then gestured at myself, saying, “My baby.”
Shefica put her hands on my arms, exclaiming, “Mama? Mama?” and then turned to Suzy, repeating, “Baby? Baby?” She was so excited and I was so pleased. We were both beaming and nodding. The bonds of motherhood.
The moment of truth with the one bathroom came after we returned, hot and sweaty, from a full day of hiking.
Shefica heated water on an outside fire. When it was our turn, we’d carry a bucket of the hot water into the bathroom and mix it with the cold shower water. It was do-able.
The next day we went from the rigors of mountain living to the luxury of our 66-foot boat, which we boarded in the town of Finike, near Antalya, the main city on Turkey’s southern Mediterranean coast.
The Barkay II was a teak beauty. Cushy seats curved around the stern and long mats for sunbathing were on the bow.
Our cabins were small, but each had a bathroom with a shower. We could settle in, for a whole week– no small thing after unpacking and packing almost every day.
Ahmet was our captain and his nephews, Barbaros and Mustapha, were the crew.
They were good looking, eager to please and good cooks.
Every meal had tomatoes, yogurt, olives, bread and melon. We usually had some kind of eggs for breakfast, and lamb or fish and vegetables for lunch and dinner.
Nothing could be called routine on this trip, but the days settled into a certain rhythm. Every day we had time for a swim and a hike.
Some of the hikes were to well-known ruins such as Myra, and others were to ancient walls and structures that only Cemil seemed to know about. We walked through pine forests and olive groves, and it was so easy to imagine St. Paul and early Christians walking where we now were.
My day of exhaustion came the day we hiked to Kayakoy–deserted since the population exchange in 1923 when Greeks living in Turkey were sent to Greece. No one ever resettled in the town.
The trail was steep with switchbacks and loose rock. Every step became a major effort.
“Mom, you don’t look good,” Suzy said when we took a rest.
I had been wondering what she carried around in her heavy daypack, and now I found out. Along with binoculars, bird books, water bottles, camera and ace bandages was a big bag of jellybeans.
“You need sugar,” she said. I ate a big handful, drank some water and practically galloped up the rest of the mountain.
Our day of healing came late in the week, when we left our ship for a little fishing boat and cruised up the Dalyan River, about 40 miles east of Marmaris, to sulfur-smelling hot springs, believed to cure what ails you.
After we soaked in the hot water, floating toe-to-toe in a circle, we rubbed warm mud all over our bodies. Then we climbed back into the fishing boat, went upstream to a fresh water lake, jumped overboard and washed off all the mud.
But everything must come to an end.
Our trip ended back in Istanbul, with a last gluttonous meal in the rowdy Kumkapi area.
I sometimes think the long flight home is necessary. Thirteen uncomfortable hours in the air blunts that sharp-edged longing for the experience to continue. You’re glad to get home.
But Suzy still wants to go to Antarctica, and I still want to go to Morocco. Maybe next year we’ll go up the Amazon.
DETAILS ON TURKEY
Although several tour groups offer trips to Turkey, we chose Overseas Adventure Travel because it combines sightseeing with physical activity–hiking through ruins as opposed to driving up in a bus.
OAT has 10 trips scheduled in Turkey for 1996 (departures April 26 through Oct. 11). All trips are 17 days and limited to 12 people.
Prices, based on double occupancy and including airfare from New York, range from $3,490 to $3,990, with the summer months commanding the higher pricetag. Our add-on roundtrip fare from Chicago, arranged by OAT, was $150.
The only other expenses stem from shopping–which can add up if you’re buying carpets–plus drinks (alcoholic and soft) and tips for the tour guides and boat crew.
One caveat: The ongoing fighting in southeastern Turkey between Kurds and Turks has created a ripple effect of terrorism throughout the country. For details, call the State Department’s automated travel advisory line at 202-647-5225.
For general information about Turkey, call the Chicago office of the Turkish Consulate General, 312-263-0644, or the New York office, 212-949-0161.
For specific information about OAT’s tours, call 800-221-0814.
