Saribelen/Sidek to Gokceoren, and on to Stepping Stones
As mentioned in yesterday's post, we woke up to a great breakfast with Kenan. His wife was busy doing chores, like milking the cow, goats, feeding the chickens, etc...but eventually came in for tea and a little breakfast. In case you didn't read the previous post, they made/grew all this food themselves, i.e. the cheese, yogurt, olives, etc....The bread came from the industrial bakery there adult son works at.
We forgot to mention that story...So funny. Basically, we asked about his children the night before, and after excitedly showing us pictures of his daughter, we asked about his son. He made motions about his son that made us think he had passed away, so we were a little shaken and embarrassed we had asked. He then showed us a little alcove in his house. We were thinking, gee, this is his son's old room! We continued on with our evening, and as we sat down for dinner, out popped a young man from the alcove! He had been under the covers so we didn't see him. He works the night shift at the bakery, so was sleeping. Poor kid, his dad was dragging strangers into his room while he was sleeping. So funny. By the way ladies, Kenan is desperate to marry him off, so I'm supposed to hook his son up with one of my friends...Any takers? He was pretty nice!
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| Breakfast with Kenan |
Kenan thought it would be funny to put these hats on for this picture. This is the table. You all sit around it, and pull the table cloth over your lap, then share from all the dishes.
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| Robin with our hosts and the dog Raki |
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| The Local Mosque, near Kenan's place |
Hike hike hike hike hike.....
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| Slogging away above the Mediterranean |
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| Grant getting well water Saribelen to Gokceoren, probably Tarlali |
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| In the fog |
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| Grant:" I bet there would be a great view from here if it weren't foggy..." |
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| Luckily there was a marker to steer us away from the man-eating goats! |
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| The magical mystical route to Gokceoren |
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| Robin catching a ride with the local Imam! |
As we descended down into Gokceoren, we were greeted by another man on a motorcycle. He could see us coming down the hillside, and was expecting other hikers. We hadn't seen them, but he offered us a ride to his pansiyon. We agreed, as we thought it would be nice to have some coffee and a beer.
As we suspected, based on the guidebook, the man was the local Imam. Frankly, because of years of American news (and because I'm not much of a religious person, period), I was a little nervous about meeting an Imam. I told myself before the trip that the Imams would be just like Grant's Uncle Ron, a Presbyterian preacher. Uncle Ron is friendly, polite, dresses casually outside of work, doesn't actually preach outside of work, and is just a normal person. Sure enough, that's exactly how this Imam was! We decided not to stay in his Pansiyon, but were happy getting a few groceries from his wife. Onward intrepid hikers.
The next stretch of hiking was down a forest service road, high above the river (not obvious based on the guidebook and map). By the time we found a spring, it was a terrible area to camp, so we pressed on. Finally just as it turned dark, we ended up setting up camp at the far end of somebody's field next to the river. The house seemed unoccupied, but we tried to be as unobtrusive as possible anyway...
And the Map:
http://www.mapmyhike.com/routes/view/195314010
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