Seeing as we did most of this yesterday, most of the 11th was the drive to Gaziantep.
Antakya is a city in the Hatay province, an itsy-bitsy dogleg in the exact south of the country, a little peninsula into Syria. This is a very, very long story, but in short, Syria is still a little touchy about a border dispute in the 1930's, when it claimed Hatay as Syrian territory. International courts ruled that Hatay could self-determine its nationality, and Hatay ruled itself independently as the Republic of Hatay for a number of years before attaching itself to Turkiye. Syria has never quite gotten over this and still claims Hatay as part of its own territory. Syrian maps even show Hatay as part of Syria, although the rest of the world considers it a part of Turkiye. Starting in 2000, Turkish-Syrian tensions lessened enough that during the holidays of Christmas and Eid in 2007, Turks and Syrians were allowed to freely cross the Hatay border to visit family. So if you ask a Syrian national, they would tell you that we were in Syria. Which is, you know, cool.
Speaking of which, this is the license plate of a Syria car parked outside our hotel:
This is the bus as it was being loaded. We lived in perpetual fear of a fast stop sending those bags over the front of the seat and onto the hapless passengers.
Apartment in Hatay. Interestingly, even in what could gently referred to as "the boonies," apartment buildings were more common than single-family homes. This changed a bit as we went further north, but I'd be curious to investigate the cause. I've heard that the apartment will often house the entire family unit. Note also the rugs hanging from the balcony. This is a common sight in Istanbul, as well.
And then we happened across a field of poppies! I could be wrong on this, but I'm pretty certain that Turkiye is the only country permitted to grow poppies agriculturally, primarily for medicinal purposes (opiates). So, of course, photo ops ensued.
The elusive Garet:
Tinkerbell in her native habitat:
Moi, clashing terribly with the flowers:
Maeghan being...Maeghan:
Danza and Tinkerbell being all color-coordinated and everything:
Blase:
Derick, Juliana, and Fernanda:
Garet again:
Man with Cow:
Can the Chaperon with Sign. We were about a million miles from anywhere.
Stop sign:
As we were climbing back into the bus, a local farmer approached Can the Chaperon with a few bags of erikler - plums. Or, in this case, green plums. Unripened. They're a common snack here, for reasons I don't quite see. They're sour and threaten to turn your gums inside out. Why not just wait until they're, you know, ripe? Anyway, here we have my journal, two erik, and a few crackers. Mmm lunch.
Aaaand Maeghan, modeling the fashion applications of your standard unripened plum (I expect this to become all the rage at some point):
We hit Gaziantep in time for lunch. As was standard procedure, they guide gave us an hour to eat, find a bathroom, hit an ATM, buy phone credits, whatever, before meeting up under a designated streetsign. The guide suggested a lahmucan place for lunch, and only Maeghan and I took her up on it. The rest of the group, we assumed, at fractured as well.
Maeghan was a little jet-lagged (bus-lagged)?
Lunch was good; we got two lahmucan and accompanying salad, a Pepsi (for her), an ayran (for me), and two cups of tea for eight lira. We found an ATM and bought phone credits before rendevousing to the meet-up point. Where we waited. And waited. Fifteen minutes after the meet-up time, we got a call from Can the Chaperon, asking where we were.
"At the meet-up point...?" we said.
It transpired that the meet-up point had been moved and the carrier pigeon entrusted with the message had gone AWOL. By the time Juliana had come to find us (the guide was giving directions along the lines of, "Walk two streets south [it was a cloudy day], turn left at the Turkcell dealer with the funny hat, right at the silver polisher's, climb up two fire escapes and jump to the adjoining rooftop...") and led us back to the bazaar where everyone else was, the bazaar-browsing time was nearly up and it was beginning to sprinkle, effectively kiboshing our plans to visit a local zoo that afternoon.
But we still got a little time at the bazaar:
The walk back to the bus:
This building was across from the hotel. It's worth mentioning that we were a two-days drive from Istanbul at this point.
(Anyone remember that picture we have from Auckland of the eatery called "Istanbul Kebab and Pizza"?)
And then we went for a walk in the park by the hotel, where we encountered people selling orange juice, nail clippers, and cola.
As usual, hijinks ensued:
A local woman in the park with her kids:
Tinkerbell with orange juice:
Can the Chaperon with Valerio's hat:
Valerio, all verklempt because Can has his hat:
This is Fernanda's fierce face:
Taxis! (Or, in Turkish, taksiler):
Various shots of an eatery on the way back to the hotel (we took the scenic route):
Garet and Tinkerbell, puddle-jumping:
Colors outside a cafe:
I want to be as cool as Jimena when I grow up.
Maeghan and a local kid. Those packets of tissues are a lira each. The cities are full of them.
The views from the hotel's terrace restaurant. The view was great. The food was terrible. Most of us were queasy the next morning.
After pushing some terrible bulgar pilav around our plates, we hit Migros for dinner part two. This would be Maeghan and Garet in the lobby, waiting for everyone else to meet up with us. I...I'm not really sure what they're doing here...
Space-age hotel lobby light fixture (I was getting bored):
Garet, goofing off outside Migros:
And Juliana, later that evening. I think I was playing with my camera's portrait mode:
The hotel was, um, interesting - Maeghan and I, who were rooming together, won points on the grounds that our room was bigger than Can the Chaperon's (and he was still resentful about our balcony in the prior hotel), and that our bathroom didn't smell quite as bad. Seriously, the bathrooms, while apparently clean, smelled like sewers. None of us showered that night. Also, the staff was apparently desperately concerned that we shouldn't drink the water:
(Translated, this says: "Warning, please don't drink the water")
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