RollingRocco

We're slowly visiting the Mediterranean coast of Turkiye. Started off with the eastern part,not reached by mass tourism yet, where the beaches are hidden between banana plantations.  So tasty the tiny bananas!  Gazipasa and it's natural swimming pools-the only big city that we would recommend for someone looking for an all inclusive holiday. Seems quite and sleepy but trust me it's a good thing comparing to other cities like Antalya with massive resorts and beaches situated on the other side of the busy road. Franco is spoiling us with fish and even got some oysters!  We went to a restaurant for the first time in a month.  Firstly because we were a bit afraid of getting a food poisoning and secondly because it was hard to find places that serve alcohol. Well it's a different story here on the coast. You even see women in a 2 piece swimming suit which was unthinkable in the east or at the lakes t...

We were putting off to go down to coast as long as possible because of the heat. We spent our last days inland between Egidir lake and Koprulu canyon. Egidir lake stay was very peaceful and lazy.  Sadly the lake is paying it's toll for global warming. We can see that water level has decreased significantly.  The water in some points were clear and good for swimming. We even bought the freshwater prawns which marks a clean quality water for prawns to breed.  Koprulu canyon at the other end was loud and chaotic!  Being close to the coast it's packed with organised tours for rafting, zip line and quad safari. Forget if you're looking for peace and nature 😂. The canyon itself is really beautiful with a cold water ( 20°C) that wakes you up instantly!  The swimming spots are limited though because of private camping sites , hotels and rafting companies situated along the river bank.  We're at the seas...

One hour drive from Konya city, situated in the lake region, the third biggest sweet water lake in Turkiye. We found a lovely place for a few nights. In Turkiye there are a lot of free spots for  a picnic equipped with gazebos, water sinks and toilets.  As long as you're not staying there at the weekend you can appreciate peace and nature. We met few fisherman and the Turkish guy that lives in Netherlands who translated that 10years ago the water level was much higher and you could swim here. Now it's full of vegetation and not very inviting. But at least there is still carp fish.  Than we wanted to visit Kizildag National Park but Jandarma told us that it's closed because of drought emergency and we can only go and see Pinargozu cave.  The cave was closed but there was a picnic zone and a very cold river spring with trout in it😀 ( we only got 1 but it was delicious 😋)! . From there...

 Probably one of the most known places in Turkiye. We were expecting a lot of people but at the end it wasn't so crowded. Obviously it's very touristy and very expensive 🫰 in comparison to real Turkiye. I wanted to see all the hot air baloons flying close and it finally happened! That was a highlight of my trip.😀 We also did 2 small trekkings, one to the Pigeon valley ( you can see the holes in the rock made for pigeons, people would collect and use their excrements as a fertiliser) and one to Love valley ( for the fallistic rock formations). I can definitely say that even if it's touristy it's so worth it! It really is a special place. After that we visited Derinkuyu underground city.  There are a lot of underground cities in this zone. They were used as a shelter in case of attacks. This one is the biggest and most known one. Let's say that for 13€ entry fee per person I was expe...

Less known amongst canyons in Turkiye but free of charge and so worth it. We arrived at the big parking lot with toilets and picnic verandas. The whole walk inside of the canyon wasn't very long but it has a several swimming spots.  We stayed for 2 nights. On the first night there were 4 campers. We made friends with Steffen that is traveling to Armenia. On the second day Franco took his fishing rod and we spent the day at the water.  We had a swimm, it wasn't easy though, water was around 20°C.😬  Plenty of fish,just not interested in a bread bite 🤣. So at the end to not feel disappointed we got ourselves delicious trout from the fish farm next to the canyon 👍😀.

Turkiye is a huge country and the distances are relevant so it took us two days to get to lake van. We have chosen less trafficked roads and one of these took us to 2445 m.  Surely almost no cars on the road would be a hint?Franco had sense it! 🤣 The landscape was breathtaking!  But at some point we found ourselves in the middle of roadworks....  Turkiye is an open construction site! They redoing the roads everywhere and to give them the credit they are well maintained 👍. We also got use to police and military check points, that at the beginning seemed quite scary with the tanks on the side of the roads, overall they always nice and polite.  Getting a SIM card is quite easy but the prices are quite high- the best offer was Vodafone - 39€ for 50gb of data, calls and SMS included ( in Georgia we paid 17€ for unlimited one month internet).Also there are restrictions on using social media so we only got 1 week included, not sure if you have to ...

Our last night in Georgia was quite eventful. We have chosen a spot in Javakheti National Park at the lake, 3 km to Kartsakhi border.  Beautiful view and very peaceful, little did we know that later that night around 10 pm we will have a visit from border police that kindly asked us to move because it's a border zone. So they pointed a fuel station that we can sleep at. We asked 3 guys that were drinking beer at the station if it's ok we sleep here they said ok ( a small fee to be paid in the morning to the station worker). After 30 minutes whe almost falling a sleep a car with loud music decide to park next to us( the parking was huge, plenty of space 🤣), no worries let's wait. Them gone, after 10 minutes a huge lorry parks 10 cm from us at this point we said no and because we were awake and annoyed we went straight to the border. At least the custom officers were all friendly and after 30 minutes we were in Turkey. Found a quiet place and finally at 1.30 am ...