RENdom Photo of the Day

Terracotta roofs glisten at sunrise over the Mediterranean. That last sentence sounds like a sales pitch.
Early morning in Kas, Turkey, right before Anderson Lanbridge got vertigo graffiti in El Bolson, Argentina
Speaking of something to make your head spin, Dónde está Che Pelotas?

RENdom Photo of the Day

It's been feeling like this all week, dark, dank, cloudy, rainy and cold.
On an island in Van, Turkey watching storm clouds come in
You do not want to feel the wrath of this storm cloud, Dónde está Che Pelotas?

RENdom Photo of the Day

Is it me, or does this collection of plastic babies in a cannister seem creepy.
A toy display on the streets of Istanbul, Turkey
I hear in addition to posters and t-shirts, bobblehead dolls of your favorite characters will be coming out for Dónde está Che Pelotas?

RENdom Photo of the Day

This is what I feel like today, cloudy, cold, sick and shitty
On an overnight bus ride from Trabzon to Kars in Eastern Turkey
I feel so crappy that I don't even care to know, Dónde está Che Pelotas?

RENdom Photo of the Day

For a mere $200, you can be in one of these balloons flying high over the Cappadocia landscape. But the view is just as nice from down low.
Early morning balloons over Göreme, Turkey.
Shhh, this is on the down low, Dónde está Che Pelotas?

Escape from Paradise...!

beauty courtesy of anders

There were aussies and Scotsman and kiwis. Two thick-ankled giants from Calgary. Starry-eyed and foul-mouthed lovers from Manchester.

Like some sort of international “Survivor” dream team, we all converged on the pirate-cove-turned-beach-resort of Olympos, as thousands of tourists do every year, at the southern tip of Turkey’s turquoise coast, where the past is forgotten and old grudges put aside to celebrate the wherewithal of the worlds heartiest binge drinkers.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved marching through the cave-city valleys of Cappadocia and climbing the ruined high-rises of hasenkeyf. But it was in Olympos that I finally found myself on “vacation” as defined by people’s dreams- that mystical land where everything always goes right, where the men are handsome and funny, and women are beautiful and sometimes sunbathing topless.

We were the chilled-out California boys, which is a good thing to be, especially if you have curly blond hair, which, when on the beach of people’s dreams, glows with a wispy sunlit halo and makes you look like an angel, which in turn makes people in a good mood almost disgustingly friendly towards you, and snowballs your delusional mental/vacation state to a dysfunctional prozac ecstasy.

Happy :)

Olympos is the kind of place where the lazy in you inevitably takes over. Slowly, terrifyingly, it oozes into your ears and settles in the front of your skull, just like those weird desert worm thingies that crawl into Chekov’s ears in STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN.

Visitors inevitably find themselves staying an extra day or two regardless of schedules, plane flights or murderous pitchfork wielding mobs. There were legends of a German tourist who became so swallowed up by the lazy that her feet turned to wood, and her toes curled and worked their way into the sand like roots, and she became a tree.

Well, not really, but I’m starting one right now. I saw it happen. I swear.

A once sizable Lycian city, Olympos has roots in Greek and Roman mythology, allegedly being the birthplace of Vulcan, the god of blacksmithing, and the deathplace of Chimera, a firebreathiing demon of yore more widely recognized as the logo for the Turkish chain of gas stations PETROL OFISI.



chimera vs. chimera corporate logo

The Chimera was slain when Iobetes, King of Xanthos, dropped lead in its mouth from above. At the site where the creature died burns an eternal flame sprouting from the earth, which you can still go check out. The flame has been burning for as long as recorded history, and is also the site where the first Olympic torch was lit.

eternal flame of chimera

Supposed “smart” people say it’s a pocket of methane gas that is slowly seeping out of the ground, but ask the German tree woman and she’ll tell you differently. You need to bribe her with cigarettes first- no lights or menthols, and don’t bother her before 10 AM cuz she’s cranky.

Regardless, the historic mythology to the spot is and always will be appropriate for me. I will always remember Olympos as the place where the ancient Lycian Lazy Monster got to me. I became too comfortable there. When Anders and Ren were ready to go, I chose to stay. I let the lazy in, I let the beast crawl in my ears- I married it, made love to it, wallowed in it.

Amidst my decadence, the thought that I would never be able to leave set in, and I panicked. I became so comfortable that I ran. I ran away from paradise.

On the day that I sullenly boarded the dolmuş out of Olympus, somewhere on the sunny coast of the Mediterranean, the Greeks looked east towards Turkey and saw for the second time in 4000 years a pointy-nosed kid icarus falling back to earth like a flaming meteor, having flown too close to the sun, having come too close to heaven for any mortal to withstand.

German tree woman (taken by anders)

party people at the Chimera (taken by anders)

I will never be the same...

Schlemiel! Schlemazl! Hasankeyf Incorporated!

As ren has previously stated. Beautiful and Eerie Hasankeyf might be underwater in the nearish future. I find it amazing that they can even consider doing this . There is so much rich history here. I guess since there is so much history everywhere we go in Turkey, anywhere they pick to flood will cover thousands of years of history.

The old city was built and dug into a bluff high above the tigris river.

This photo will be in 3-d when blogger finally makes the 3-d plug-in available in 2008.View of the Tigris from the old city.the graveyards were always on the hightest points...usually on top of the cities.

Locals still live in alot of the lower caves.These clouds were the bane of Ren's photo shoots.

But they did give Ren time to clip those meddlesome nosepeppers that had been growing out of his snozzola.

A rare contemplative moment for action mark. perhaps sizing up nearby cliff or hole.

Local Mustafa and guitar hero, Mustafa, unruffled by the impending flood.

a cozy fixer upper with nice location near the center of town.

¿Qué Sucedió a Maxi Rodriguez?

A week of many firsts...

Traveled over 1,000 miles since last post and now we’re in Van, a lakeside city in the southeast corner of Turkey, less than 100 miles from the border of Iran. Both Van the city and the lake rest on a plateau more than a mile above sea level (eat it Denver), making for a beautiful/alien landscape of snow-capped mountains atop smooth blue water. The lake is naturally alkaline due to the quality of the rock- that means that if you wash your clothes in the water, they come clean without soap.

We are way off the beaten trail here. English-speakers are rare, so we depend mostly on pantomime and a few key phrases from our guidebooks. Right now we are definitely the only white people in Van, and my brother and I get constant stares. A man in the market told us we are the first tourists he’s seen in 2 years. With our blond, curly hair and pale skin, people think we’re German. We let them. People are cautious of Americans here. "Aufitersen!" we shout as we walk away.

I’ve never been to Turkey before, so naturally I’m experiencing a lot of things for the first time. Some of my more notable firsts in just one week of travel…

For the first time ever, I’ve-

• been hustled by goat herders
  
  
• eaten paprika-flavored potato chips
  
  
• thrown a rock into Armenia from the ruins 1,500 year-old city
  
  
  
  
  
  
• seen so many satellite dishes fixed neatly atop the roofs of stone huts, surrounded by roosters.
  
  
• been sponge-bathed and then violently man-handled by a scar-faced man in a Hamam (Turkish bath house).
  
  
• successfully performed emergency toe surgery on an ingrown toenail on the bathroom floor of a hotel with tweezers and a sewing needle while running a flu of 100.
  
  
• celebrated Easter on the Black Sea 100 miles from the Republic of Georgia in a catholic mission, run by a Polack and a Romanian, with a congregation of 5 people.
  
  
• sat amongst a herd of grazing cows and found peace in the sound of dozens of mouths slowly chewing cud.
  

Needless to say, I’m having a good time.

Trabzon...

We arrive in… Trabzon, located in the north of turkey between the black sea coast and the Kackar mountains. It is a big port town that’s been around for quite some time. 746 B.C. to be exact.

A view of those same mountains from up in the plane. (photo courtesy of the files of Maxi Rodriguez)
We arrived on Easter Sunday and just so happened to stay at the Sancta Maria Hostel, a catholic monastery in the middle of Islamic Turkey. It was pretty surreal. While staying here we found out that the last priest who preached here was shot in the back of the head for saying that Allah and the catholic god were one and the same. Now there are secret police at all of the masses.

Ren declared the hostel to be the best place he’s stayed so far. Free kitchen, laundry, a private bathroom in every room and nice mattresses on the beds. Last but not least, the price. The Sancta Maria asks for a donation of whatever you can afford as payment for these plush digs.

view of the Sancta Maria's Church.
The next day we took a dolmus (a small bus/van which can carry up to 7 people anywhere they want.) with our local tour guide, Celine, up to the Sumela Monastery. This particular dolmus had backwards facing seats, so me and Ren were lucky enough to get a nausea inducing ride up the winding roads south of Trabzon into the mountains where the Monastery lives. I’ve had pretty bad cold the whole trip so nausea was a good addition to the list.

After a killer hike (killer most likely because I’m out of shape) up switchback after switchback we arrived at what so far has been my favorite thing we’ve seen/experienced so far! The Sumela Monastery. Back in the Byzantine time it was all the rage to hike up to the middle of nowhere and build a crazy monastery into the side of a mountain.

My first glimpse of the monastery, i was ecstatic due to lack of oxygen (no wonder they built it up here). view of the surrounding area half way up the side of the mountain. looking down on the monastery The biggest downside was that visitors have scratched their names into what is now almost illegible frescos. Some have even stolen the faces. Idiots! quote of the hike: "look, he's being eaten by lions!" ristaino the younger.

by the way...
¿Qué Sucedió a Maxi Rodriguez?

merhaba!

Merhaba (Greetings) from the third member of the turkey triumvirate.

I could spend my first entry showing you an endless parade of photos revealing the grandeur of the blue mosque

or the elegance of its interiors… But instead I have chosen to focus on the trivial.
start at the beginning,

upon entry to SFO’s international section of the airport we were first greeted by the visage of this jolly soul. A newly restored fresco depicting the trials and tribulations of a tortilla chef driven to the brink of insanity by spending far to much time in the sfo international airport. Luckily my brother mark and i were spared this malady by having to wait only and hour and a half to catch out flight to…

Istanbul! City of cats!
One of the first things you notice about Istanbul is that, dang, there’s a lot a stray cats in this town.

Local cats are hired as security guards at the aya Sofya.
From a safe distance Turkish men play an endless game of teasing the cats below with strings attached to fishing poles.

Once in Istanbul, we met up with old friend and founding member of the Globtrans staff. Renato.
Here is renato getting worked up into a lather discussing politics with some of the locals.

Renato wasn’t the only old friend that greeted us.
"Willy, alf’s put mr. Wiskers in the microwave and opened up a chain of denim clothing stores in turkey again!”

also, the locals were friendly enough to swindle us into drinking an expensive cherry juice. crack squad of cherry juice vendors pulled up next to us as we were walking in the middle of a public park. Jumped out of their car and quickly started posing for pictures and pouring us cherry juice. It was only after we imbibed the sweet juice that we were told that there was a price attached.
Mark surrounded by brightly colored cherry pushers.

And so.
¿Qué Sucedió a Maxi Rodriguez?