Afyon - the town of free sweets

We stopped by the little town of Afyon both to check out its fort - whch is excellent- and to break up an otherwise long bus ride. The fort is great, perched atop a rocky outcrop that overlooks the city. Hearing the haunting ezan (Muslim call to prayer) echo as it bounces off the stony hills all around was amazing. It also gave us excellent views of the town, especially the older part which has its fair share of Ottoman houses and mosques dotted every few blocks clearly visible because of their distinctive minarets.

But what made Afyon so remarkable wasn't its great fort, but its great people. The Turkish people are among the friendliest we've ever met and Afyon is a town that probably doesn't see that many foreign tourists so the locals were quite curious about us and very happy to help us out. Turkish people also love to handout free samples of their food, including delicious baklava and lokum (turkish delight), occasionally dripping honey on the shop floors.

Pammukale and Hierapolis

Pammukale is a town often featured in the always-faded tourist photos of Turkey that usually grace the walls of the budget hostels where we stay. We saw one of these in Bodrum and were excited to see what it would look like now (and if those short-shorts so popular in the 1970s were still in fashion).

Pammukale is known for its pure white tarvertine shelves and pools which were created when the calcium-rich warm water of the area cooled onto the land and cliff edges (and less naturally onto the cement retaining walls of the pools). To enter the site, you have to walk up about 200 m through pools and travertines which is very beautiful but a little hard on the feet. It was even better coming down as the sun was setting with all of the little shadows making the texture more visible.

On the top of the cliffs, the Romans built a spa town in order to enjoy the restorative properties of the water and the ruins are pretty good. While the main part of the ruins is over-run with tours, walking out to the necropolis was a great way to spend a few relaxing hours and to see the ruins. One of the highlights here is to swim in a pool complete with a tumbled-down Roman column, but at 20 TL each (about $15 AUD) we gave it a miss. The other highlight (for us anyways) was the number of Russian men wearing nautical captain's hats - why do they seem to buy them en masse?

Efes or Efesus, either way it's near Selcuk

Efes (or Ephesus, depending on who you talk to) is the best-preserved classical city in the eastern Mediterranean. It was built before 600 BC and considering how old it is the ruins are in lovely repair. The library is the most spectacular building with loads of detail still clearly visible. The terraced houses require an additional entry fee which deters most tours from checking them out, but they are absolutely amazing. You can still clearly see paintings on the walls and the mosaics on the floor are in stunning condition. There are also lots of signs that have pictures of what they think the rooms would have looked like originally which help to bring the whole thing to life.

Turkey time: Bodrum

We hopped over to Marmaris, Turkey, from Rhodes and immidiately caught a bus to another toursity, coastal town called Bodrum. Why the change, youhref="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju-u7d6_Dtla75cJXv0dtAuAABzgyl1sLd7LomOzqvK58if8zO94T4ttTH8BFaIUNjY_sJeD3cdogG2Sh7qdoIzcZhureYyiJyp6uuERiMdfMao8aaTNhUWWhl_CJ9dkdW2tpIjTXuul0P/s1600/01+bodrum+phil.jpg"> might ask. Diving. Bodrum is one of (or prehaps style="font-style: italic;">the) place to dive in Turkey. It also has a cool fort with a museum inside and loads of the regular tourist shops and restaurants.

But back to the diving: it was pretty good and Ahmet, our diving guide, was fabulous as was the dive shop owner. We did two dives, the first to a little reef about 30 mins from the mainland where we saw a very good eel and some nice schools of fish. The second dive was to a wreck of a coast guard's ship which you could penetrate but as I was having bouyancy issues we gave it a miss. While the diving wasn't spell-binding, it was a great chance to get back under the water.

Greece: a retrospective

Okay, long time no blog, but we're back and should be up-to-date in a few days. Because we're so behind, beware that we will be pretty cursory with the text and will probably rely heavily on Phil's excellent photos (which is probably more fun anyway, especially when they don't take like 5 minutes each to upload).

Greece was amazing, but a bit of a shock coming right after Ethiopia. Happily, it was generally a very positive shock - goodbye injera, hello greek salad - except for the small matter of cost. Suddenly the price of, say, a cup of coffee sky-rocketed from $0.30 to $5.00 - and a sandwich from our hotel in Athens was about 18 euros (needless to say, we gave the food there a miss).

We really enjoyed our time in Athens; we checked out the sites, drank many glasses of house wine and a few beers, and noodled around the shops. It was great to decompress after Ethiopia and generally enjoy being back in the first world.

We met up with Maria and Neil (Phil's parents) on our way out of Athens and over to Porto Heli where Maria has a cousin with some very delux accommodation and amazing hospitality - a huge thanks from the two of us to Mary and Christos for all that they did for us during our stay. We had a wonderful time and really hope that we'll be able to repay their hospitality at some point.

From our base on the mainland, we checked out some amazing sights and towns, including Epidavros, Mycenae, Hydra and Spetses.

We headed back to Athens to catch our first ferry to Mykonos, the party town of Greece. Mykonos is a lovely town with some great food (and some very creepy waiters, well one anyway) and it's one of the few places I've been where night becomes day because of the intense lighting they shine on the streets at night. The only way to tell the difference is crowd density and the number of drunk young 'uns.

From Mykonos we hopped over to Santorini, maybe the most dramatic island ever when you first approach it by sea. The town is built on an expired volcano, up some very sheer cliffs. We did a full tour of the island, checking out a number of the towns and even walking around the smoking caldera during the intense midday heat. But the best of all was enjoying some very tasty meals and some stunning views.

After a few days on Santorini we hopped over to Greece's largest island, Crete. We did a cruisey little road trip, visiting Iraklio, Rethymno, Hania, Spili, and Agia Galini, enjoying each of our stops for different reasons, but enjoying each of them nonetheless. Sadly, we parted ways in Crete with Neil and Maria heading home and Phil and I continuing on to Rhodes to spend a few days enjoying the cool old walled city.

Even though it seems crazy to jump over a whole month of fantastic travel in a few lines, I trust the photos are worth a few thousand words (at least). A huge thanks Maria and Neil without whom we would have had a much different, and much less enjoyable trip. Another great time on the road with the four of us - hopefully we'll be seeing them in the very near future...

Tigray Region

We took a truely beautiful drive from Aksum to the village of Hawsien. We saw amazing landscapes, peppered with towering rocky outcrops disrupting the flat pastures full of farmers and their cows ploughing the earth. Once again we had an overwhelming feeling of being back in time, watching this ancient earth being turned over like it has been done, without change, for thousands of years.

The reason for coming here was to check out some of the hundreds of rock-hewn churches in this region. Yes, more churches. But surely we could handle one more day. We stayed at a wonderful lodge, infact one of our favourites of this trip. After a day of recooperation, we set out and saw some of the churches. By far the most impressive and scariest was the Abuna Yemata Guh, spectacularly perched within a cliff face, half way up a sheer rock pinnacle. We had heard about this place a couple of months ago and we weren't necessarily looking forward it to. To get to the church itself involved a verticle climbs using footholds carved into the sandstone and then a precarious ledge walk over a 200m drop! Fortunately the rain held off. Near the church was a small carved out cave full of mummified bodies, our guide reassured us they were the remains of local priests and not unfortunate tourists. The church was great but maybe it was just a relief to be standing on firm ground and to be within it's walls which shielded our eyes from the potential drop only a few meters away. While at the top, we tried to not think about how we'd fare on the way back down. The guides actually had to place your feet into the footholds as the rock face was so steep you couldn't see the next step. All this at about 2000m above sea level it was no wonder it felt like our hearts were bursting out of our chests. Quite terrifying, but extremely rewarding and unforgetable, no wonder the rest of the churches we saw this day didn't seem as impressive.

Aksum

We took another time-saving flight north to Aksum, near the border with Eritrea. Aksum was once the center of a great civilisation dating back as early as 400BC and was the powerful capital of an extensive empire for nearly 1000 years. The town is covered in sites containing carved granite obelisks or stelae looking like giant rock needles. Amazingly sculpted from single pieces of granite some of the stelae are over 30m tall, weigh more than 500 tonnes and have been standing erect for over 1500 years! Many have actually succomb to the forces of gravity and one of thebiggest ones is now propped up with the aid of a kind of sling, but they are still quite a sight.

Although the towering stelae intice your eyes skyward, there is even more to be seen at ground level, or should I say below ground level. 98% of Aksum's treasures remains buried under ground in hundreds of unopened tombs. A few of the tombs have been excavated and you can actually descend into them. It's amazing how sophisticated the brick work is and how well preserved they are considering they date back to the 3rd century. Other sights here include an stone tablet inscribed in 3 languages dating back to 330 AD and most importantly for Ethiopian pilgrims is the church of St Mary of Zion which contains a small chapel in which most Ethiopians believe is where the legendary Ark of the Covenant resides. However nobody is allowed remotely near the chapel, let alone feast eyes on the Ark. Mmmm.