Eastern Turkey & Black Sea July 24 - Aug. 06, 2004


Camli Hemsin - Rize headscarf

Day 04   Tuesday July 27, 2004
Kavran Yaylasi, Rize
Submitted by  Robert Powers  dogbarn_99@yahoo.com

We awoke in charming mountain guesthouse in Ayder to sunny blue skies and breakfast on the porch overlooking typical mountain summer pasture houses.  We were heartily greeted by Yusuf and his two daughters who prepared a typical Turkish breakfast. One daughter Gulshah just passed her University exams for literature and travel guiding with plans for more studies. We learned some new words in addition to chai (tea), ekmek (bread), domates (tomato), recel, yag (eggs, cheese, wheat) and mullama (local jam).  
We all swapped travel stories as we became better acquainted with our fellow tour buddies. villagers only spend a few weeks at these houses and go even further up to higher pastures (Aylas) when the weather is warm. We saw a couple scything the grass in the garden adjacent to the guesthouse, as we were putting our shoes back on. After Meli posed with the family for hugs and pictures, we then strolled up through the village to look at a mountain waterfall, and to check out the famous beehives of Ayder. 
These look like barrels and are placed way up in a tree, I guess to get the best honey.


Driving to Kackar mountains

 As our bus will not be able to negotiate the rough Katchkar mountain dirt roads, we took a local mini-bus (Dolmus) up to the second Ayla and beyond, up towards the snowpack, up above the treeline to the high pasture camps. We passed some crazy Catalan bikers, all with great thighs from the uphill climb.  We were passed by truckloads of young people, coming back from Istanbul for the short summer to help out with the herds, to camp out and to continue the village ways.

At the second yayla we stopped and Meli arranged for us a traditional lunch with a lady cooking in a tent. We were going to continue up to the third or highest yayla, and then back down here for lunch.

 During one of our many photo opportunity stops Joanne twisted her ankle.  Nancy looked at it and thought it might be broken. Meli jumped into action, revising our schedule and making sure she got medical care right away.  Leaving a group of us at the second yayla, she had the mini-bus driver shuttle them back down to Ayder, for our bus to take them on down to Rize and to the Hospital. 

 The mini-bus then returned to pick up the rest of us, after a fine lunch of shepherds kebab cooked on a large round tin thing like a wok. We also had a local specialty for desert, loka that was delicious!.  The driver brought us all the way back down to Rize, where we were to stay and meet up with Meli and the rest of the group. We stopped on our way back down to shop and sightsee in Ayder , take more pictures of the Ottoman bridge, and to power shop our way thru another village.

 Both groups met up at the hotel at almost the same time, and we learned that Joanne and Nelson had decided to return to the states and that Joanne was doing OK with little pain.

 All our thanks go to Meli for her quick action, to Nancy for her calming expertise, and to Bekir the mini-bus driver for taking us under his wing and putting up with my limited Turkish.

 Send pictures of Dolmus and driver to:                

Bekir Kutlu
 Karadeniz Cad.
Sarioglu AP Kat 5.
 PAZAR, RIZE,Turkey

 

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