Trabzon, Turkey

Well, this blog entry sees us in Trabzon, Turkey. In a day or so we should be going across the border into Georgia.
Here we are also doing a major update to our web pages (finally), so make sure you check out www.fernweh.ch
The update covers our time in North Africa, and includes everything we have done up to Turkey, so we hope you enjoy it.

Now to this blog:
After a little over two weeks, we managed to get all our visas (with the exception of Kazahkstan, which we will get in Tashkehnt). I spent an extra couple of days polishing up the last few pages to our web site and we took of.

Not only did we manage to take care of the Visas, but somewhere in there we did a lot of work on the bikes. Including, inserting a heli-coil one week, taking it out and modifying it the following week. Replacing the front brake lever piston, and the left front fork seal on Cecilias bike. What it all meant is that we could take off with the bikes in pretty good condition.
Of course we also had plenty of time to catch up on a lot of movies which we had missed. So relaxed and rested we were looking forward to what the road had to offer.

Early Monday morning we headed to the Black Sea coast (why is it called the Black Sea?). The first night we made it to a town called Amasra, which turned out to be a very nice, relaxing, laid back resort town. For us it was just amazing how green everything was. One hour out of Ankara, and we hit the hills, with forests as far as the eye could see. It was so green we were almost blinded. The contrast is just incredible, to what we had been experiencing for the past 6 months or so.

After spending a night in Amasra, we headed to Sinop, where we found a little camping spot just outside of town. Sinop also turns out to be resort town, with plenty of beaches. It sits on a peninsula, so it has beaches on both sides, pretty cool.

After Sinop, we continued onwards, unfortunately it stopped being so nice. Up to Sinop, the road had been very small, and went up and down mountains, as it hugged the coastline as much as possible. There were few towns and everything was pretty rural. After Sinop, it changed the coastline wasn't as nice anymore, and the towns, larger and "grittier". It probably didn't help that there is a lot of construction going on, on the road along the coast. Lots of heavy traffic, dust, gravel, and more dust. We looked like two fugitives from Mad Max, when we arrived at Besikduzu near Trabzon. You could hardly tell my jacket was red! We were too tired to really bother and took the first hotel we found. A couple of kebabs and bed.

Before getting there though, we did take a break at Jasons Cape, having a quick look at Jason's Church. That is, as in Jason and the Argonauts. Across the road is a quaint little cafe, where we had a couple of cokes right on the beach, with the church in the background. As the weather was pretty overcast, it was pretty cool, when a ray of the sun would hit the church giving it a very heavenly aura. Not really tourist place, even if there is a desolated campground next to the church.

The next day it rained in the morning, but since we had decided to only go to Trabzon in order to take care of some last minute details before leaving Turkey, sure enough a couple of hours later it stopped, and we took off.

Trabzon, turns out to be a very busy, hecktic, port city, with lots of one-way street, and like a number of other Turkish towns, built on hills and valleys. We nevertheless managed to find a decent hotel with suitable parking for our motorcycles, and settled it. We proceeded to take care of a few things, and then spent some time catching up on the e-mails, and updating our web pages. Check them out at www.fernweh.ch and that is it for now. Next time you will hear from us should be Georgia.
Cheers