Buses from heaven

Like a small meteoroid orbiting the Earth we were being inexorably drawn towards the behemoth of a metropolis that is modern day Istanbul.  Unlike the meteoroid however our main mode of travel through Turkey has been the intercity bus. If heaven had an intercity bus service, and I’m sure being a fairly well populated place, it does, then I’d put a fair wedge of money on it being operated by the Turks.

Having had a variety of bus experiences over my travels there’s always a degree of trepidation when first encountering a country’s bus service, but from our first journey and each after we’ve been pleasantly surprised.  Not only are all the buses large intercity cruisers, but each seat has it’s own airplane style entertainment screen, it’s all in Turkish, but with most action movies it’s pretty easy to work out what’s going on, and most importantly, the good guys and the bad guys.  In some countries these features may be standard, but what sets the Turkish buses apart is the chap, normally resplendently dressed with sharp shirt and bow tie who provides complimentary cay, coffee, softies, water and cakes during the journey.

Safranbolu at dusk

It was on such a bus we left Goreme and Cappadocia behind, headed in the direction of Istanbul, but diverted from the direct route for three nights to the historical town of Safranbolu, near the Black Sea Coast.

Safranbolu (or ‘The Bowlo’ as I liked to refer to it, much to the amusement of only myself) is famed for its Ottoman era housing and back in the day, at the height of the Ottoman Empire, was reknowned for the quality of its craftsman and the herb it’s named after, saffron.  These days following the intervention of UNESCO the Ottoman era housing within the old city is slowly being restored and like most foreigners this is where we stayed.

Checking into our accommodation we were recommended a homely place to eat.  I was aware that we were now entering the low season, but walking around the old town at night there was barely another soul on the street.  The restaurant was easy to find as it was the one place where there were fellow humans. The restaurant itself was actually a converted house with two Turkish Mutti’s waiting in the kitchen for the husband to call through the order of one of the five items on the menu.  The food was delicious and it was great to have that home cooked taste to the meal.

Outside of the attractiveness of the old city there’s not a huge list of must see sights on offer.  I’d read through this blog that it was possible however to hike from the old city 7 km along a gorge to the Incekaya Aqueduct an ancient piece of Byzantine civil engineering, an irresistible combination. 

Scouting the net there wasn’t much on offer in terms of directions, and asking at the hostel only gave me the route for driving, the owner unable to understand why anyone would hike it. Trying Tourist Information the chap confidently pointed at the first bridge out of town over the gorge, indicated finding our way down into it and then, voila, simply hiking up it. 

Setting off we soon encountered the bridge spanning the gorge below.  After a bit of searching we found a way down to the dry creek bed within the gorge.  As I’ve previously noted rubbish collection isn’t a Turkish strong suit and a gorge represents God’s gift of a ready made landfill.  As we hiked amongst all sorts of debris including children's plastic toys the route just didn’t feel right.  Rounding a bend our way was completely blocked as the concrete bridge over the gorge had cracked and fallen into the gorge.  Backtracking and scrambling up we found ourselves not too far advanced and in the rear of a person’s property. 

At this point we decided the Tourist Information guy had no idea and proceeded along the parallel road for a couple of kilometers.  From what we’d read we were seeking wooden stairs down into the gorge that would take us to the ancient Aqueduct.  Crossing back over the gorge, now filled with a flowing creek, we continued merrily along, constantly wondering where these wooden stairs were.  Eventually the road petered out and we came across a group of guys with a car.  Asking for directions they also couldn’t understand why you would hike and indicated it was still quite some way to the concrete water bridge.

Incekaya Aqueduct

Obviously it was a busy day for them as we all then piled into their little van, two of us and four of them as they drove us to the Incekaya Aqueduct.  It turns out they were a group of civil engineers designing a new road and we were very grateful for their assistance.

Our Turkish guides

After revealing in the Incekaya Aqueduct and walking back and forth we decided to determine where we missed the decent into the gorge by following it back from the Aqueduct.  

Walking along we were soon joined by another group of Turks, three University friends and their Mother.  In exchange for them being able to practice their English they offered to show us the way, so guided by our new found friends we hiked our way back in the fading autumn light, reflecting on the generosity and friendliness of our chance encounters with locals on our hike.

Cappadocia dreamin'

Something that’s become quite evident during our travels in Turkey has been the level of pride the Turks have in their country. This pride is most overtly recognisable through the multitude of Turkish flags waving proudly in all manner of locations across the country, although surprisingly they’re yet to embrace the superman cape look for some reason.

More subtly this pride is demonstrated through popular culture.  While enjoying a cup of cay (the ever present black Turkish tea) in a Pamukkale café the Turkey current top 20 were playing on a nearby TV.  As we watched it became apparent that all the songs were by Turkish artists, which generally involved the warbling of a swarthy chap and there wasn’t the slightest hint of western infiltration.

Within this context we’ve been constantly amused by how this song has infiltrated Turkey and the unusual places it’s cropped up, such as watching the sunset at an outdoors bar in Antalya, only for the background hum of the city to be broken by a group of guys walking by with a small radio blasting it out, or more recently as we biked along a narrow track through the Rose Valley on the outskirts of Goreme in Cappadocia, only to have to take evasive action and move smartly off the path as an ancient white Renault packed with barely teenage boys came racing along and, like an agitated octopus, their arms pumped the air to the tune out of the car windows as they passed by in a cloud of dust.

Goreme and the wider Cappadocia area perhaps goes someway to explaining the source of the Turkish pride.  As with Pamukkale it’s unique, being famous for the alien landscape of pendulous outcrops and wavy ice-cream shaped rocks cascading down hillsides into valley floors. The formations are a result of hardened volcanic flows that have remained as the surrounding earth has eroded overtime to reveal the rock underneath.  During the Byzantine period the local communities started to construct dwellings, stores and churches in the rocks and below ground to protect against marauding raids from the Persians.  These days the main use of the houses in the rocky outcrops (beside hotels) is as pigeon coups, that we were informed assists in providing much need soil fertiliser for the surrounding farms.

We’d somewhat upgraded our accommodation in Goreme following Kizkalesi and opted to stay in the Kelebek ‘special’ (special in that all the hotels have the word cave in them so there’s a need to differentiate) cave hotel.  It was a lovely place to stay nestled into a rocky outcrop overlooking the town of Goreme.  Each morning from our cave room you could hear the faint sound of the firing of the balloons outside the window and peering out the window watch them slowly rise to join with the 70 or so other balloon rides that occur each morning.

Morning over Goreme

'Love' Valley

On checking in we’d been given a sketchy map of the surrounding valleys, outline of the walks and approximate time to spend in each one, including the modestly named ‘Love Valley’ (30 minutes apparently)….and Rose and Red Valleys.  After a day spent walking around the valleys we decided it’d be easier the next day to head back with bikes.  Many people drive quads around the valleys, but from what I observed it becomes more about racing over sand dunes than taking the fascinating homes amongst the landscape.

The sketchy maps provided by the hotel seemed to be the same available throughout the town and we set off on our bikes to the Rose and Red Valleys trying to relate the squiggles on the paper to our surrounds.  To confuse matters there regularly appeared red spray painted arrows to the valleys that work for a while, but then start to contradict each other.

The tops of the valleys are sparsely vegetated, but lower down the vegetation increases and winds with the valley floor.  Being late autumn the leaves had turned a golden yellow and in the weak sunshine it was great fun to ride along the path.  At some stage however we must have missed that the path turned off the trail we were on as I never actually imagined that the trail came out of the valley floor we were in and went over the top of the valley as I learned later on.  Consequently we blindly rode on as our path became increasingly narrow and came across the first location where we had to pick the bikes up and haul them over rocks. 

As we continued on this became a common occurrence, with the path only wide enough for the bike handles and the walls of the valley looming over us.  Eventually we reached a point where the path split in two, one way the path disappeared completely and the other the path was blocked by a boulder larger than I.  At this point we came to the startling conclusion that we’d somehow taken a wrong turn and retreated back the way we’d come.  We spent the rest of the day riding around other valleys, stopping to dismount and climb up to explore the insides of the long abandoned houses before pedalling our exhausted bodies back before the setting sun.

We end up staying in Goreme for five nights, doing a day tour of surrounding ruins and an underground city that spread to a depth of eight floors beneath the ground, but felt that we’d only just scratched the surface in terms of exploring the unique Cappadocia region.

The Turkish Mole

Since our arrival in Turkey we’d had something of a purple patch in terms of our time in the country; Ephesus, the Travertines and our cruise from Fethiye to Olympos, were all memorable experiences.  As Lance Armstrong can attest however it’s naturally hard to keep a run like this going and the week following our cruise was to demonstrate this.

On reflection I think the downward slide can be attributed to a Mole in our ranks and its cunning leverage of the Turkish four day Islamic, Kurban Bayrami (the merrily named ‘Festival of Sacrifice’) holiday period. This year it also coincided with Turkish Republic Day and so represented a fair chunk of holiday time for the Turks.

Worried of Turkey

A key aspect of the Festival is the slaughtering of a halal animal (cow, goat, sheep or even a camel) by each family and the distribution of the body parts in equal portions to close family, friends and those less fortunate. From our observations the goat seemed to be the slaughteree of choice on the western Mediterranean and with approximately 77 million Turks, over 96% of who are Muslim this equates to a lot of worried goats.

Like any good shyster the Mole gained our confidence over a long period and did so again through its whisperings and pointed insights about not staying in Olympos, the default post cruise location, but rather Cirali, a mere 3km further along the beach front.

Chimera

Whereas Olympos is effectively a series of backpacker hostels coming off a dirt track, Cirali is its own town set in a forested coastal strip ringed with small rural holdings and overlooked by the surrounding mountains. With free bikes available from our hotel we spent an enjoyable afternoon pedalling around before pulling over and enjoying the local speciality of pomegranate and orange juice in one of the many vegetated grotto like eateries.

Cirali is also closer to the primary attraction in the region, the ‘chimera’, a naturally occurring phenomenon whereby volcanic gases exude from the rocks on the side of a mountain and are ignited through contact with the atmosphere.  Setting off at dusk we hiked through the town and surrounding countryside to watch the sunset as the flames flickered from the rocks all around us.

Kaleici, Antalya

Our plans from Cirali had been informed by prior research that pointed to accommodation and spots on any bus being hard to come by prior to, during and after the Bayram holiday period.  To manage this, and on advice from the Mole, we’d chosen to spend four nights in Kizkalesi on the eastern Mediterranean as we tried to wring the last vestiges of heat out of the remnants of the Turkish summer.

Our journey to Kizkalesi took us through the historic city of Antalya for an evening, which should have provided us with our first warning signs about the Mole as the directions provided were all over the place for moving in and out of the city from the bus station.  We had however no reason to question its advice and once we’d made it to Kaleici, the historic Roman centre of Antalya and despite the turning of the weather, could have easily spent more than an evening, but the scarcity of buses meant we were on the move again the next day.

It wasn’t until our bus rolled into Kizkalesi that the extent of the betrayal the Mole had wrought upon us was apparent.  For the first day or so neither of us could bring ourselves to openly discuss this betrayal as we found it hard to believe that it’s vivid description and promotion of the town as ‘wonderful’ could be so far from the truth.

The Kizkalesi the Mole, or as it is otherwise known, Lonely Planet, had described was a far cry from the mosquito infested, litter strewn concrete jungle by the sea we encountered.  With its intermittent electricity supply and roaming packs of wild dogs and mangy cats we would normally have moved onto the next location, however with accommodation and bus spots at a premium due to the Bayram holiday we were locked in for four nights.

During this time I came across an earlier description of the town stating it was in danger of losing it’s character due to the mushrooming of B and C grade concrete block hotels. Well it has lost that battle and also the one to control its approach to waste disposal. 

More broadly this appears to be a particular problem in Turkey and even on our cruise we’d be fishing out large plastic water containers as we swam around.  Within this context I couldn’t help but think on hearing the news over the past few weeks that Afghanistan has declared its first national park, with a view to attracting tourism in the future, that I hope they consider and provide the infrastructure to handle the unintended environmental impacts that rapid tourist development can bring, lest such development destroy the values that attract tourists in the first place.

Crystal clear

I think you’d be hard pressed to find another country that has such genuine love and appreciation of another human than the Turks do for Mustafa Kemel, or Ataturk (meaning Father Turk) as he is more commonly known. Reading through the history of his life and role in shaping modern Turkey it’s easy to understand the source of this admiration. For the Turks there’s no question as to who is the Daddy and the only other country I can think that has a similar relationship is the Vietnamese reverence for Ho Chi Minh.

Today the physical actualization of this admiration is borne out through, at minimum; an Ataturk statue in every town, his name adorning every imaginable piece of infrastructure and his benevolent gaze staring down from behind the counter of any commercial enterprise you may come across.

Kayakoy

While we were on the coast in Fethiye to commence our four day gulet cruise to Olympos we had enough time to visit the eerily deserted ghost town of Kayakoy, a consequence of an Ataturk policy in the 1920s to avoid future sectarian conflicts and ensure a Turkish republic solely for Turks through population exchanges.

It’s a short minibus ride from Fethiye to Kayakoy, but for the unsuspecting, such as us, the ride passes through the ultimate chav dream resort of Oludeniz, where a full English roast is available everyday of the year and neon lit establishments, such as the bemusingly named 'Grand Boozey', do a thriving trade.  Like most Turkish sites once you’ve paid a nominal entrance fee you’re free to climb on, over, up and down unhindered and so we spent an enjoyable afternoon clambering over the former Greek speaking town whose population was forced to depart for Greece under the population exchange program.

Scouring the list of available tourist activities in Turkey I’d quickly singled out the desire to spend several days puttering along the Turkish coast line in a hand made traditional wooden Turkish ‘gulet’ vessel.  It’s a popular activity with numerous operators and having singled it out I was also responsible for choosing one. Fortunately I was saved this task through the fruits of my side project of chatting with elderly American men in unusual locations around the globe. A conversation with a retired professor from the University of Nebraska following a swim in the hotel pool in Selcuk revealed he’d done his research and chosen V-Go. On this basis we found ourselves with thirteen others assembled outside the V-Go office in Fethiye ready to board our cruise one warm clear morning.

The mighty Mavi Boncuk

Any group activity with a bunch of strangers, and especially one in an effectively confined space for four days, there’s concern you’ll be stuck for days on end with a bunch of nuff nuffs.  As we motored out of Fethiye aboard the ‘Mavi Boncuk’, (replete with suitably benevolent Ataturk portrait) to our first stop, the stunning beach at Butterfly Valley wedged between two mountains, these fears were quickly allayed and over the course of the next four days I was constantly surprised how well our group, consisting of mainly Americans and Australians, gelled. 

Part of this could have also been down to the clear crystal waters, the feeling timeless sunny hot days brings and a sea so calm that most of the time it resembled a deep blue liquid chrome.  Combined with the realisation that there was nowt to do except swim, converse, laze on the deck, wonder if it was too early for a beer and enjoy the next sumptuous meal prepared by the crew, it’d take a miserable soul indeed not to gell with your fellow travellers. Even Tony managed a smile, well, more a grimace, but it's a start.

The following morning our gulet slowly made its way along the coast towards the Kekova region where we’d spend the next few days, overnighting initially at the beautiful secluded town of Kas, set in a bay at the base of a coastal mountain range, and the next at another still calm bay.  During the day we’d drop anchor and snorkel, or, as in case of the small community of Simena, part of a historical city sunken into the sea by an earthquake, be offered the chance to go ashore.

Butterfly Valley

The water clarity visibly highlighted however the extent of overfishing along the course of our voyage. While in 2006 WWF convinced the local authorities to declare most of our route a marine park, the sea felt largely bereft of marine life, with all but the tiddliest of tiddlers absent at depths up to 10m. It was startling and made me question a number of times the source of the fish in the numerous seafood restaurants dotted along the coast.

With my initial reservations completely unfounded it was in the end all too soon that we were saying goodbyes at the port of Demre and back into the swing of bus travel for our next destinations, and like most we were headed for the Olympos region. 

Round Turkey with a market trolley

During our time in Kos it became apparent that since the start of my travels several months ago I’d had my backpack set up was all wrong. The length was way too short, so that instead of resting on my hips I had all the weight on the top of my back. A schoolboy error I know, and one that eventuated during our time in Greece to a constant pain in my back between my shoulder blades, making carrying any weight an uncomfortable experience.

Departing Kos for Bodrum in Turkey, a short hydrofoil across the deep blue seas, it was apparent that if we were to backpack around Turkey, with its extensive intercity bus network, and bus stations, I’d need to find a solution for hauling my luggage that didn’t involve my back.  After contemplating purchasing suitcase with wheels Susi came up with the idea of modifying an older ladies market day trolley.

Bodrum

Picturesque Bodrum fancies itself as the St Tropez of Turkey, with a host of high-end stores and flash restaurants, over looked by the imposing Castle of St Peter, the stronghold of the Knights of St John in the 1400s.  Perversely it also promotes itself as a Centre of Excellence in imitation clothing to the hoards of Kos daytrippers that peaks with the weekly Tuesday textile market. We headed in that direction in search of a suitable market trolley and quickly spied one outside a hardware store across from the market. After insulting the proprietor with my haphazard bartering I became the proud owner of a market day trolley and three occie straps for securing the backpack. 

While Greece and Turkey aren’t on the best of terms (although Turkey has a solid track record with this on a few fronts…Syria, Armenia, Iraq, Iran…), there are similarities, such as large groups of men sat around doing not very much. 

In Turkey these groups seem to be focused on perfecting their backgammon game and contemplating the strength of the latest round of tea, while presumably their female relations, wife, mother, daughters, are at home hard at work.  In such a culture the sight of a man pushing a market day trolley is a source of high merriment amongst the local male population as I found alighting from the plush bus from Bodrum to Selcuk.

Selcuk is the closest town to the ruins of Ephesus, the eastern capital of the Roman Empire after it split into west and east, and despite the masses of annual visitors retains its authentic Turkish flavour, in part due to a vast majority of Ephesus visitors bussing in on a day trip from the cruise town of Kusadasi.  Ephesus is one of the best preserved Greco-Roman cities and while, like Tikal in Guatemala, only 20% of the site has been uncovered, is a fascinating site to visit.

Ephesus

After several days in Selcuk including a highly informative guided tour of Ephesus, punctuated with obligatory stops at a traditional pottery and carpet store to be charmed by smooth talking Turkish salesmen we were back on the bus to Pamukkale, who’s correct pronunciation is a constant mystery to me. 

Where Selcuk has retained its own sense of being outside of the tourist drawcard Pamukkale has rolled over, put its feet in the air and accepted its fate as service town to the Travertines (or Cotton Castle as the Turks refer to it), the amazing white calcified pools that have formed on the side of a mountain at the base of the ancient city of Hierapolis.

Waiting till later in the afternoon to visit I was pretty stunned by how much I enjoyed our time clambering over the calcified mountain and wading into the naturally warm turquoise pools. I think my enjoyment sprung from the uniqueness of the Travertines, never having experienced anything like it before we were both donning wide smiles as we slowly ventured up the mountain, stopping numerous times to wade into the warm water pools as they appeared on the side of the path. 

While visually you feel as if you’re in the midst of a snow field, you’re conflicted by other senses which feel the Turkish heat and glare and the ribbed white surface beneath your feet that is like you’re walking on the surface of giant cats tongue, albeit one that's been licking a bowl of bleach. Following a fleeting visit to Hierapolis we returned once again to the Travertine’s to enjoy the descent at dusk and early evening.

The Turkey Lonely Planet rates the Travertine’s as the 17^th top experience in Turkey, with eating a kebab coming in at 5^th…I think it would need to the crème del la crème of kebabs, maybe prepared by Ataturk himself to top this experience.

The next morning I prepared the market trolley once more and trundled to the bus station for our next destination and experience, Fethiye and a Gulet cruise.

Chasing the sun

As the nights close in on northern Europe and the weather turns so my chosen path is taking me increasingly south in search of warmer climes.

My plan was always to spend time in Spain and then several weeks in Turkey, how we moved between the two countries though was up in the air. After exploring the options of going overland, flying into via Macedonia or Bulgaria and entering Turkey from the north, we settled on the more relaxed approach of a boat across from the Greek Islands. 

 

Leaving Barcelona to unseasonal rain and flooding we arrived in Athens just as I remembered it from previous visits, brown, hot and without a cloud in the blue blue sky, reminiscent of landing into Perth for my annual Christmas sojourn.

We only stayed in Athens for two days, enough time to spend a pleasant day sight seeing at the Acropolis. Having been in Athens a few times before I was, in a way, more intrigued to see if I could perceive changes from my previous visits given the current economic situation that Greece has unfortunately of late become infamous for.

On the basis of a friends recommendation, which included the promise of a much vaunted 2 Euro gyros directly across from the hotel, we by chance found ourselves staying in the area of Exarchia, the bohemia centre of Athens and an area the US State Department has advised against visiting given its association with rioters and civic disturbance. Potentially an issue given the rioting that had occurred in central Athens the week prior.

Gyros

Of course I had no idea about this at the time and was more focused on trying to locate the promised gyros land. Strolling around Exarchia it reminded me of many other inner city areas I’ve seen, with street art, bars and clubs and a whole range of eating options, from the aforementioned gyros to fine dining. 

Where Exarchia differed that first evening however were the riot policeman posted on each corner.  I assured Susi this was normal, although when we passed a van full of them I wasn’t so sure and then questioned why I thought it was normal in the first place.  Saying this we had no problems during our time in Exarchia, had some great meals (including the gyros) and evenings out, that were much more preferable to the tourist fare on offer in the vicinity of the Acropolis.

 

In terms of changes it was hard to gauge in such a short period, but the general mood of Athens feels somber to say the least and I’d say they’re grateful for steady stream of tourists the Acropolis and associated Parthenon provide.

Leaving Athens the hotelier enquired where we were going next, my response of the Greek Island of Kos elicited, ‘why do you go to Kos?’, to this I had no real response except it’s close to Turkey and the flights were cheap.  This reply, especially the mention of the Turks resulted in a stony silence and we shuffled out the door in search of our airport bus.

As I’ve travelled from place to place there’s usually a predominant type of tourist, from those doing a few weeks in the States, to those on longer timeframes in Central and South America, or in Iceland, the weekend break.  To date though I hadn’t really come across the package sun worshipping northern European tourist until Kos.

After a bit of research we’d chosen to stay in a small town called Tigaki on the basis that it had a very long stretch of sandy beach affronting the crystal clear waters of the Aegean and our accommodation, ‘Jonathans’ appeared pleasant enough when booking.  The accommodation turned out to be the finest and some of the cheapest to date and our initial booking of three nights quickly turned into five.

I’d read that Tigaki was famed for its windsurfing and I was keen to give learning another go. So late on the first afternoon, in fading sunlight, as I strode out along the shore searching for signs of windsurfers I was bewildered by the sparsely laid out pack of elephant seals basking in the sun, barely moving a muscle, that were my fellow beach goers.

It took until the next morning before we too succumbed to the pace of the Tigaki lifestyle of waking late, heading to the beach, lunch, swim in the pool, beer and then meal.  This we varied with the odd trip to a surrounding town, which confirmed how much we enjoyed Tigaki, and then we’d slowly make our way back. I’m not endorsing the package holiday, but for five days it felt very strangely like its own highly enjoyable separate vacation within my travels.

Unfinished business

My 30^th Birthday occurred while I was living in London and for the occasion I arranged for eight of my nearest to travel to northern Spain for a surfing holiday, in the process checking out Bilbao and San Sebastian.

All was set, but unfortunately two days before we were due to fly I tore the ligaments in my ankle playing soccer.  Determined to go and with crutches in hand I spent the next week or so contributing to the global pool of black comedy gold as I attempted sand dunes, pension stairs and bridge crossings during a week of celebration.  The black comedy pinnacle being when my housemate at the time unbeknown to me removed the pins from my crutches while at the beach and in attempting to stand the crutches concertinaed on themselves and I fell face forward into the sand, hilarious.

Like most I’m a simple person and always felt a little cheated by my northern Spain experience and vowed one day to return sans crutches.  Flying into Bilbao we were primarily here, as are most, to check out the Guggenheim Musuem, a defining piece of architecture and the home to one of my favourite pieces of art, Puppy by Jeff Koons, that stands on permanent display at the entrance to the building.  I’m a big fan of Bilbao and its unpretentious nature that gives it the feeling of the real Spain, away from the tourist traps and hoards associated with other Spanish cities.

Puppy 

During my travels I’ve been asked a few times what was my favourite place, this is a tricky question as I often find myself subconsciously tailoring my response to my perception of what the asker would like if they were on holiday.  I can confidently say however that San Sebastian is and continues to be one of my favourite destinations and I could happily return again and again.

After staying in a pension in Bilbao, we had booked a hostel in San Sebastian. Sure, it’s less private, but within the first five minutes of arriving we’d already met a talkative New Yorker, Tom and agreed to catch up later for dinner and drinks. Tom had befriended the, ever present in any location in the world, group of Australians, and we all ended up doing a pintxos bar crawl through the old town of San Sebastian that evening.  Pintxos are inexpensive but delicious small servings that adorn bars throughout the Basque region, with the idea being that you roll from bar to bar, quaffing dirt cheap rioja or local cider while sampling the particular wares of each bar.  While it was our first, it was Tom’s last night and he took us on a crawl of his most delectable bars chosen through long nights of punishing research.  Each night after we thought about a standard sit down meal we’d end up lent against a pintxos bar, drinking and sampling the fine food on offer.

But it’s not just the food that makes San Sebastian such a winner, it’s a beautiful historic town with winding laneways and during the day there’s a choice within easy walking of a bay based beach and a surf beach where the number of learner surfers in the water at any one time is inversely proportional to the quality of the waves. Fortunately it required numerous hours sat on the beach studying and sampling the water to determine this relationship.

We also happened on San Sebastian during its 60^th International Film Festival and were asked numerous times if we were in town for the Festival, something we were completely ignorant of prior to arrival. 

People have different versions of their own personal hell, but one of mine would be waiting with the hoards behind a temporary barrier for a celebrity to walk down a red carpet. Given the proximity however of our hostel to the Film Festival we would on many occasion come across such hoards lined up waiting for a celeb sighting.  

Strolling past the assembled throng one evening there was a palpable increase in the frothing frenzy amongst the gathered masses and so I found myself embracing my own personal hell and standing amongst them waiting for a car to arrive in the hope it was someone I vaguely knew. After the first car passed we were treated to John Travolta and Benicio del Toro striding from their limo to walk the carpet for the premier of Savages. Being disdainful about the red carpet experience, as a fan of Pulp Fiction, Traffic and of course Saturday Night Fever, I couldn’t help but be a wee bit excited by the experience, although having recently read a review entitled ‘it’s a toss up who gives the worst performance in this flatulent bore of a film’ of Savages I was wondering if John and Benicio were feeling a little bit chagrined about the adulation they were receiving.

Zarautz

From San Sebastian it’s a pleasant 30 minute scenic train ride to the chilled coastal town of Zarautz.  One of the main disappointments from my previous time on crutches had been the inability to surf on one leg.   To redress this I’d booked in time in Zarautz, with its 3km of sandy beach front and multiple breaks, for bobbing round the ocean.

While we were here to surf it was hard not to follow what was a turbulent week in Spain with riots in Madrid while we were in the country.  The Basque region has been pushing for autonomy for decades and with the current economic turmoil and austerity measures there seems to be an increased passion for breaking away from Spain.  As a means of protest the whole Basque region went on strike on the day we were due to leave Zarautz.  We’d seen the posters around and the square we over looked was set to be the scene of demonstrations and marching.  After the riots in Madrid we weren’t quite sure what to expect. We hadn’t counted on the nature of the locals however and the small gathering came and shuffled off and with everything shut and the sun shining they went back to their prime pastimes of the sitting on the beach and promenading along the foreshore. My type of revolution. 

Given the difficulty of travelling and obtaining any services we ended up staying for another two very relaxing days in Zarautz.  Our pension was almost full for these two days and we were moved to the Harry Potter room, though instead of being under the stairs it was under the roofline and consequently I was able to fully stand in about a third of the room to peer at the sky from skylight in the roof. 

From Zarautz we headed back to Bilbao and onto Barcelona. I’ve been to Barcelona a number of times before and thoroughly enjoyed it, but our accommodation was in the midst of tourist central, surrounded by Irish bars and weekender stag and hens dos. After the previous week or so it was all a bit much and highlighted how much I’d enjoyed the return to northern Spain.