Sometimes You Get Lucky

Today was another travel day where we were moving from Gerome to Cirali.  The day started with trying to get out of the room by 10 am as everyone opted for getting up earlier to pack then do it last night.  So we cleared out of the room and had a few hours to kill before our shuttle took us to the Kayseri airport.  The girls decided to head out to purchase a few nick nacks while I manned the fort and caught up on the blog.

Catching up on things and the girls getting their screen time.

We knew things needed to go pretty

Our room is the upper door below the fairy chimney.

smoothly today as our flight was to get into Antalya at 6:15, the transfer to the bus station was 30 minutes and the final bus toward Cirali was 8pm.  So things started out well as the shuttle picked us up right on time, the only issue was they had to fill up the bus before they left.  He booted it to the airport and we made our flight with no problems, checked in and grabbed food as we knew dinner might be a while if the flight was late.  All was looking great until our boarding at 4:40 passed and then our flight time of 5:15 passed and we were still sitting in the airport looking at our plane sitting on the tarmac.  We finally boarded shortly after but it seemed to take forever to get into the air.

Given all that took place, we were only 45 minutes late and luckily our bags were one of the first ones to drop onto the turnstiles.  We grabbed our bags and ran out the door to catch a taxi to the bus station. The cabbie dropped us off at the right bus terminal for Cirali after many attempts to drive us there directly for a small inflated price that would have crush the budget.  Once at the bus station we ran through another metal detector with the packs on and alarms sounding and were welcomed by an older Turkish man asking us where we wanted to go.  “Chi-lliry” I replied as luckily I’ve met a number of people who corrected me with the pronunciation of “Cir-ali” as they would have had no clue what I was trying to say.  He ran us through the back door waving at a bus but proceeded to tell us to wait 20 minutes for the next one.

Lantern gourds for sale in Cirali.

We grabbed water, lemonade and a few snacks for the trip to Cirali as we kind of missed dinner again.  Once the bus showed up, we were told we had to wait for the next one in another five minutes.  There was no way we were going to miss this one so as soon as it arrived I started stuffing the packs in the back while Shannon and Jenna grabbing seats, it was pretty chaotic.  We managed to get a seat on the very last bus for the night as they had to turn a number of people away.  The driver kept on grabbing more people along the way so what started out as a full bus just kept on getting more full!  An hour and a half later with people crammed in the walkway and a number standing we were informed the stop for Cirali was here (of course we were in the very back of the bus).  So half the bus had to get out so we could and got deposited at a dark junction on the side of a one laned highway with our bags. 

According to the plan and what was documented on the internet there was supposed to be a few taxis at that junction that were to take us into the town which was 7km away.  Well.... there was nothing but darkness as Jenna and I pulled out our phone flashlights so we could see where we were going.  We crossed the highway and thought, well, what do we do now???  

We looked across the street at three people who were standing there (two were waiting for a bus going the other way) and a Ukrainian guy comes over to ask where we were from and if we needed a ride for free!  We figured we had nothing to lose so we jumped into his old decrepit Mazda and headed down this crazy twisting road into the town of Cirali.  Just as we got down to the bottom into town my phone rang and our Penysion host called to see if everything was okay.  I told him we’d be there in 5 and next thing you know we were there!  We walked into this beautiful new cabin with a loft for the girls and a bedroom for Shannon and I with a kitchen and living area, man, I can get used to this.  To Shannon’s delight there is even a washing machine and after doing laundry in sinks for the last 50 days, she was pretty pumped!  They even had free townie bikes that we could use whenever!  I headed into town to grab a few things for tomorrow morning down this pitch black road on my new townie and had one of those moments.... wow, where are we, this is crazy as I looked up at the stars and took breath of the warm humid tropical air.  It’ll be cool to see where we are when we can actually see!

We haven't killed eachother yet!  A few times close but we're still a clan of four!!!