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November
24, 1999
Erzerum, Turkey to Zara, Turkey
Good
morning. This is Doug from Team AroundTheWorld1999 with today's journal
entry for November 24, covering our journey from Erzerum to Zara. Both
cities are located in the beautiful country of Turkey.
Today is a
sad turning point for the team. Calgary Jones (Earle) is flying to Athens
to meet his lovely girlfriend Christie and they will embark on a romantic
getaway to various European cities. We all knew about their plans for a
rendezvous but originally they were to meet in Paris. Earle's premature
departure was caused by our inevitable delays en route. Have fun bro,
we're going to miss you.
In what was
becoming de rigueur for the team, we once again got a late start. We
wanted to ensure that Earle's travel plans were cemented, we all needed
to exchange money and we all needed to sit down and consult the map and
plot a route through Turkey. Another delay was caused by a familiar
nemesis; ridiculously inflated telephone bills imposed by the hotel. I
had personally inquired with the clerk behind the front desk about the
phone rates, and after finding them quite reasonable, I passed this
information on to my fellow team members. A flurry of stateside calls
ensued. Lo and behold, when we went to check out we were very surprised
to find out that we were being charged four times the quoted amount.
Apparently, there was a miscommunication between the clerk and myself. I
had asked for the per-minute rate and he had given me the per-unit rate -
a unit being 15 seconds, of course. Even our ace negotiator Nick couldn't
get them to budge and with much ill will we paid our bills. This was not
the first time we've encountered this type of scam and by now we were fed
up with all of the petty ways in which money was unscrupulously extracted
from tourists. Nobody said earning our seasoned traveler stripes was an
inexpensive venture.
One of the
clerks felt bad for us. Earlier he had befriended Jeff and I and had
personally escorted us to various moneychangers in a futile attempt to
dump our now worthless Iranian Rials (a quest I must add, that Jeff
pursued religiously for the duration of the trip, albeit with the same
negative results). The clerk treated Jeff to some coffee and gave him a
lighter. His sincerity helped ease the feeling that we were scammed by
another hotel.
We finally
hit the road sometime around noon after bidding Godspeed to our wayward
navigator/electronics whiz Earle. Our destination was Ankara, some five
zillion kilometers away. We would be driving well into the night, even at
maximum speed with ideal conditions. Things started out well but it
didn't take long before it started snowing -- hard. No problem, we just
kept chugging along. Then calamity struck: Hercules started losing power.
The alternator was going out on us and we barely had enough juice to run
the engine. Combine this with the whiteout/blizzard conditions and we
were in trouble. Did I mention that it was also dark out? Lucky for us,
we had just left a gas station so Nick took the helm of Hercules (to get
a feel for the problem) and limped it back to the station where we could
mess with it under cover. We jiggled wires and tightened nuts and it
seemed to help, but it was apparent that we weren't going to make it to
Ankara tonight.
Jeff and I
took the lead in Herc while the rest of the gang followed behind as a
precautionary measure. In order to conserve juice, we drove without the
defroster but we just couldn't spare the wipers. We decided to detour to
the small town of Zara and see what we could do in the morning.
Zara was
buzzing with activity. The cops were everywhere and we soon found out
why. The Turkish Minister of Health was in town. A policeman flagged us
down and asked us what we were doing. After a brief explanation, he made
a local boy get in our car and direct us to the town hotel. Todd got out
and went inside to get us our rooms and two Kalishnikov-toting
plainclothes policemen immediately followed him inside. We didn’t hear
any gunfire, so figuring Todd was still alive, we went inside. After
Pakistan and Iran, we were pretty much used to seeing men with automatic
weapons so nobody was particularly surprised -- although we always
thought it was cool.
Nick, Jeff,
and I went to check out an Internet cafe to see if we could download some
pictures, check out our Web site and, of course, get an update on the
U.S. stock market. Toddo and Chanda were tired so they flaked out.
Originally we were going to just pop in, work, and then leave, but the
locals were really excited to meet three Americans traveling through
Turkey, especially after they saw our site. We ended up staying until
2:30 a.m., BSing with everyone who stopped by. Most of them just came
from the local bar and were quite talkative. This being Turkey, everyone
smoked and we were constantly being offered cigs. Not wanting to seem impolite,
we always accepted, regardless of our growing sense of smoke-related
nausea. It was too much for me and I like smoking. Jeff and Nick were
dying. A thick fog hung over the room and the next day we all smelled
like walking ashtrays. We said our goodbyes and headed back to the hotel
for a few hours sleep. If Hercules can hold up, we will try to make it
all they way to Istanbul, where we can get a new alternator.
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