Steve ıs a crack head

Distance: A very difficult 42km

Just so you know, the tıtle of thıs post has nothing to do with its content.

When we awoke it was hot. Not hot like Thailand but still hot. And we were sticky from not having showered since our swim yesterday.

Shanna has a t-shirt she has been wearing for almost a week now. Neither of us can remember when she last washed it, but its keeping the wild animals away, so she thinks she might stick with it for a little longer.

Thıngs arent a whole lot better for me... The runs have come back (not in an athletic way either) although not as bad as Asia, so Ive just bought some more drugs from a Chemist.

By the way, ıf you are wonderıng why I havent been usıng apostrophes (or why I just said -you are-), ıts because these Turkish key pads dont have them. They also have a few other funny letters so it can be trıcky and slow to type. Well I will stick to this excuse anyway.

Gettıng back to the day.

By mıd-morning we had hit the slopes. The bumpy, but at least for this stage semı-paved roads had gone up, up, up ın a steep spiral. And gasping for breath we saw ahead of us that the road turned into bumpy rocky gravel.

Over the next four hours we probabaly spent more time pushing our bikes up hill than actually ridıng them. We were both struggliıng up the hills in the hot sun wıth not enough water when an Australian guy on a big loaded up motor-bike passed us and Shanna flagged him down. He and the girl he was with, who was from the UK somewhere were great, and we stood and chatted for a bit, exchanging stories whıle he filled our water bottles for us.

A little bit happier but still unsure when we would find food and more water we kept pushıng through the hot sun and thinking about how great the bumpy ashphalt had been compared to the rocky road we were on now.

At around lunch time while cycling through a tiny village an old man approached us (see photo), told us to sıt on his porch and gave us two bottles of home made butter milk, some bread, spring onions, goats cheese and tea and then his friends came and joined us. None of us could communicate but he knew how grateful we were, and we realised that the pain of the morning had been worth ıt, if only for ths chance encounter.

An hour later and the road turned back into ashphalt. We stopped in another small village with only a corner shop and a tea house and bought some drinks. The shop keeper spoke English so we asked how far it was to were we could buy food. He told us that there was no where for another sixty kilometers, so hesitantly we bought some more things from him. (We later found our it was only 10 kılometers!!).

Flying down the street and the road once agaın met the beach. We were exhausted, so seeing a beautiful place we stopped to camp.

Here we had the best meal, hands down, of our entire trıp so far- freshly caught and perfectly cooked fish, roasted chicken, peppers and tomato wıth delicious fresh bread and the best salad we have ever eaten.

We sat and ate on a table rıght beside the ocean, our only companion a friendly stray dog, and decided that life couldnt get any better.