The day before on our tour the guide told us that we should go to sleep in a cave somewhere and to just tell anyone who may take offence that Hussein said it would be alright and they wouldn’t bother us. I sat back wondering how they would know which Hussein it was seeing as everyone I had met had either been named Hussein, Mohammad, Gokhan or Ahmed.
So anyway we booked ourselves out of the Hostel amid cries from the owner. "You couldn’t pay me a million lira to sleep out there. Scorpions." Before shuddering.
Seeing as a million lira was the same as about AUS$1 I didn’t see the problem myself. We had made some friends the day before and the girls all wanted to as well while the two blokes decided not to come. It would be tough chaperoning 5 girls, me being the only male of the camping group.
So we began our planning and decided to all get pushies and scout out a suitable cave. Cleverly in our excitement we went to the first bike place and paid a nice group blue eye tax.
We informed the owner proudly that we were going to camp in a cave and he started shaking his head, "You couldn’t pay me a million lira to go camping, Scorpions" before shuddering.
"Yes, yes we have been through all this before already"
"What can scorpions do to you anyway?" someone asked.
"Make you sick." I explained before the man angrily replied, "Have you been bitten!?" and on my negative continued, "You don’t know crap, when you get bitten you get intense paid and you have a few hours to get to a hospital and get an injection for the poison and then you have intense pain for a day and then nothing."
I wondered if my definition of sick differed somehow from the Turkish one. I personally think he was jealous of me with all the girls so I added, "I bet YOU haven’t been bit before!" That would show that smug man who is boss. He then proceeded to show me all his scorpion bite scars. There was a 1 in 6 chance it would be me who got bit so I was happy with those odds.
We all chose bikes which we then had to change again because half of them had no breaks or gears or seat too hard etc and when we were all happy we set off before coming back and changing bikes around again except changed them back to the ones we had already got rid of and so there was much confusion before happy again and then got to the top of the hill before going back down to change again. Finally, however, we were done and after doing the hill again we all hopped off our bikes, panting with exhaustion, to admire the view. We all agreed the brick wall was very interesting so we sat down and studied it quite well, memorizing all 3 of the brick positions and the couple of stones around it. By the time we reached the very top we all admired the view again and agreed the landscape was much prettier than the wall. Along the ridge 5 minutes we stopped again for another view break and that was when we got our first flat. We all chuckled and sat about enthusiastically changing the tire. Well the girls sat about while the boys changed the tire. We all then went down the hill and at the bottom discovered another 2 flat tires. So after 30 minutes in and only 10 minutes of riding done we had 3 flats.
"I am not paying for this!" I stated furiously after fixing the next 2.
The girls were fine talking about dancing, dresses and such, "Do you think I should cut my hair?", "What's that Mika? Are you done yet?", "About time boys", "Lets go I am bored".
5 minutes later we got our 4th flat tire. While fixing this us boys started chatting.
"I bet it’s a scam!"
"Yeah definitely a scam, they get pins and do tiny holes in the tubes so we pay for them."
"Yeah I heard about those slow release holes."
"Wow, they are cunning."
"But we are on to these bastards!"
"When we get back, boy, are we going to give it to them!"
"Damn straight."
"Check the tire I bet they stick the pins to the inside."
"Sneaky!"
"Nope no pins."
"Ohh! Sneakier! Secret pins that pop out when riding."
"Clever bastards" we muttered.
"So a blue top matches my eyes better with these pants do you think? Oh boys are done yet? Isn't it such a nice day? This is so fun hanging out on a nice bike trip." The girls added.
Us boys with our broken nails, greasy hands and frustration didn’t agree quite as much. 5 minutes later and the next 2 simultaneous flat tires we had it to a fine art.
"Mika you remove that one, I'll get the pump fixed (which was broken as well) and mate you grab the tools and spare tire tube."
We got even better for the next 2 10 minutes later. 13 flat later we just gave up and walked the bikes back. On the walk back we noticed these thorns in all the tires and scattered all over the road.
"Oh! I bet they scattered them there on purpose."
"Yeah must be it."
"Sneaky bastards."
But all in all it was quite fun and we saw a lot of cool caves even though we could have walked our trip a lot quicker.
"You know", one of the girls stated, "we cant sleep in the caves now, no bikes, we cant get there." All the girls except Hannah agreed, "Damn I really wanted to do it as well!", they all said a bit too forcefully and cheerily. They didn’t seem to hear me when I added that it was alright I knew of some good caves within walking distance.
"Pity there are no caves near enough to walk to."
My furious pointing at a suitable cave 500m away seemed to get overlooked.
"Yeah would have been a nice mission."
When we got back we had to pay for 13 punctures from the 8 bikes. We had only been gone 5 hrs as well and that included the 1hr lunch and 3hrs exploring on foot. He was going to charge more than he did until Ariane pointed out that we would tell everyone at the pension not to come to him because he was a rip off. He then became nice and forced us to sit and drink some of his apple tea and stay and chat. The other two boys because very excited.
"Apple Tea, eh?", whisper, whisper, "this is brilliant!"
"Can we have some more?"
"Guys are you tasting this? Why haven’t we had this before?"
For the next few days whenever we saw them they would be sitting huddled in the corner somewhere with an apple tea comparing the merits of the apple tea from different café's.
"How do they make it?"
"Hot water"
"Wow", before sitting huddled again whispering and ordering another apple tea.
"We should really get some hot water", and then again sitting huddled, sipping and whispering.
We then ran up to a lookout point where we had missed the sunset the night before by 2 minutes and promptly missed it again by 2 minutes.
"Probably wasn’t that good anyway" someone piped as we saw a misty orange red glow following the retreating sun, and people looked and shared their amazing photo's.
"We should just go and get some apple tea." One of the apple tea boys suggested hopefully.
"Yeah apple tea will make up for it." The other replied.