Day 6: Egirdir

After leaving Pamukkale, we got on a big tour bus that took us three hours to Egirdir (pronounced Eyirdir), a small town on the shores of Lake Egirdir. Egirdir was not very exciting in and of itself - the town was tiny, and proved especially disappointing when we tried looking around for places to watch the Turkey-Croatia game only to find no good places. While in the town, we did visit an old medrese next to a mosque built in the thirteenth century. We also got to climb around some old Seljuk ruins and stand on top of an old castle tower - for some reason, the town thought it'd be nice to put their name on top of it:


The town and the lake:


The biggest attraction about the town was the lake - it's the second largest lake in Turkey with more than 550 square kilometers of water - much larger than Lake Norman. After arriving, we went swimming in the clear water which felt really good. The place we stayed at was a pension - part hostel, part hotel - we stayed in the hostel part, with all ten of us in a room. It was an experience, especially since we had to share one toilet and one shower between all of us and about 15 other Australians/English/New Zealanders. Needless to say, it ended up being a lot of dashing into the shower/bathroom whenever someone came out of it.

Egirdir in and of itself is not much of a stop, but Prof Shields and William had been to it before and had been really impressed with the Kings Highway, an ancient road used by the Persians to invade Greece and by Alexander the Great and the Greeks to invade Persia. It winds its way through a narrow canyon called Candir (Jandir) that is now a national park. It was absolutely beautiful, with huge cliffs and mountains and lots of forest with a river winding through it and the ancient road on one of the side cliffs. It really reminded me of Yosemite minus the ancient ruins and the annoying tourists.

Here's the road at its widest:


Some Greek markers along the road:



We hiked along the ancient road (and then kept going after that road seemed to have disappeared) and saw a really blue pool of water beside a nice waterfall a ways down the cliff. We decided to stop there, and Kristina and I scouted a way to get down to it.

The water was freezing, and we had to jump in a few times to get used to it. With all the big rocks around, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to jump off one. Edward did it first, jumping off a rock about 15 feet high (we scouted the depth of the pool - none of us could reach the bottom diving, so it was obviously very deep). We all tried doing it - here's me in my first attempt:

After the first one, the only logical place to go was up, so up we went. Edward was the first to jump off of the second cliff, a good 35 feet above the water. After Kristina, Zoe and Kevin went, I decided to gather my courage and give it a shot. I was halfway up when my new fear of heights decided to kick in - once I got to the top, I started freaking out. Kristina, who had come up with me, had to talk me into doing it for five minutes while everyone below watched. Here's me freaking with Kristina trying to convince me to do it:


After 5 minutes, I finally decided to man up and do it. So I jumped:

The feeling was absolutely exhilarating. I didn't feel any fear at all - just adrenaline and excitement and fun going through me. I'm glad I did it.

After swimming around some more, we gathered around Prof Shields and we all talked about tourism in Turkey - how it was that we were the only people in this beautiful park, and how Turkey markets itself towards foreigners and how that compares to the way it shows itself to its own citizens.

We left the canyon after that and, after getting lost for a bit when our driver went the wrong way, headed back to our rooms. We ate a nice meal with the profs and then headed out to find a bar to watch the soccer game at with 45 minutes to go. We walked all along the town and asked everywhere, but there seemed to be nowhere to go. Finally, 15 minutes after kickoff, we decided to go back to the pension to watch it. We watched it with 2 Turks and entirely too many elderly British and Australian people (not the ratio we wanted, obviously), but it was still exciting to watch Turkey come back from a 1-0 deficit 1 minute after the game was supposed to have ended. After penalties, I ran outside to celebrate with Kelly and Yekta. There was a procession of about 40 cars going by honking their horns and hanging out their window and yelling and singing. Unlike Canakkale, we were the only people who were actually standing on the side of the road. We cursed ourselves for not being in Istanbul to celebrate this ridiculous victory (or any major city, for that matter), but it was still exciting to have everyone honking at us in celebration (as opposed to honking at us to avoid hitting us).

And that was that for out stay in Egirdir - stay tuned for the next part, Konya.