Place: room 116 Hotel Mercan, Adana, Turkey
Another early start… but no too bad. We were up at 5:30am as our taxi was picking us up to take us to our bus which was taking us to Ercan airport near Lefkosia. We got to the airport around 8am and tucked into some breakfast. Donna was so hungry, if she wasn’t going to get food I was worried she was going to start eating the children. She murdered a toasted cheese sarmie and tried to catch up on some z’s.
Eventually our airline was ready to check us in. We were asked with raised eyebrows, ‘ are you travelling to Adana?’ We weren’t sure why the surprised look. But I suppose most foreigners fly to Istanbul. We went through to the boarding gates and to our surprise noticed that there was not one plane to be seen. 15 mins later a Turkish airlines plane came cruising in and taxied rapidly to position where the passengers quickly disembarked and reloaded with new ones and off they went. A very quick turn around. After 25mins our Pegasus plane came rushing in and the turn around time was even quicker. We decided to by a can of coke on the plane to appease the hunger and save the children, but it cost me R40 – yes 40 bucks. Best damn coke I ever had. Our flight took 32mins from take off to touch down – my shortest flight ever. Barely had time to finish the coke.
I think Donna explained the amazing deal we landed for flights from North Cyprus to Adana. Insane. I kept reminding myself that the flight cost less than R250 and it was going to take 32mins as opposed to 8 hours by ferry. I must have reminded myself of this at least 5 times today. Like when we landed I said,’ sheesh if we were on that ferry we would still have 7 hours and 30mins to go.’
Adana airport is tiny. Reminded me of Lanseria at first but then I decided that Lanseria was bigger. It was more like Windhoek airport in the old days. We walked into the airport slightly apprehensive as to whether we would get a visa or not. We were thrown a bit when we heard a story in Cyprus that a South African had to return to Cyprus from Turkey for some visa related issue. It was not clear as to why they were sent back but nevertheless we did our homework and were assured by those in the know that there shouldn’t be a problem. And we prayed of course and rested on the promise that God gave us that we would give us passage into every country that our heart desired.
We arrived at passport control and made a very cool and relaxed Turk suddenly look horribly confused. He phoned his superior, as he couldn’t figure out what to do with my passport, as it had no visa. The queue behind us was growing longer and longer and eventually he asked us to stand aside so that he could deal with his fellow countrymen – a run of the mill transaction. The superior disappeared with our passports and came back with a very comical colleague who approached us and asked us to follow him to the visa application booth, which was closed since our arrival. He entered the booth and lifted the blinds and asked us for $15 dollars each. We gave him a $100 bill to which he replied he had no change in US Dollars. He then phoned his superior who the safe key so that he could get change. The string for the blinds was hooked on the handle for the safe and as the safe opened, the blinds shot all the way up, released its lock mechanism and came plummeting down – only to be followed by laughing on the other side. We enjoyed that too!
We received a 90day multiple entry visa for Turkey and proceeded to our luggage and head out side. We caught a taxi to our Hotel, dropped off our luggage and went back outside with purpose to find lunch. We were beyond hungry! Not even 50m from our hotel was a nice Turkish restaurant which served kebab. For R100 we ate ourselves broken. Chicken kebab, pita, salad, some other bread fresh from the oven with sesame seads, lemon, chilli’s and the most incredible dessert, which Donna said,”if I had to eat heaven, this is what it would taste like.”
With full stomachs we rolled to our hotel for some shut eye. We went for a stroll through the extremely busy streets of Adana later in the afternoon. Reminded me a bit of Cairo – but the Turks are wonderful people. We ended up at some well looked after park where we had an ice cream and a relax.
Tomorrow we catch a bus to Goreme. A small town in Capadoccia full of very interesting rock formations. Should be very interesting!
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