Friday, October 18, 2013

Enjoyable ride along the Turkish Black Sea coast 1

After an overnight bus trip from Istanbul, we arrived Bartin. It was the cheapest bus ticket we could buy to somewhere near the Black Sea coast. It was near an important religious celebration and everyone was crazy leaving Istanbul to go to their home. Many buses were full. Bartin was still not on the coast but 30km uphill. We arrived in the misty morning, not impressed by the boring town center and the scattered village house; we left right away to the coastal town Amasra. There we started our Black Sea journey.

Amasra is a small town. After some sight seeing we started hitchhiking along the coast. With our good memory of hitchhiking with the nice and helpful Turkish drivers in May, we hope we could go as long as we could along the coast to the east, before around 4pm. There we find a hostel or a cheap pension to stay, as we need a good hot shower.

"Maria power" worked again. A delivery vehicle took us for around 30km to Kurucasile. This distance took one hour because the road went zigzag along the hillside next to the sea,     some on the cliff. Yosef had a four year old boy, with some English and was happy to show us the boy's pictures. We have the good view along the road between mountain and sea. It is autumn and the leaves are changing color.


Our second hike was even more exciting. It went all the way to Sinop. The driver Murad took his passenger, who is a middle-aged woman, with his tough toyota truck, to a village first. It is our first time seeing the natural scenery behind the mountains. It is a world by itself, another natural reserve between two ranges of mountain. He dropped his passenger in the village and move back to the coast. We passed Cide, a town with 8km beach, then we went inland again because Murad said the  280 coastal road afterwards was to zigzagly and rough that speed can be just 30-50km/h and it will take very long to go. It is very scenic too but Murad was in hurry going home. We should follow his way. 

Although we did not go coastal, the inward route to Kastamonu passed the colorful forest and beautiful canyon. We saw so many colors in the forest: red, orange, yellow and green all around. It was so magnificent.


The way back to coast was another 180km of the 360km on the highway which we could run 120km/h. So it only took 4 hours for this 360km instead of that 280km which could not run more than 40km/h most of the time.

We are very happy with this drive and thank Murad for that. He even bought us sweet. It was kind of new year, people visit each other and serve candies. We arrive Sinop at around 5pm to see the animal market. It is a scenic fishing town where Istanbulis have holiday break.

We have other scenic Black Sea route waiting for us.

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