Day 33: Van to Sarp

Not quite so hidden from the rising sun as were we expecting, we awoke to a tent rapidly becoming a sauna and emerged into brilliant sunshine over the lake shore. The gentle sounds of the waves lapping the shoreline had been soothing to sleep to, and we were both feeling well rested. Seizing the day, I enjoyed another swim in the lake whilst Gerle prepared breakfast. With the air temperature warmer than the previous night, the water seemed colder, and after splashing about for a while  I was glad to get out and dry off on the hot rocks.

After a quick breakfast of bread, tomatoes and cucumbers we had the campsite packed up and were on the road. After meandering back through the countryside to the main highway, we stopped for fuel, where Gerle was made decidedly uncomfortable from some unwanted attention from the shopkeeper whilst I was busy fuelling the car. How is it that the Turkish men can be so charming and yet so creepy? Cutting short a fantasy or two, we were headed in the direction of Narman as soon as the fuel bill was paid.

Narman was intended as the destination for the day, with it seen as being mid-way break between Van and Batumi. There are peribaclari rock formations which seemed like an interesting place to camp, not so frequently visited tourists as the more famous peribaclari in Goreme. Along the way to Narman, we were traveling through mostly agricultural Turkey, also not often frequented by tourists, hence the extra attraction from our fuel retailers. It's a bit strange I guess... 'So there was this Australian man, Mongolian woman and a German car pull up...'.

Along the way, we could see red dots here and there in the fields that we were passing. We had seen only but a few poppies since arriving in Turkey, naively dismissing them in the thought that we would be later passing fields completely full of them, which we hadn't. Stopping to make a closer inspection, what started out as a romantic gesture quickly failed as the red dot did not eventuate to be a poppy and resembled something more like a mutant weed variant. No more poppies were hence seen in Turkey. 

Shortly prior to our arrival to the Narman National Park, we stopped at a roadside watering point to fill our camping water supplies from a stream emanating from the white capped peaks above. The water was cold and clear, but with livestock grazing about and a bit of rubbish strewn about the fill point, it wasn't going to be drinking water untreated. Good for washing up.

Is it a poppy?

Nope... romance is dead.

Continuing the surprising trend in Turkey, the main road toward our destination was in excellent condition and we reached Narman quite early in the day. It was about 1pm, and stinking hot. Before setting out to have a look around the peribaclari, we had a picnic lunch not to dissimilar to the breakfast that we had in the shade of some trees nearby a small stream. 

After lunch, and a short nap in the shade, we set off to have a look around the peribacari. Driving into the National Park, the small track that we had entered on quickly petered out to nothing. Previously I thought that I had seen a track traversing the National Park on Google Maps, and had hoped that by following this we may have found a private gully to camp in, but it was not to be the case. We couldn't go very far into the rock formations by vehicle, and this, in combination with the high heat and humidity, lead to the suggestion that we continue driving toward the coastline. 

I can't say that I'll be able to visit this place again, and it is regrettable not to have ventured further into the National Park on foot, but I do think that we had successfully covered peribaclari rock formations from both on the ground and in the air at Goreme. 

Narman Peribaclari... not quite as impressive as Goreme. 

Interesting sculptures

As far as the road would take us

Good colour combination

Narman peribaclari

Not quite as impressive as Goreme

Leaving the Narman National Park at about 2.30pm, it was about 350 km to the Black Sea coast. Sounds easy... until hitting major (super major) roadworks for about 180 km of this! This included about an hour delay waiting for the roadwork crews to clear rubble from recent blasting. The Turkish seem to be the modern day Romans when it comes to road building; no obstacle is too great to be overcome, to allow a super smooth high speed motorway to be constructed. 

Prior to hitting the sections of bulk roadworks, we crossed over some relatively high mountains. The highest point was close to 2900m (a new record for the trip thus far, eclipsing the Stelvio Pass in Italy), but there was no monument at the top to know the name of the pass itself. We did cross the Kirecli Gecidi pass (2415m), though Gerle may need to watch the ensuing time-lapse video (from the dash mounted camera) to recollect this as she was fast asleep.

Not the highest pass of the day, but it was signposted.

To get to Sarpi, we needed to travel down a steep walled and narrow valley which the D010 road follows. Aside from one or two locations where the valley widened, for the most part the floor of the valley was only just wide enough to encompass the raging torrent beside us, and the road upon which we were travelling. The multitude of roadworks going on around us included tunnelling, bridge building, road repair and road construction at various levels for new road joining the bridges and tunnels under construction. 

Our route took us between old and new sections of road, confusing the GPS unit no end, but allowing us to see what the almost entirely new road would be like. Swift, would be the only way to describe it. Whereas the old road hugged the steep valley walls, the new road simply sliced and efficient straight-line path through the valley at a higher level. Whilst it would certainly make transit faster, hopefully the old road would remain for use by local and touristic traffic. 

This area would have been truly worthy of spending more time in. There were numerous historical sites worth looking at that we passed, good climbing and biking trails, and the villages that dotted the small valleys we encountered all seemed to have a charm that would have been worth visiting in slow travel mode. A good week or two could be spent travelling this area on bike, ideally starting high up away from the coast, to allow a casual descent back down to the sea.

One of the lakes on the valley floor where it widened

Stopping for a 'driver reviver' above one of the lakes that we passed. The passenger was more sleepy than the driver!

Chocolate + vanilla = Chocolate. Mixing of the valley streams.

By the time that we had passed through all of the roadwork, it was now starting to get dark. Low in the valley, the sun had disappeared from view long ago, but now darkness was descending. Keen to get down to the coastline, we pushed on, noticing how the temperature rose as we continued to descend. With limited opportunities to overtake slow moving traffic, we seemingly crawled down the final stages of the slope into the township of Kemalpasa.

Sarp was the border town with Georgia, only a few kilometres further along the coast, so we headed in this direction thinking that it would be possible to find somewhere to camp not too far off the road. The road hugged the coastline, and for the most part was wedged between steep mountain terrain or urban development to the south, and the Black Sea to the north. No where could be found to camp. Arriving in Sarp, we spent about 45 minutes searching fruitlessly (in the darkness) in the hills behind the township for a campsite, but everywhere flat and without forest was already populated. 

Admitting defeat, we checked into the Sarp Hotel. Overly priced for what it was, it was still quite nice to find ourselves in an air-conditioned room, with a private bathroom and comfy beds. After being denied the entry of some snacks from a small shop across the road (we had to, of course, use the hotel restaurant - which was bloody closed - for fear of food poisoning... WTF? Bad review on TripAdvisor coming up for the Sarp Hotel), we 'dined' on some room service beers before quickly falling asleep after showering, completely exhausted.