TurkeyPage 5 |
PAMUKKALE
Natural Wonder Turned Tourism Horror Story
August 1-2We left our comfortable place in Selcuk for the three-hour ride inland to Pamukkale at around 9:30 in the morning. We should have known we were going to be in for "one of those days" when we saw that there were only other tourists on the bus -- no locals, not even any Turkish tourists. Just foreigners.
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The Amazing Travertines at Pamukkale |
First of all, as soon as our bus pulled up to its stop in the middle of town, a real mob of hotel and pension touts rushed the vehicle. They practically assaulted each and every passenger as we exited the bus, arms waving frantically with color brochures and business cards. Even when we said we had a reservation already (we didn't), they persisted, demanding to know where our reservation was. We figured if we told them, we'd get some story like "that hotel burned down last week, try ours instead."
After checking in to a reasonable place, we had a quick lunch at a nearby restaurant and headed for the travertine ridge. All the way down the street, vendors yelled at us automatically as if preprogrammed to do so whenever a tourist was sighted -- "Hello, we have excellent lunch!", "Hello, we have rooms, pansiyon!", "Come see my carpets?!" There was no escaping it -- we were in tourist hell, and we hadn't even made it to the travertines yet!!
There is a long pedestrian walkway which cuts straight up the face of the calcium-white ridge. You take off your shoes and walk barefoot through the water running down the mineralized slope. This part was actually kind of fun, even though there were hundreds of people doing the same thing right along with us. But when we reached the top, we were very disappointed -- none of the upper travertines had any water in them! It was all pure white calcium. Although the government was wise enough to close off the travertine pools to direct foot traffic, it seems they are also willing to divert nearly all of the mineral water to town to feed the many swimming pools there for the summer tourists! They only allow the water to flow over the travertines during the winter when, of course, nobody is here to see them anyway. Why would they do that? We would rather have the sight of the beautiful natural pools over an artificial hotel swimming pool any day! Wouldn't everybody?
After the disappointment of the travertines, we thought perhaps another nearby site we had read about might still have some natural beautiy to it. This was the "Sacred Pool" in the ruins of the Roman spa town of Heiropolis, situated at the top of the ridge above the travertines. Wrong again. As we approached the entrance, we realized we were moving even further into the realm of the overdeveloped tourist frenzy. Dozens of giant tour buses weaved around the giant parking lot in front of the "Sacred Pool" entrance. We walked through the entryway and found ourselves in a sea of bodies, all of them partying down like it was an on-location shot for MTV Spring Break. In the pool itself lie actual ruins of Roman columns which had fallen into the pool centuries ago. On top of these columns sat fat, sunburned European tourists. All around the pool tacky ice cream stands and bars blasted rock music as people danced around and dove in to the "Sacred Pool." A long time ago, this must have been an amazing site, with the deep green water surrounding the ancient Roman ruins. Now, it's just sickening.
Utterly depressed, we made our way back down the ridge amid the hordes of tourists and returned to town, where we holed up in our pension until we could get the hell out of there the next day. We've seen this kind of environment before. It almost always occurs in fairly isolated locations where there is a single tourist draw, and where tourism has popped up almost overnight. The tourists come only to see that single thing, often on day trips, and care little to really interact with or get to know the local people. Consequently, the locals begin to see the tourists only as dumb foreigners with lots of cash, and in no time a hassling, money-grubbing subculture takes over. This in turn makes the ugly tourists become even uglier, creating a vicious feedback cycle which simply worsens over time. Left unchecked by either local government or the common sense of the population and a place like Pamukkale emerges in no time. We've seen this in other places, like Lake Batur in Bali and Chaweng Beach on Koh Samui, Thailand. Luckily, these completely out-of-control beasts are a rarity, even in busy places like Bali and coastal Turkey. We hope not to have many experiences like this during the rest of our year abroad.
We might come back to Pamukkale one day if the government makes good on its promise to clean up the place and allow the travertines to repair themselves. But that probably won't be for a long, long time.
KUSADASI
Sprawling Resort Catering to Cruise Ships and the Party Crowd
August 2-4 |
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Spying on a huge ship in the harborfont |
We were fortunate to stumble upon Hassan, the young owner of a comfortable, cheap, perfectly-located hotel, as we got off the bus in town (actually, he found us...he was looking for customers). We got an excellent, comfortable room at his place, the Hotel Liman, with a full-on view of the harbor and waterfront from our balcony. As we checked in, we couldn't help but notice the monster ship which was docked before us. It was one of those huge super-cruise ships. Its name was the "Grand Princess," we remember reading about the feat of engineering it took to build this ship just before we left home. The thing was gargantuan -- we counted 17 stories of decks, and it had to be a couple hundred meters long. We got some cheap entertainment from sitting on our hotel's rooftop terrace and watching mega-ships like this one cruise in and out of port over our two-day stay here. How they can park these things in harbors like this is beyond us.
Kusadasi was the first of a few Turkish mega-resort towns we were to visit along the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts. After two nights there, we were on to...
BODRUM
Partying Down in Turkey's Nuclear-Powered Resort Town
August 4-6A few hours south of Kusadasi, on a spectacular stretch of coast, lies pretty Bodrum. People come to Bodrum for a lot of reasons, but for one reason more than any other: to party their asses off. There are discos here like you've never seen before, including the gargantuan, incredibly loud Halicarnus, renowned throughout the Mediterranean as one of the biggest and best. (No, we never went to the Halicarnus, but we heard a lot about it while we were in town).
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View of Bodrum harbor from the castle |
So, upon our first glimpse of Bodrum as our bus descended into town, we were quite excited about the possibilities of a stay here. But we made a real strategic error when it came to selecting a place to stay. As we exited the bus, the usual assortment of pension and hotel hawkers waited for us. The first guy had a nice-looking place at the right price, but it was also right in the middle of the noisy eastern section of town -- an area we had heard we should avoid if we wanted to get any sleep at night. So we passed on that offer. The next guy had what seemed to us to be a much better offer -- a room in a nice place with a swimming pool "right on the beach," in "a quiet part of town," about "two kilometers west" of town center. Hearing the word "west" was key. We had read that the western part of town was the place to be, quiet but still close enough to the action. So, we took the fellow up on his offer and hopped in his car to go take a look at the place. Well, "two kilometers" turned out to be more like five, and in fact we ended up not being in Bodrum at all, but in nearby Gumbet. Gumbet is a horror of overdevelopment. As a consequence of Bodrum town's tight zoning laws, the formerly beautiful areas around it (like Gumbet) have seen wholesale, uncontrolled development in recent years. Gumbet is now package tourist hell, full of shoddy concrete buildings and low-quality "international" restaurants catering almost exclusively to the British and the Dutch on package vacations. You will not see any Turkish-language signs or menus here; it's all for foreign consumption. Everything is in English and English only. But it was too late for us. We had already come all this way, and didn't want to double back to Bodrum to try and find another place in the heat of the day. So, we decided we would stay in Gumbet for two nights and take the 10-minute minibus ride into Bodrum when we wanted to go there.
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Hanging out with Salih (right) and Mehmet |
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The castle at sunset |
Another major sight we visited in Bodrum is the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, another of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. This huge tomb was built by the wife of King Mausolus of Caria sometime after his death in 353 BC. Actually, there isn't much to see here since earthquakes and pillagers long ago took their toll on the original building, said to be some 55m (165ft) tall in its heyday. Now there's just a big rectangular hole in the ground with a few segments of what once must have been huge marble columns laying around the grounds. And yes, in case you're wondering, this is where the word mausoleum originated. Another fascinating piece of history right here in Turkey...
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Typical crowd on Bodrum's main street |
But one can only take so much noise in the party zone before needing to seek out more peaceful environs. When we hit the wall, that's when we headed out of town and discovered Dalyan, a quiet little town about four hours south of noisy, nuclear-powered Bodrum...
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