Amasra and Sinop .. and Amastra TO Sinop

I arrived after lots of bus changes to Amasra, such a beautiful little town, much like Avylik on the Aegean coast, (where we got Turkish lessons from the old fella in the 2nd hand shop). Spent a few nights here, not much else to do but relax. I stayed in a cute little gaudy pension which suited me perfectly, pink curtains, matching furniture with crisp sheets with pink flowers on them, a 3 bed room to myself to sprawl out, dye my hair, do my nails, re -pack my stuff, do some washing and basically just chill out on the water for a while. Was sunny, about 28 degrees most days, and was lovely to wonder around the market, buy scarves and pick up a few little pressies for mum! Went on a big hike (for me anyways) up the hill to watch the sunset one night, which was gorgeous. Had a lovely stop and really loved the quiet time…time to myself to just .. well ‘be’ really. Stacey and Nadia and I met back up here and Stacey celebrated her 20th birthday over a Pide (like a pizza but with Turkish bread) and a bottle of vodka with cherry juice and lemonade, was the first drink I'd had in months and was quite nice! Id read that one of the highlights in Turkey is the drive along the Black Sea Coat (the northern coast) from Amasra to Sinop.. so I organized myself to head along the winding roads hugging the coast. Stacey had left to go on a tour so we joined a bus load of locals headed the same direction. Apparently this stretch would entail several local mini-bus (otobus) changes in lots of spots and although we should have been able to do the whole trip in a day (about 7 hours) it was unlikely that we could make it the whole way to Sinop because the buses didn’t run past about 5pm. This turned out to be true, and we ended up stopping in a shit hole of a beach front town called Inebolu. Stayed in a dodgy as hotel and left on the very first bus out the next morning for the last leg into Sinop. I didn’t take many shots along this entire stretch because it was incredibly winding and steep, vertigo inducing! Was really beautiful drive though, and it was worth the multiple changes in local buses, the revolting toilet stops, the motion sickness and the shitty stop in shitty Inebolu! The sheer drops off the side of cliffs into the crystal clear water and deserted beaches was really gorgeous, and was lovely to not see a tourist for a couple days and to travel on local transport. Something that has been a bit of a rarity in Turkey. Pretty much no one speaks any English on this side of Turkey, so its becoming a challenge Im embracing in this otherwise quite ‘european’ country, which .. I have to say .. is boring me a little. Arrived in Sinop late morning, has planned to stay for a couple nights in this small coastal town. But arrived, checked in to a small pension run by this old fella and had a look around the town. Had lunch (which is becoming more and more frequently salad and bread for me in this very meat-centric country where ‘no meat’ means you want chicken or fish) and decided that in fact we’d prefer to get straight on the overnight bus to Trabzon that night rather than stay a night in this town. It was cute and fairly scenic but nothing different to other coast places we’d stayed and nothing new to see really. So we checked out the same day we checked in and headed on a 12 hour overnight bus to Trabzon, far north eastern Turkey, where there are less tourists, where no one really comes and where the politics around Georgia/Turkey, Kurdish Iraq/Turkey, Iran/Turkey and Iraq/Turkey start to heat up … You don’t realize till you study a map that Turkey is bordered by a huge amount of countries and people smuggling is RIFE to get into Europe .. on one side of Turkey is Iran, Iraq, Georgia, Syria, Lebanon, and nearby Pakistan and Afghanistan and on the other side is Greece and the path straight into the E.U .. we are stopped frequently by Machine Gun armed Jandarma Police who get every single persons ID from the busses, put all the names into a data base then give back the I.D’s and the bus heads off .. apparently this will become much more frequent as we head further south and more frequent again headed to the south eastern region. Pics - the top 4 are from Sinop - shots taken mostly of these young turkish boys who play a game were they are in the water waiting for people to walk past and they yell out for u to chuck a coin in the water and they race to dive down to get it .. cute .. and clever way to make a couple lira!!! The next one is of the drive between Amasra and Sinop. The next 7 shots are taken in Amasra, a couple from the walk up the hill overlooking the town, one of the childrens fair that was on the day i arrived, and one of an Ottoman building.