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Our tripping around Turkey is by bus, a combination of tour buses and public buses.
Tour buses are easy – hop on, listen to the guide, hop off.
For the public buses, our travel agent said there would always be a colleague to take us to the public bus station and pick us up after the journey.
Our first public bus journey was from Pamukkale to Fethiya. An interesting journey over the Tourus mountains to the sea.
And we were duly picked up from the hotel in a mini bus and driven to another hotel.
A half hour wait and with more passengers on board, we were driven to a petrol station a few kilometres out of Pamukkale.
From there we were taken in a larger bus to a bus station in the next major town. There were more passengers than seats, so poor Bruce had to stand the whole way with his camera bag hanging off his back. I got to sit in the dicky seat at the front, quite scary as they drive at 100kph down country roads and pass slower vehicles at any opportunity.
Our next bus was a small local bus. We had no idea how far we were going. It was evident that this bus would struggle up the massive mountains. And then it started to rain.
We arrived at a very small village in the mountains where it was wet and cold, and we were told “change buses”. After collecting our luggage we piled onto another small local bus, and in the teaming rain it made its way down very steep mountainous roads into Fethiye. I figured this bus driver had driven this road many times before, so the mobile phone calls and chit chat with his assistant really didn’t bother me too much. I was however frightened when a horse ran in front of the bus, causing some quick and wobbly braking. It felt like the bus driver reduced his speed after that incident.
Fethiye was the first destination where we were expecting someone to meet us. That didn’t seem to happen. It was a man with a broom in his hand who asked if he could help. When I showed him our hotel voucher we were piled into another minibus and taken to a hotel that didn’t match the voucher.
It was the 6th bus that picked us up from that hotel and drove 200 meters down the road to The Daffodil Hotel that finally finished a long day of lugging backpacks on and off buses.
Watch this space for more bus journey adventures!!
You would have been glad that you have only backpacks.