Episode 1: In which she gets up before noon

Location: Göreme

Date: 24.05.06

 

Those of you who have lived with me know that my sleep patterns are far from normal.  If left alone, I tend to go to sleep somewhere between 3 and 7am, waking up sometime in the early-mid afternoon.  This has been the case in recent weeks in Göreme, so attempting to leave here on the road trip by 9am was somewhat of a challenge for me.

 

Nonetheless, I dragged myself out of bed after a couple of hours of sleep, finished packing my bag, made myself a sandwich and a coffee for breakfast and waited for the other intrepid travellers to arrive.

 

In typical "try to get a group moving" style, the others didn't show for another half an hour.  Leaving my bags in the restaurant, we went to pick up the car.

 

As is usual in this town, it takes forever to get from Point A to Point B (usually movement is retarded by copious amounts of tea (or water in the recent heat) and conversation that ranges from polite to gossipy to engaging).  After a quick trip to the ATM, we discovered that we had to wait for the car to have its oil changed.  After that it had to be washed, which resulted in the entire backseat being soaked.  Us backseaters decided to walk to Ineke's and meet the car there.  After loading her luggage and waiting for the boys to use the car to do some mysterious potplant errand, we picked up Ben and Elvira's luggage from their place, went somewhere else to pick up some cassettes (!), picked up my things and then raided the market for water and snacks.

 

By the time we got on the road, and this is before the petrol stop, it was 11.15.  So much for good intentions!