Going back to my June post in Trabzon, you will see that we met a police officer in Trabzon by the name of Necmettin Coskun who stopped us on the street because we were foreigners and gave us his white water rafting card. So we gave him a call. Luckily, it turns out that he was in Yusufeli that particular weekend. Normally, he requires a party to have 4 people to raft (b/c otherwise it is not worth his time to pay for the raft itself and the guy who picks us up in the van). Anyways, he told us on the phone to come and that he would not charge us extra and that he would take us out for the same price he charges individuals in groups of 4. It was incredibly nice of him.
We made the trek to Yusufeli which involved 6 hours on the bus. It was an ambitious journey for a two day trip. The plan was to take the bus up there on Saturday to get there by Saturday evening, spend early Sunday rafting and be back in Trabzon by the evening. We got on the bus and started towards Artvin, where we would change busses and get in a smaller van to Yusufeli.
On the way we stopped in the very same rest area I complained about during my trip to Gerogia. Did I mention that I STILL hate Turkish toilets? Why do these bus companies all stop at the same bathroom stops if they are disgusting? Wouldn't someone say something about it? Also, why the hell do they give you one little piece of paper when you go in? That's not nearly enough for anyone! It wasn't enough for me! That's for sure. I had to go buy tissues at the nearby store. Also, if you are not feeling well and you need to enter the bathroom multiple times because you aren't finished, they charge you for each entry. So I left the bathroom and then had the urge to go back and had to pay the fee again. If I had just stayed in the bathroom, they wouldnt have charged me! Furthermore, the guy recognized me. I mean COME ON. Sorry for the rant. The Turkish toilets make me that angry. Anyways, after my little bathroom fiasco, we got back on the bus and continued for Artvin.
When we arrived in Hopa, we took a right off of the main road that paralleled the Black Sea. After a few minutes we were increasing our elevation and weaving into the mountains. The scenery was beautiful, complete with mountain lakes and trees. I took several pictures from the bus. It is amazing that such beautiful places exist on Earth. Some of the valleys were filled in with water but this may not have been a natural phenomenon due to the dam project.
On the bus we started to get into a conversation with a Turkish guy sitting around us. It turns out that he was the owner of the bus company (or something like that). I can't remember what he did exactly but it was somehow related to the bus we were on. He was curious about me because I was a foreigner. Somehow we started talking about Jewish people and Israel (I can't remember how we got onto that subject) and he actually seemed OK with Israel. He asked me my religion and I contemplated telling him the truth. Husniye gave me a look that indicated that I should not do that, so I didn't.
We eventually made it to Artvin, which was a surprisingly small town considering it was the provincial capital. It is built on the side of the mountain and has a pretty view of a mountain stream/river below it. The bus station was also small and we waited for the van. The mountains were so steep that there wasn't a lot of vegetation right outside of Artvin. It was another different landscape than any other place I had seen in Turkey.
The ride on the van took a while. The roads were not that great through the mountains (as expected). Also, riding in the small van was uncomfortable (also expected). There was a road block for a wedding party on the way up there and we were forced to stop for 20 minutes. I didn't mind, as I was able to get out of the bus. We stopped near a small waterfall coming down the mountains and I took a picture.
We finally got to Yusufeli around nightfall. We met Necmettin at the bus stop and he took us to the hotel he had arranged for us. Instead of having us go through the trouble of finding a place, he booked a room for us for 30 TL for the night with his friend in town. We put our things down and went out to dinner at a restaurant on the Çoruh River. The dinner was decent. Necmettin asked me if I wanted a beer. Husniye really really does not like beer or alcohol. However, since he was technically my host, I felt it was the right thing to do to accept him. I don't think Husniye was happy with me for that...especially after offering me a beer, he didn't have one! At least I enjoyed mine.
After dinner, we took a walk around town. Necmettin could tell us a lot about the town because he had been born there. He told us about the future dam project, which threatens to submerge thousands of houses. We talked about how he works in Trabzon but prefers Yusufeli. It was interesting for me to learn that the police in Turkey are not allowed to be police in the same province in which they were residents. This is why he had to move to Trabzon (he was considered a resident of Artvin). On our walk we also saw a Turkish wedding going on outside. The party was dancing a traditional Turkish dance (the same one we did with our Kurdish friends in Urfa and Dogubeyazit). Necmettin asked me if I wanted to join in but I respectfully declined. I did not have nearly enough alcohol in my bloodstream to attempt any form of dancing.
Husniye and Necmettin talked quite a bit in Turkish too, which was a little boring for me but understandable. Necmettin had pretty good English though.
After our walk we got back to the hotel and were in for quite a surprise. We went downstairs to check into the rooms. As per the norm in Turkey, they required a form of identification for each of us to check into the rooms. I gave my passport and Huniye gave her Turkish ID. At this point, things got interesting. Husniye and I had only booked one room (we would be sharing, which would not be unusual at all in the US). It turns out that the owner of the hotel had a problem with us staying in the same room for the sole reason that Husniye was a Turkish girl and we were unmarried. If we were two foreigners, he would not have had a problem with it, but because Husniye was one of their own, he did not like it and refused to allow it in his hotel. He told us that we would be required to sleep in separate rooms. He apologized for the misunderstanding and offered to give us a "discount" to 20TL for each room. If we shared a room, the total would be 30TL (15 TL for each of us to pay) but now he would be charging us 20TL! Is 5TL that much to quibble about? Probably not. It was the principle of the thing that bothered me. If you give someone a set price, you do not increase it just because you didn't know that the girl I was staying with was Turkish! That is absolutely preposterous!
It turns out that the guy who owned the hotel was actually an imam (Muslim spiritual leader akin to a priest or a rabbi). He obviously felt very strongly about the situation.
I got really angry about the situation and asked Husniye to translate exactly what I was saying. She did so. The man was genuinely sorry but stated that the Koran required him to do this. I believed the Koran should only have required him to govern his own life but not that of others. I told him that I would not accept the deal and that if he did not lower the price to 15TL for each of us (I was even willing to accept sleeping in separate rooms though I did not like the idea), that we would be finding another hotel. He refused to lower the price so we left.
The very first hotel we walked into down the street quoted us the exact same 30TL price. My first question was whether they cared if we slept in the same room or not. I was worried that this town was particularly conservative and that perhaps everyone in the town cared about something like that. Luckily, they did not care. We moved our stuff in and settled down for the night. We would have to be awake at 8am for our rafting adventure.
I reflected on the evening's events with the imam and a few things were interesting/surprising. Firstly, I was warned that something like this could have happened when we were traveling in Eastern Turkey. I found it ironic that E. Turkey is supposed to be the most conservative of areas in Turkey and that this particular incident happened in another region and not E. Turkey. Secondly, I was thinking about this situation and how it would be handled in the US. No one would have cared who does what behind closed doors whether they were American, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, French, or any other religion or ethnicity. Here, not only did the imam care, but he cared so strongly that he was willing to give up business to preserve his ideals. At the late hour that we left, there is no way that those rooms were going to be filled that night. In some ways, I respect him for feeling so strongly about his morals. It is also interesting to observe the differences between the cultures. Thirdly, I was annoyed that the guy felt like he should be the parent of a 25 year old girl. Truthfully, whatever she decides to do is none of his business. I think he may have made Husniye feel bad because he was implicitly judging what she was doing and suggesting she was a bad person (which she wasn't because she didn't do anything wrong). This obviously pissed me off. At any rate, it was over and we found a place to stay for the same price any way. If nothing else, I had another interesting story to tell in this blog and to my friends back in the States.
Rafting
We woke up the next morning and met with Necmettin. We told him about the events of last night and he apologized profusely. He had no idea his friend was like that. He told us that we normally need 4 people in addition to himself to navigate the raft and that he had some friends (Turkish) who wanted to go rafting. After a tea and a quick breakfast, we met them. One was a dentist and the other...I can't remember what he does. I remembered the dentist because I thought it was ironic since Husniye was also a dentist. We were taken over to the place where we would put in the river and we got the equipment ready and had our safety briefing.
We were finally ready to go out on the water. The expedition was only supposed to last about 2 hours or so and we'd go about 11km. We had to do the shorter one because we were constrained by the need to catch the last bus to Artvin and Trabzon. I thought it was silly that the last one leaves so early in the day, but I guess the demand is not that high, as Yusufeli is a small town.
We started by practicing on the water. Oddly enough, even though I was the only one who spoke English on the boat as their first language (the other two did not even speak any English), the commands would be forward and back, right, and left paddle rather than their Turkish equivalents. I suspect that Necmettin only rarely takes out a majority Turkish group, so that is probably why this is the case. We practiced and everything was good to go and we started off down the river.
At first it wasn't too bad. I learned that the rapids we would be doing would be class 4 and 5 on a scale of 1-6. Nothing like really jumping straight into the fire, eh? Anyways so the rapids got very intense. We passed rapids such as "King Kong Rapids." There was also a point where we had to get out of the river and drag the raft around one of the rapids because it was impossible to pass without flipping the raft. Oddly enough, Necmettin stood over the rapids and was watching the water flow. He was clearly trying to figure out exactly how to pass that area and not flip. One has to be careful in areas like that because there are rocks sticking up in rhe river, which if hit could be very dangerous (also the reason why helmets must be worn).
There was one point where we got really close to the rocks and the raft went almost vertical. It was a huge adrenaline rush. After we passed, Necmettin told us that we were about one or two strokes away from completely flipping the raft. Speaking of which, Husniye couldn't swim (which we didn't realize until afterwards). Had she fallen in, it would have been bad. She also made me promise to jump in with her if she fell in. Luckily, we never had to test whether I actually would :)
At one point, the raft did flip up and we didn't quite paddle fast enough. The raft reared up and I fell into the water as did one other guy. I had underestimated how strong the current was. I kicked upwards but at first I could not get to the surface. Eventually after a few seconds I popped up near the raft with my paddle floating closely by. I think I may have been under the raft at first. They pulled me back into the boat and everything was fine. We then paddled over to get the other guy that fell in.
The rafting wasn't quite as scary after I fell in since I knew that was the worst that could happen. It was still a ton of fun though. Every time we passed a really rough rapid, we all clicked our paddles together. I guess it was a showing that we were victorious. Also, it was interesting to note that we were the only raft on the river. I saw no others the entire time I was there. This surprised me since the Coruh River is supposedly one of the primier rafting places in the world. It's going to be hard to try out hamburgers after I've had filet minion.
We finally got to the point where we were supposed to get out around noon but the others (and myself) were having a ton of fun and we kept going. We rafted for almost an hour longer than we had planned and ended up rafting something like 20km. I wish we didn't have to go back to Trabzon. IF we didn't, I suspect they would have rafted longer. As it was, we were cutting things very close. Luckily, Necmettin knew the bus people and called them and asked them to wait on us. I think we put them about 15 minutes behind schedule. I thought it was super nice of him to do that for us. The entire time he was very nice and accommodating and I don't think I would ever raft with anyone else in Turkey. You can see how dirty the water was by our appearance after the ordeal.
Husniye and I changed clothes and got onto the bus to make the long trip back to Trabzon. I snapped a picture of the river we rafted on a little further downstream so you can see what it looked like.
Necmettin also did a good job telling us about the wild life during the less tumultuous parts of the rafting trip. The scenery throughout the whole trip was incredible.
Speaking of incredible scenery, I got some great pictures of the landscape as we drove through the mountains on the way back to Trabzon.
We also stopped once more along the Black Sea in time to see the sun set over the water, which was beautiful. Then our trip was over.
In two days time, I would say goodbye to Husniye and Trabzon. It was a tough goodbye because I had enjoyed being with her and enjoyed my time there. It was also tough because of what it meant. The sun was setting on my time in Turkey and I was genuinely disappointed about that.
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