Hubbard Motorcycle Adventures

At Goreme we are awakened by a intermittent roaring sound. We instantly know what is. Yes, it is a balloon going right past our hotel. We can hear the "driver" talking to the passengers. By coincidence the hotel owns the ballon Company!    We then hit the road as early as possible to head East to Malatya. 430 km of dual carriage highway with hardly a car in sight. It was all so easy. We later find out that today is a National holiday !    We stop for a break. A young Turkish man sees our bike and come to talk to us. He is from Maltya and is an environmental engineer. He want to travel and looks at our bike longingly. He is going to work on the Ivory Coast.  He was a delightful young man - the face of modern Turkey I think    The countryside gets drier ( and hotter )    Then suddenly we are in Malatya  - the apricot capital of Turkey. And by the prosperous look of the town there must  be money in Turkish Apricots. Note to Hubbard Foods - negotiate harder on the price for Turki

               First of all we have to leave Mersin. We hit the road at 7.00am to get ahead of the heat and we head to Tarsus just down the toad where St Paul came from. Now that is why he is called St Paul of Tarsus ! We visit where his house was and the well in the garden which he reportedly used. Pilgrims come here to drink water from the well apparently.    He are the remains of his house below the glass shield  From here he walked to Ephesus to hand deliver a letter to the Ephesians. I bet he would have given his eye teeth for email especially when you see the geography of the region he walked through.   We then head north to Cappadocia and the cave dwellers. We travel on a superb three lane motorway that crosses a high mountain range. The temperature delightfully drops   There is virtually no traffic.     At the start of the motorway you pass through an unmanned electronic toll gate. As you come off the motorway you pass through another. You are supposed to have a prepaid chip on

Suitably refreshed from our indulgent stop over in Kas we head down to to the town of Alanya for an overnight stop at a hotel almost full of Scandanavians !  . As we head down we pass close to the Greek Island of Rhodes and lots of other Greek Islands off the coast. They are so tantalising close!  We continue wind our way round the coast th our next stop which is the city of Mersin. That is very close to where St Paul was born.    With the odd rural scene    We see bananas being being  grown everywhere.    And we think this is a refuge camp behind this sentry box. Certainly there was lots of barbed wire , sentry posts and black out screen so you could not see anything from the road.     The road was a mixture of the old.........   And the new..........   And the yet to be finished    There were lots of produce stalls on the side of the road    And it is obviously and important fruit and vegetable area    And over two days we get to the city of Mersin.    We are very close to Cyprus and

Today was a short day if about 200km and we hit the road early to escape the worst of the afternoon heat. Thus we arrived at the very pretty fishing town or village of Kas. The trip winding down the coast wth the colour of the sea was amazing. Little bays everywhere.    And in inland places there were huge  areas of " glasshouses"    The sea just got bluer and bluer  And the flowers brighter and brighter    A morning tea break at a typical roadside place    And then to finish off the sensory load was our hotel for the night - paradise    The view from our balcony    We spend the afternoon swimming,lazing,  swimming,  having a beer, having a late lunch,swimming, lazing, swimming  again - do you get the picture  I call a trip planning meeting as the sun goes down . First item on the agenda was - woops I forgot. I have got it now , Piña  Colada or Daquirie ?    Diana does her share of thinking    The setting  sun rolls down the side of the hill   So it's a quiet  dinner for

 Given the hotness of the afternoons we have  back our daily mileage a little and go for about 300 km today so that we get to our hotel by about 2pm. And it certainly did get hotter. In one town where I pulled up for traffic lights the temperature read 39.5 deg C which is hot! We started off in the  morning at a balmy and cool 25 deg but it rapidly got to the average 37 deg mark. When you are moving on the bike it is not too uncomfortable in the heat but you notice when you stop.  We by pass the city of Izmir which us the third biggest city in Turkey. This is close enough thanks.    And we pass the turn off to Ephesus ( which is also known by its abbreviated name of Efes. That is also the name of the most popular beer in Turkey. I am flabbergasted that the Romans named the city of Ephesus after their favourite beer! They were a sophisticated race.    We stop for breaks every 100 km because of the heat and some of the roadside cafes are lovely and friendly. Here is a " preening sta