Turkish Hospitality
By Alex Honnold
I spent this January sport climbing in Geyik Bayiri, which is located near Antalya, in Southern Turkey. It's an incredible place for vacation style sport climbing in winter. The sea is visible from the crag and there are snowy mountains behind. The climbing is exactly what one might expect from Mediterranean limestone: tufas, stalactites, pockets; in short, anything and everything enjoyable to climb on. If anything, the routes were too featured; there would often be ledges or huge holes breaking them up, making the climbing more bouldery than sustained. But overall it was amazingly fun.
But the appeal of visiting Turkey lay more in the exotic travel experience than the climbing. Even though it has applied for membership in the EU, and has always been a staunch US ally in the Middle East, Turkey retains a mysterious allure. It somehow seems, and is, very different than the rest of Europe. It is a Muslim country, deeply rooted in Eastern tradition, a fact that you're reminded of five times a day by the call of the muezzin.
The thing that was most striking about Turkey was the friendliness of individual Turks. I have never experienced such enthusiasm and kindness anywhere else in the world. On one rest day, some fellow climbers and I decided to go skiing at a nearby resort and ran out of diesel on the way up the hill. We continued on foot a little ways up the road, in what felt like the middle of nowhere, and surprisingly found some men building a new road with heavy machinery. We approached the nearest bulldozer and motioned to the driver, who stopped, perplexed, and got out to talk to us. None of us spoke any Turkish, but through a lot of pantomiming we communicated that we needed diesel. He called someone, waited a few minutes, then loaded us into another truck, which took us back to our car and gave us a few liters of diesel. They absolutely refused any repayment, insulted at the mere idea. But they asked us how we were enjoying our trip and what we thought of Turkey.
Everyone would ask us where we were from and how we were enjoying Turkey. I had a man in an internet cafe pull out a Florida driver's license to show me that he'd lived in the States after he'd asked me how I liked Antalya. Where else in the world do you get that kind of enthusiasm?
As we drove across Western Turkey we stopped in a patisserie and ordered a large assortment of random pastries. The owner asked me if I wanted tea to go with one of my selections. I declined out of frugality, but he gave me some tea for free because "you always need tea with that pastry." He wanted me to have the proper experience; he was right, the pastry and tea tasted delicious together.
We continued west across the country and took a ferry to Kalymnos, leaving behind one vacation paradise for another. But I'll never forget how kind the people were in Turkey. Inviting, hospitable, interested; they're all just inadequate words to describe genuinely good people. Hopefully it's a place that every climber can visit someday.
