Day 5 Journal: Lake Egridir beach
Tuesday 10/4/05
Praise be to God in all His ways because He loves us and showers His mercy on us when we least deserve it. We really had a wonderful day today. We started at dawn packing our camp up. We had picked a great spot overlooking the lake from a cliff. We descended a treacherous slope of loose dirt and sliding rock to a valley where there stood a shepherd’s hut and pen.
The view was beautiful as we walked a stream bed down to Lake Egridir. We lost our marks a little when we spotted a woman with a donkey and stopped for a picture. After backtracking a bit and using the GPS we found our way into the backyard of the fisherman’s house where we were to get a ride across the lake.
We arrived at noon, obviously unexpectedly to the family there. But the family knew what we needed even though they spoke no English and our Turkish book wasn’t helping much. They fed us fish (deep-fried and headless, but with the bones), tomato and onion salad (European style), pasta (spirals) and bread. Jeff ate two fish and Ang one. Then we had what I had been craving all day — Turkish tea. They kept bringing that all afternoon while we waited for the boat to get ready.
We played with the kids. Jeff teased the boy Salle and his bouncy toy. Ang gave bracelets to the girls and everyone got Tootsie Rolls. We filled our water bags from their water (to amuse Salle).
The afternoon pressed on and a German become Turk came to see us. He spoke pretty good English and had a lot to say about driving fast and speed limits. For good reason he thought he would go to jail for driving too fast in the U.S. From what he said, he broke speed limits everywhere.
We finally got a boat around 5 p.m. and got to the other side about 5:30 p.m. We had to hurry to find a camp, but daylight failed us before Jeff got to a level spot.
[By the way: two dogs came to greet us in a hostile way as we walked out of town on the road. We stood still as a woman came up the hill toward us. We figured she would call them off, but she instead yelled at them in Turkish and threw rocks as they closed in on Ang. The lady spoke no English, but tried to get us to stay and eat. We worked and finally convinced her that we had to go. She accepted that only after chewing out Ang for two or three minutes in boisterous Turkish.]
We proceeded up the hill for a flat ridge that never came. We should have camped earlier, but we trudged on into the dark. As Ang was giving up on Jeff’s sanity, we started seeing lights at the bottom of the hill we were descending, over rocks and through bushes with only our headlamps to help us see.
As we came down, Yasar was coming toward us calling out in Turkish. We met about two-thirds of the way down, and he guided us to the bottom and helped us set camp. He was great. He only used a lighter that he flipped occasionally for light. But got along very well. It was a huge blessing to have him here at that moment. We set camp as he left for home and we gazed at a sky full of stars above us. What an interesting, wonderful day. Tomorrow Yasar has promised us milk for breakfast and more water. (Psalm 23).
Also: Ang got to see three shooting stars tonight, and we learned that Angel in Turkish is Melek, so that’s what Angela was called by the family in the fishing village.
—Jeff
