The taxi ride was an experience in itself. They drive through the tunnel at 110km in a 50km zone, no seatbelt, using a mobile phone and one hand on the stearing wheel, but very skilfully. The Dakar rally has nothing on it!
Yesterday was the big day. A ferry trip across the Bosphorous which separates Europe Turkey and Asia Turkey to Haydarpasa where the docks are. Beautiful views of the various temples palaces and other old buildings along the way. Population of Istanbul is 17 million (I think the majority are carpet sellers).
Another morning of paperwork and then the rest of the day waiting patiently on the wharf for containers to be located and inspected by Customs. Then a large Turkish guy whose job it was to unlock the container doors with a large pair of bolt cutters proceeded to do this with lots of cheering from the group and much photo staging and then kissed some of the male members of the group which made their toes turn up. He then got into trouble for opening the doors without the presence of Customs. He was still walking around later with his bolt cutters over his shoulders like a star who was just discovered so it looks as though he still has a job.
Finally we were given special permission by Customs to drive our van out because we had to put the wheels on. All the guys pitched in and helped fit the wheels and rear lights which had been taken off for loading.
Eventually all vehicles were allowed out of the containers and members were busy putting on hoops, canvas, fueling up and checking everything over. Our van started first go in the container but when we were all set to take off the battery had died. We had to be towed by another Blitz to get going.
We returned via the Bosphorous again by car ferry as we had organised 24 security parking close to our hotel . We kept the engine running on the ferry which caused some inconvenience to the people behind sitting in their car - something to do with fumes!! We were too scared to turn off the ignition in case we couldn't get it going again. Leisa and Nigel also had battery trouble with their jeep and Leisa very courageously drove it from the port to the parking lot. On the ferry a guy signalled to her to turn off the ignition but then when she went to drive off the ferry the jeep wouldn't start. What a stir she caused - she had all these guys pushing her off the ferry to get started. Only a woman would get away with that!
Once off the ferry it was a case of looking at your map and/or following the vehicle in front. We did the latter and followed John Hedges and inadvertently ended up going over the Golden Horn bridge to the other side (in the wrong direction completely). After going down a couple of side streets to get back in the right direction we saw that John was indicating to go in another direction altogether (nowhere in the direction that we had to be going). A good decision was made not to follow John and we headed back towards the parking area. A slight error by the nagivator found us in the police yards where we were met with 3 policemen with assault rifles not really understanding what we were doing. After showing them the map they pointed us in the right direction. Unfortunately there were bollards in the middle of the street and we could not go across to go down the street that led to the parking lot. So we had to do a lap of the block and when we were pulled up trying to work out which way to go a carpet salesman came running out of his shop and tried to sell us a carpet. We finally managed to end up at the correct destination with much cheering from the rest of the group who had managed to get there - except for two others (John Hedges being one of them). Dave and Maggie Motteram arrived soon after us. A taxi finally led John home and he had prime parking right outside of the front of the hotel.
Because we managed to get the vehicles off the wharf quicker than anticipated our journey now begins a couple of days earlier. Today we are headed for Galipolli via the coastal route and will camp the night out in the Galipolli National Park.
