Expedition Kackar 2009
2. Transfer to the Mountains
Previous Chapter : 1. The Introductory European Part of the Expedition
The flight took two hours and was calm. Anyway I suppose it was because I had gone to sleep. I just remember I was pretty fed up when the plane landed on the Trabzon runway, because it woke me up and I´d been sleeping so weeell...
After picking up the luggage and pulling it outside through crowds in front of the airport we came to the coastal highway with a bus stop. Before we managed to figure out how to get to the bus terminal, a man with a station wagon attached himself to us and offered to take us there. It was a few kilometres. After I paid twenty lira to the unsatisfied driver (one Turkish lira was twelve Czech crowns at that time), Thomas told me off, the usual price was only ten liras. At the “otogar” (bus terminal in Turkish – sounds French, doesn´t it?) we bought tickets to Pazar for 45 lira/person, from there we wanted to go on by dolmus (minibus). Tom left us to buy a beer. He really got it, but packed in newspaper. When our bus came at 2:30, they didn´t allow Tom to take the beer with him.
The modern coach went pretty fast on the coastal highway and at 4:00 we were already in Pazar. Beside us seven Israeli boys got off, they were also travelling to Kackar and had even been on the same plane to Trabzon, as well. We had to catch a dolmus to the mountain-town Ayder, which was fine... but at night? The coach left and there was nobody there, only a muezzin’s voice from the mosque amplifier close-by. But the Israelis had everything under the control. Suddenly a blinking police car appeared and one of the Israelis immediately started to talk brightly with the policemen. I didn´t know whether the police car was covered with a slogan like “help and protect” (usual in Czechia), but the policemen acted like that anyway, because in less than ten minutes a minibus came and took us to the mountains.
Before 7 a.m. we reached the mountain-town Ayder, where the paved road ended. Each of us paid 13 lira and the driver was very happy, he had a full minibus on the way there. He said good bye to each of us by handshake. Despite the daylight the town was still empty. Our first task was to get petrol for our fuel stove, the next step was to catch a dolmus at 9:00 to the mountain village Yukarı Kavron, from which we would finally go on foot.
It became a big adventure to get petrol; everyone told us, it´s impossible to get it in Ayder, but they couldn´t persuade us out of it and in the end we got it. (For interested people: in Cafeteria Yilimaz, in the upper part of the town.) We needed petrol for cooking. We rejected the gas stove because of the impossibility to take gas cartouches onto a plane. So we were really surprised, when we saw our Israeli fellow travellers taking a gas stove with cartouches out of their bags. I asked them how they were able to smuggle it on the plane and they answered they had been informed by Turkish Airlines that it would be no problem...
After a Turkish breakfast (bread, tomatoes, cucumbers, goat cheese, butter, delicious olives, honey and tea) in a pension, strategically placed by the first stop of the dolmus to Yukarı Kavron, we sat in the minibus and set out after a while. It was just 9 o´clock and the mountain town slowly started to wake up and live. There were plenty of pensions and surprisingly enough Turkish tourists. The driver, one hand with a mobile to his ear, phoned somebody all the time and tooted at every pension to be sure that nobody wanted to go with us. At the end of the town the capacity of the dolmus was absolutely full. We waved from the window to the Israelis, who had decided not to go on that day because of the following day´s Sabbath, and they had to prepare food etc., because the Sabbath is a day of rest with the prohibition of physical effort. The minibus left the town together with the paved road behind.
It´s unbelievable just where it is possible to go by minibus. A dust road winded at a gradient of about 30m above the river and every once in a while the road was covered by the stream of a steep sided valley. Tom fell asleep immediately without problem, although his head rhythmically drummed on the car window because of chuckholes and serpentines. We reached Yukarı Kavron at ten o´clock - for ten lira each, just the other Turkish passengers paid just 7,50-. They had charged us more probably because of our bags on the roof, I calmed myself down.
Yukarı Kavron (c. 2200m above sea level) is the last village with buffets and pensions. The owner of one of them invited us into his cottage and gave us tea free. We capitalized on this and changed into our walking gear. The weather wasn’t too good – foggy and it looked like it would soon rain. We planned to camp at the end of the valley stream which flowed to Yukar Kavron from Lake Derebaşı and according to the descriptions on the internet should have been 6-7 hours journey. It took us about 4 hours, no doubt because of the two maniacs, Jack and Thomas, at the front, but I do think that even for normal people it would take no more than 5 hours – the description on the internet was a bit of an exaggeration. It rained a little and was foggy on the journey. Otherwise orientation was easy, as we more or less kept to the mountain stream.
When we reached the mountain lake at two o’clock in the afternoon, it was still quite foggy and it wasn’t possible to see the other bank of the stream, so to be sure we went around the river to see whether there was a better place for our tent than the one we found at the beginning – but there wasn’t. For a moment, the fog cleared and in that instant we were able to see the mountain lake. Then we managed to catch up with a little bit of sleep before dinner – something we hadn’t been able to do in the night. At five o’clock we ate dinner. In the evening the horizon cleared again for a moment, but this time it was possible to catch a glimpse of the majestic mountain Kackar above the lake. I also noticed that the meadowy undergrowth didn’t continue above the lake, but instead a stone field began. There followed an obligatory evening social pot of grog and then I went to sleep, as I didn’t feel all that well.
I hope I don’t have vertigo, I thought to myself. It would be very rare at 2800 metres. What will be, will be – unfortunately it lasted another three days. My head spun mainly in the evening, and during the night when I wanted to turn onto my other side, it was as though I had just climbed the stairs to the eleventh floor. What a good start…