Day Seven - Ephesus and Ferry to Athens

The local village near Küçükkuyu.
After breakfast I head South around Izmir which seemed to have most major roads being rebuilt and little in the way of detours, thank goodness for my Garmin Zumo 400 that has been faultless for the entire journey.

The heat goes up and I see 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) on the air temp, before I left on this trip SimonDippenhall gave me quite a bit of very useful information after his amazing trip to the Red Sea, one of his gems was to carry a camel back, I had the thermal insulated model which kept the water cool and fitted in a back pocket in my BMW jacket, I kept it topped up. In the heat today I would get through 6 litres of cold water and that was barely enough, but it was a real life-saver.

The road surface can get very slick so you have to pick your path carefully.



My destination today was Ephesus near Selçuk. Ephesus has one of the largest collection of nearly complete ancient buildings in the world dating back to 550 BC. I could have easily have spent all day here and not seen everything.






The original communal toilets

But I am on a schedule and I have to leave sooner than I would have wanted to catch a ferry out of Turkey to the small Greek island of Chios.

I speed onto Cesme where I find my small ferry that will take me to Chios.

I meet this Italian couple who have been touring Turkey for the last 2 months. Thankfully he has excellent English but his girlfriend doesn't speak a word, so over a cold drink while we wait for our ferry we enthusiastically share experiences of our journeys, she just sulks, typical bikers.


It only has enough room for 3 cars and my bike.
The sea looks calm in the harbour but the wind has been blowing hard all day and the crossing is expected to be rough, so the crew insist I stay next to my bike for the 50 min voyage to keep it upright. At least they gave me a chair.

I get to Chios and wait for my overnight ferry that will leave at 22:00 and take me to Athens. I will really miss Turkey, I love the food, lifestyle, historical sites but most of all I found the people warm and very hospitable.