Day 7 (Continued)

Yusufeli is a medium-sized village set between two rivers which join to form the Coruh, and upon our arrival it was immediately apparent that we were the only visitors in town. It was also apparent that within minutes of our arrival everyone in town knew that two Americans had come, and we had several offers of places to stay. We ended up choosing a small hotel with three clean little rooms about a block from the bus stop, next to the small mosque. We of course chose the one with the private bath and hot water. It was $2 a night, the owner told us. Mark and I looked at each other. The owner, thinking our look meant that the price was too high, assured us "it is my best price, really." We didn't argue.

We also make it known to the hotel owner that we were interested in hiking and rafting, and that anything he could do to help us would be appreciated. The owner then explained that since the Kurdish revolt began five years ago, tourists had stopped coming that far east (despite the fact that the problems were much further south) and so the only two rafting outfitters had closed up shop. But the owner promised that he would see what he could do.

Within fifteen minutes, there were two men at our door. One was a former rafting guide who had moved to Kas (a city on the southern coast of Turkey) to find work but was back in town for a week or so to see his family. He said that he would try to find his old raft and paddles and set something up for the next day, but that any trip would have to be limited to only one day as he had to return to Kas the following night. The other man was a trekking guide, who proudly showed us a Mountain Travel-Sobek catalogue a few years old which included his picture as one of the trail guides who led the plush tours for which the crazy Americans paid thousands of dollars. But for us, $20 a day. We talked to them both for a while (their English was quite good--all those Mt. Travel groups I guess) and made plans to go rafting the next day, and possibly hiking the following day.

Then it was dinner at a small restaurant (one of only three in town) overlooking the river which flows through the village. We ate the usual salads plus some wonderful river trout while talking with a 10-year-old boy who attended an English-language boarding school (apparently as the result of scoring the highest in the region on some national exam) and was home for the summer.

Besides the guides, this little boy and our hotel owner who spoke very broken English, the only English anyone else in Yusufeli knew were two questions: "What is your name?" and "Where are you from?" And I mean that seriously; while taking an evening stroll up and down the three blocks that comprise Yusufeli's main street (the evening activity for everyone in Yusufeli who wasn't sitting in tea houses drinking and smoking), at least 30 men and children (no women) came up to us and simply asked those two questions, listened to our responses, smiled and then walked away. One or two surprised us by first asking, "I walk with you to practice English?" We agreed, of course, expecting real conversation, but were then hit with only those same two questions. It was rather amusing, I must say.

written by  shoshtrvls on June 8, 1996 from Yusufeli, Turkey
from the travel blog: Turkey and Greece (1996)
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